New research by Dr. Michael Kesden, assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe — the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much larger black hole. The work provides for the first time solutions to decades-old equations that describe conditions as two black holes in a binary system orbit each other and spiral in toward a collision....

Varghese Mathai of the University of Massachusetts Amherst explains and shows how air flows inside cars and how to lower the risk of COVID-19 airborne transmission. What can be done to reduce the risk of airborne transmission inside a car? It’s important to have good ventilation. This means you get as much outside air as possible to mix with the air inside the cabin and then flush it out. You can do this in a couple of ways....

Recently, a research group led by Prof. Wang Bo from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) has provided new insight into the niche diversity, chemical communication, and defense mechanisms of Mesozoic pollinating insects. Its findings were published in Nature Communications on September 17. One of the most intensely investigated examples of pollination niches is the morphological match between insect proboscis and floral tube length, which Darwin described in a publication in 1877....

Have you ever gone ahead and eaten that piece of chocolate, despite yourself? Do you inadvertently make decisions because you are hungry or cold? In other words, does the brain’s processing of internal bodily signals interfere with your ability to act freely? This line of thinking is at the heart of research that questions our ability to act on thoughts of free will. We already know that inner body signals, like the heartbeat, affect our mental states, can be used to reduce the perception of pain and are of fundamental importance for bodily self-consciousness....

Compared to naturally conceived pregnancies, pregnancies conceived with assisted reproductive technology using frozen embryos, may have a 74% higher risk of developing a hypertensive disorder.In comparison, the risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancies from fresh embryo transfer was similar to naturally conceived pregnancies.High blood pressure during pregnancy may be a sign of preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complication that may be life-threatening to both the mother and the fetus. According to new research published on September 26 in Hypertension, in vitro fertilization (IVF) using frozen embryos may be associated with a 74% higher risk of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy....

Graphene and graphene-like molecules were an attractive choice as an electronic component in molecular devices, but up till now, it has proven very challenging to use them in large-scale production of molecular devices that will work and be robust at room temperatures. In a joint effort research teams from the University of Warwick, EMPA, and Lancaster and Bern Universities have reached both electrical and mechanical stability in graphene-based junctions million times smaller than the diameter of human hair....

A new study by Yale University scientists found that GATA1 represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells and that GATA1 may play a role in symptoms of depression. Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs — a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models....

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) is a process by which the spread of disease in human populations is tracked by testing wastewater. It has been used to track the spread of polio and norovirus infections. Many groups around the world are working on developing methods to adapt WBE to track COVID-19. Using these methods, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in municipal wastewater from Australia, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In a paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, a group of researchers – including Samendra P....

The image—captured by a NASA-designed and built instrument called the Goddard-IRAM Superconducting 2-Millimeter Observer, or GISMO—shows the inner part of our galaxy, which hosts the largest, densest collection of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way. These vast, cool clouds contain enough dense gas and dust to form tens of millions of stars like the Sun. The view spans a part of the sky about 1.5 degrees across, equivalent to roughly three times the apparent size of the Moon....

“The faint glow would be most visible during evening hours when the background sky is darker,” said William Farrell, from Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of a paper on this topic. “NASA’s experimental Ingenuity helicopter does not fly during this time, but future drones could be cleared for evening flight and look for this glow.” If you’ve ever shuffled your feet across a wool carpet on a dry winter day, and then reached out to touch a metal doorknob, you’re familiar with the static discharge that creates a little zap — a spark — that leaps between your fingers and the metal knob....

Scientists published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE. Sora Kim, from the University of Wyoming and colleagues, used chemical clues in great white shark vertebrae to track the different feeding preferences among individuals, between 1957 and 2000. This technique has been used previously to outline the diet of other creatures. As animals feed, chemical tracers in the form of carbon and nitrogen isotopes are incorporated into their teeth and bones....

“The emergence of multicellularity is one of the greatest mysteries of life on Earth,” states corresponding author Kouhei Mizuno, a professor at the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN), Tokyo, Japan. “The point is that we already know the superior function and adaptability of multicellularity, but we know almost nothing about its origins. Established function and adaptability are not necessarily their own formative driving force. A curiosity of multicellularity is the conflict between the ‘benefits of individuals’ versus the ‘benefit of the group’ that must have existed in the early stage of the evolutionary transition....

This scene, while familiar to anyone and repeated constantly across the planet, is not without a feeling of mystery. But now that mystery has deepened, with the discovery that lightning can result in matter-antimatter annihilation. In a collaborative study appearing in Nature, researchers from Japan describe how gamma rays from lightning react with the air to produce radioisotopes and even positrons — the antimatter equivalent of electrons. “We already knew that thunderclouds and lightning emit gamma rays, and hypothesized that they would react in some way with the nuclei of environmental elements in the atmosphere,” explains Teruaki Enoto from Kyoto University, who leads the project....

Research on energy production from biomass usually focuses on the amount of energy generated. But it is also important to consider how much energy goes into the process, a component that is often neglected, says Tony Grift, professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. Grift is a co-author on a new study, published in Bioresource Technology Reports, that takes a look at the bioconversion efficiency of two products often used as biomass for energy production, miscanthus giganteus and sugarcane bagasse....

A team of scientists led by Magdalena Winkiel at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland recently published a study in Frontiers in Pharmacology, reviewing the potential of glycoalkaloids found in common vegetables like potatoes and tomatoes as a treatment for cancer. “Scientists around the world are still searching for the drugs which will be lethal to cancer cells but at the same time safe for healthy cells,” said Winkiel. “It is not easy despite the advances in medicine and powerful development of modern treatment techniques....

NGC 1961 is classified as an intermediate spiral and an AGN, or active galactic nuclei, type of galaxy. Because they lack a clearly defined bar of stars at their cores, intermediate spiral galaxies fall between “barred” and “unbarred” spiral galaxies. AGN galaxies have very bright centers that frequently far outshine the rest of the galaxy at certain wavelengths of light. These galaxies are believed to have supermassive black holes at their center churning out bright jets and winds that shape their evolution....

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet (C/2012 S1) ISON was photographed on April 10, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun (394 million miles from Earth). Even at that great distance the comet is already active as sunlight warms the surface and causes frozen volatiles to sublimate. A detailed analysis of the dust coma surrounding the solid, icy nucleus reveals a strong, jet blasting dust particles off the sunward-facing side of the comet’s nucleus....

This newly released Hubble image shows dwarf galaxy Leo A, which is located roughly 2.5 million light-years from Earth. At first glance this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image seems to show an array of different cosmic objects, but the speckling of stars shown here actually forms a single body — a nearby dwarf galaxy known as Leo A. Its few million stars are so sparsely distributed that some distant background galaxies are visible through it....

IC 10 is a remarkable object. It is the closest-known starburst galaxy to us, meaning that it is undergoing a furious bout of star formation fueled by ample supplies of cool hydrogen gas. This gas condenses into vast molecular clouds, which then form into dense knots where pressures and temperatures reach a point sufficient to ignite nuclear fusion, thus giving rise to new generations of stars. As an irregular galaxy, IC 10 lacks the majestic shape of spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way, or the rounded, ethereal appearance of elliptical galaxies....

This colorful and star-studded view of the Milky Way galaxy was captured when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope pointed its cameras towards the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). Blue stars can be seen scattered across the frame, set against a distant backdrop of red-hued cosmic companions. This blue litter most likely formed at the same time from the same collapsing molecular cloud. The color of a star can reveal many of its secrets....