After evaluating 35 studies — involving the work of 145 scientists and the outcomes of 10,080 participants — Keith Humphreys, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and his fellow investigators determined that AA was nearly always found to be more effective than psychotherapy in achieving abstinence. In addition, most studies showed that AA participation lowered health care costs. AA works because it’s based on social interaction, Humphreys said, noting that members give one another emotional support as well as practical tips to refrain from drinking....

ALL, a cancer of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cells), is the most common childhood cancer. About 98% of children with ALL go into remission within weeks after starting treatment, and about 90% of those children will eventually be cured. Modern treatment for ALL is risk-adapted, meaning chemotherapy is tailored based on clinical features, leukemia genomics, and the degree of minimal residual disease (MRD), which is the presence of microscopic levels of cancer cells that remain after initial treatment....

“We found that a disordered labyrinthine phase transforms into the more ordered parallel-stripe structure upon raising the temperature,” said Yousra Nahas, first author of the study titled “Inverse Transition of Labyrinthine Domain Patterns in Ferroelectric Thin Films,” published in the journal Nature. Former and present U of A physics researchers Sergei Prokhorenko, Bin Xu, Sergey Prosandeev, and Distinguished Professor Laurent Bellaiche, along with colleagues in France, also contributed to the study....

When a person with a respiratory infection, such as SARS-CoV-2, coughs or sneezes, they release small droplets and aerosolized particles into the air. Particles smaller than 0.3 μm can stay airborne for hours, so materials that can trap these tiny particles are ideal for use in facemasks and air filters. But some existing filter materials have drawbacks. For example, fiberglass, carbon nanotubes, and polypropylene fibers are not durable enough to undergo repeated decontamination procedures, while some further rely on electrostatics so they can’t be washed, leading to large amounts of waste....

The discovery was part of the VLA Frontier Fields Legacy Survey, led by NRAO Astronomer Eric Murphy, which used distant clusters of galaxies as natural lenses to study objects even farther away. The clusters served as gravitational lenses, using the gravitational pull of the galaxies in the clusters to bend and magnify light and radio waves coming from the more-distant objects. In this composite, a VLA radio image is superimposed on a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope....

A team of astronomers led by Lidia Oskinova of the University of Potsdam, Germany, used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray telescope to study the object that was originally discovered in 2019. Back then, astronomers already reported that the object has very high wind speeds and is too bright, and therefore too massive, to be an ordinary white dwarf. They suggested that the object is a new type of star that survived the merger of two white dwarfs....

Center for Translational Antiviral Research Reports Novel Drug Class with Activity Against SARS-CoV-2 The COVID-19 pandemic and resurgence of infections by other respiratory RNA viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in children has caused an urgent need for the development of orally available broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutics. In a study published online on December 2, 2021, in Science, researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University report a new candidate ribonucleoside analog, 4’-fluorouridine (4’-FlU), that has potent antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, RSV and other respiratory RNA viruses in cell culture, human organoids and different animal models when administered orally once daily....

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior. Transfer of the powdered rock sample into an open scoop was visible for the first time in images received Wednesday at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California....

Scientists around the world are working to understand the nature of dark matter, which accounts for most of the mass of the universe. The earth seems to be moving through a cloud of dark-matter particles that encompasses the visible parts of our galaxy. We should be able to sense this dark matter if we can deploy detectors that are sensitive to the ‘billiard ball’ scatter of a dark matter particle from an atomic nucleus inside these detectors....

The initial findings were presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. They indicate that as many as one in twenty-five trees died in areas with the most severe water scarcity. The findings also suggest that previous techniques using satellites to measure drought stress in rainforests may be missing impacts of a warming global climate, which is believed will cause more droughts in these critical habitats. The Carnegie Airbone Observatory, which scans forests from a slow-flying plane 2,000 meters above treetops, measured the shape and chemical signatures of the forests using lidar and a spectrometer....

