The next full moon will be Tuesday morning, March 7, 2023, appearing opposite the Sun in Earth-based longitude at 7:40 AM EST. This will be on Wednesday morning from Kamchatka and Fiji Time eastward to the International Date Line. The Moon will appear full for about three days around this time, from Sunday evening through Wednesday morning (and possibly early Wednesday evening). The Maine Farmers’ Almanac began publishing Native American names for full moons in the 1930s and these names are now widely known and used....

Regular exercise has benefits beyond a leaner and stronger physique. It also boosts brain function, especially in older adults. And doing exercise with others, according to a study in Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, results in even greater cognitive benefits compared to exercising alone. With the projected increase in the global number of dementia patients reaching 150 million by 2050, there is growing interest in simple lifestyle practices, like exercise and socializing, that can potentially lower the risk of age-related cognitive decline....

Most dinosaurs famously disappeared 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. Prior to that, a majority of Earth’s creatures were snuffed out between the Permian and Triassic periods, roughly 252 million years ago. Thanks to the efforts of researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Virginia Tech, it’s now known that a similar extinction occurred 550 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period. This discovery is documented in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper....

By measuring the different speeds at which these waves penetrate and pass through the Earth’s inner core, the researchers believe they’ve documented evidence of a distinct layer inside Earth known as the innermost inner core – a solid “metallic ball” that sits within the center of the inner core. Not long ago it was thought Earth’s structure was comprised of four distinct layers: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core....

A guided mindfulness-based stress reduction program was as effective as the use of the gold-standard drug – the common antidepressant drug escitalopram – for patients with anxiety disorders. This is according to the results of a first-of-its-kind, randomized clinical trial led by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center. The findings were published on November 9, 2022m, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. This follows the announcement on October 11, 2022, by the United States Preventive Services Task Force that, for the first time, recommended screening for anxiety disorders due to the high prevalence of these conditions....

A scientific team headed by Peter Krause, M.D., and including Erol Fikrig, M.D., and Sukanya Narasimhan, Ph.D., both of the Yale School of Medicine, and Robert Lane, Ph.D. of the University of California, Berkeley, tested archived sera and found evidence that the disease exists in a Lyme disease endemic community in northern California. A previous study by Krause and colleagues published last year found evidence that the disease exists in Manitoba, Canada....

New research from Yale University shows that middle-school children who consume heavily sweetened energy drinks are 66% more likely to be at risk for hyperactivity and inattention symptoms. The finding has implications for school success and lends support to existing recommendations to limit the amount of sweetened beverages schoolchildren drink. The authors also recommend that children avoid energy drinks, which in addition to high levels of sugar also often contain caffeine....

Many celestial objects are beautiful – swirling spiral galaxies or glittering clusters of stars are notable examples. But some of the most striking scenes are created during the death throes of intermediate-mass stars, when great clouds of superheated gas are expelled into space. These dying breaths form planetary nebulas like NGC 6302, captured here in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Known perhaps more appropriately as the Bug or Butterfly Nebula, this complex nebula lies roughly 3,800 light-years away from us within the Milky Way....

Although SARS-CoV-2 mainly affects the respiratory system, the virus — and the body’s response to it — also damages other tissues. Recent evidence indicates that COVID-19 infection can reduce male fertility, and the virus has been detected in male reproductive organs. Firuza Parikh and Rajesh Parikh at Jaslok Hospital, Sanjeeva Srivastava at the Indian Institute of Technology and colleagues wondered if COVID-19 infection could have long-term impacts on the male reproductive system....

In a new study performed in mice, researchers from the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (HSCRB), Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard Medical School (HMS), and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) uncovered one explanation for why exercise might be beneficial: It stimulates the heart to make new muscle cells, both under normal conditions and after a heart attack. Just published in the journal Nature Communications, the findings have implications for public health, physical education, and the rehabilitation of cardiac patients....

“From the atomic physics perspective, the experiment is beautifully described by existing theory,” says Stephen Eckel, an atomic physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the lead author of the new paper. “But even more striking is how that theory connects with cosmology.” In several sets of experiments, Eckel and his colleagues rapidly expanded the size of a doughnut-shaped cloud of atoms, taking snapshots during the process....

Commander Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) will lead station operations for about the next two weeks, until she and fellow crewmates Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom crew ship. The foursome has been aboard the space station since April 27. They spent the day on Friday checking their Dragon pressure suits, packing personal items, and reviewing departure and landing procedures....

In amongst the tiny dots, spirals, and ovals that are the galaxies that belong to the cluster, there are several distinct crescent shapes. These curved arcs of light are strong examples of a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The image was compiled using observations taken with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Gravitational lensing occurs when an object’s mass causes light to bend....

Ancient air samples from one of Antarctica’s snowiest ice core sites may add a new molecule to the record of changes to Earth’s atmosphere over the past century and a half, since the Industrial Revolution began burning fossil fuels on a massive scale. While carbon dioxide and methane are well known, researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Rochester are part of a team working to trace a much rarer gas, present at less than one in a trillion molecules....

Scientists have long speculated that falcons’ eye markings improve their ability to target fast-moving prey, like pigeons and doves, in bright sunlight. Now research suggests these markings have evolved according to the climate; the sunnier the bird’s habitat, the larger and darker are the tell-tale dark ‘sun-shade’ feathers. The distinctive dark stripes directly beneath the peregrine falcon’s eyes, called the malar stripe or ‘mustache,’ likely reduce sunlight glare and confer a competitive advantage during high-speed chases....

As COVID-19 continues to spread, bottlenecks in supplies and laboratory personnel have led to long waiting times for results in some areas. In a new study, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign researchers have demonstrated a prototype of a rapid COVID-19 molecular test and a simple-to-use, portable instrument for reading the results with a smartphone in 30 minutes, which could enable point-of-care diagnosis without needing to send samples to a lab. “If such a device and test were available, we could test for COVID-19 at public events, auditoriums, large gatherings, and potentially even at home for self-testing....

Anemonefish are easily recognized by their striking orange and white patterning, but University of Queensland scientists set out to find out how ‘clownfish’ see their world and how that influences their behavior. Researchers at UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) and the University of Maryland (USA) analyzed the visual systems of a particular species of anemonefish, Amphiprion akindynos. QBI researcher Dr. Fabio Cortesi said the Great Barrier Reef anemonefish was basically Nemo’s cousin....

The COVID-19 virus holds some mysteries. Scientists remain in the dark on aspects of how it fuses and enters the host cell; how it assembles itself; and how it buds off the host cell. Computational modeling combined with experimental data provides insights into these behaviors. But modeling over meaningful timescales of the pandemic-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus has so far been limited to just its pieces like the spike protein, a target for the current round of vaccines....

61-year-old patient suffered from severe post-COVID-19 respiratory failure after three months on an artificial lung that oxygenates blood and multiple treatment-related complications. Doctors in Lisbon report on the case of a 61-year-old man who received a double lung transplant after his lungs were irreparably damaged by COVID-19, in a case report presented at Euroanaesthesia, the annual meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC), held online this year on December 17-19....

“We are giving humanity its first view of a black hole — a one-way door out of our universe,” said EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “This is a landmark in astronomy, an unprecedented scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.” Black holes are extraordinary cosmic objects with enormous masses but extremely compact sizes. The presence of these objects affects their environment in extreme ways, warping spacetime and super-heating any surrounding material so that it glows....