There are only 460 North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) in the waters of Canada and the USA. Both countries have implemented measures to protect these whales from becoming entangled in fishing gear or being hit by ships in certain areas. The US ‘ship strike rule’ that limits vessel speeds in certain areas, came into effect in 2008 and is set to expire in 2013. The scientists published their analysis of all known deaths of eight species of large whales in the northwest Atlantic between 1970 and 2009 in the journal Conservation Biology....

Last year, scientists with NASA’s Dawn mission announced the detection of organic material — carbon-based compounds that are necessary components for life — exposed in patches on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres. Now, a new analysis of the Dawn data by Brown University researchers suggests those patches may contain a much higher abundance of organics than originally thought. The findings, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, raise intriguing questions about how those organics got to the surface of Ceres, and the methods used in the new study could also provide a template for interpreting data for future missions, the researchers say....

Everton Miranda and colleagues found that harpy eagles rely on specific prey that lives in canopy forests, including sloths and monkeys. Eaglets starved in areas of high deforestation where canopy-based food was limited. The authors calculated that areas with over 50% deforestation are unsuitable for harpy eagles to successfully raise offspring and estimate that around 35% of northern Mato Grosso is unsuitable for breeding harpy eagles. This may have caused a decline in numbers of breeding pairs by 3,256 since 1985....

Additionally, compared to non-users, cannabis users exhibit no differences in reward-seeking motivation, enjoyment from rewards, or the brain’s response to rewards. After alcohol and nicotine, cannabis is the third most often used controlled substance globally. According to 2018 research from the NHS Digital Lifestyles Team, 19% of 15-year-olds in England reported using cannabis in the previous year. This number was higher in the United States, with the National Institute on Drug Abuse reporting that 28% of 15 to 16-year-olds used cannabis in the previous 12 months in 2020....

Modern humans are fundamentally different from our closest living relatives, the great apes: We live on the ground, walk on two legs and have much larger brains. The first populations of the genus Homo emerged in Africa about 2.5 million years ago. They already walked upright, but their brains were only about half the size of today’s humans. These earliest Homo populations in Africa had primitive ape-like brains – just like their extinct ancestors, the australopithecines....

Generated by the human immune system, neutralizing antibodies can effectively prevent viruses from infecting cells. New results from animal studies showed that their neutralizing antibody provides a potential cure for COVID-19 as well as means for short-term prevention. This marks a major milestone in the fight against the pandemic. This study has been published online in Cell, titled “Potent neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 identified by high-throughput single-cell sequencing of convalescent patients’ B cells....

“Einstein’s right, at least for now,” said Ghez, a co-lead author of the research. “We can absolutely rule out Newton’s law of gravity. Our observations are consistent with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. However, his theory is definitely showing vulnerability. It cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole, and at some point we will need to move beyond Einstein’s theory to a more comprehensive theory of gravity that explains what a black hole is....

New research reveals that overharvesting has put the Great Barrier Reef’s tropical sea cucumber populations in peril, with strong demand for this delicacy from East and Southeast Asia. Several kinds of sea cucumber are harvested, mainly for Chinese consumption. The global market for sea cucumbers is estimated to be worth over USD$200 million annually. Published in Biological Conservation, the research was led by a team from the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland....

Pine Island Glacier is a region of fast-flowing ice draining an area of West Antarctica approximately two thirds the size of the UK. The glacier is a particular cause for concern as it is losing more ice than any other glacier in Antarctica. Currently, Pine Island Glacier together with its neighboring Thwaites glacier are responsible for about 10% of the ongoing increase in global sea level. Scientists have argued for some time that this region of Antarctica could reach a tipping point and undergo an irreversible retreat from which it could not recover....

The research, which author James Clark calls a “feasibility study,” appears today in The Astrophysical Journal. The findings suggest that if a high-powered 1- to 2-megawatt laser were focused through a massive 30- to 45-meter (98- to 148-foot) telescope and aimed out into space, the combination would produce a beam of infrared radiation strong enough to stand out from the sun’s energy. Such a signal could be detectable by alien astronomers performing a cursory survey of our section of the Milky Way — especially if those astronomers live in nearby systems, such as around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, or TRAPPIST-1, a star about 40 light-years away that hosts seven exoplanets, three of which are potentially habitable....