Self-driving cars have become better and more reliable in recent years. Before they might be allowed to drive completely autonomously on our roads in the near future, however, a few hurdles have to be taken. Above all, the need to assess the surroundings at lightning speed and to recognize people and obstacles takes current technologies to their limits. A team of scientists led by Jürg Leuthold at the Institute for Electromagnetic Fields at ETH Zurich, together with colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the USA and at Chalmers University in Gothenburg (Sweden), has now developed a novel electro-​opto-mechanical switch that might be able to elegantly solve both problems in the future....

On Earth, shifting tectonic plates reshuffle the planet’s surface and make for a dynamic interior. Due to the absence of such processes on Mars, many thought of it as a dead planet, where not much happened in the past 3 billion years. Scientists from the University of Arizona challenge current views of Martian geodynamic evolution with a report on the discovery of an active mantle plume pushing the surface upward and causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions....

Near Earth Asteroids, or NEAs, pass by our home planet all the time. But an SUV-size asteroid set the record this past weekend for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA: It passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday, August 16 at 12:08 a.m. EDT (Saturday, August 15 at 9:08 p.m. PDT). At roughly 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) across, asteroid 2020 QG is very small by asteroid standards: If it had actually been on an impact trajectory, it would likely have become a fireball as it broke up in Earth’s atmosphere, which happens several times a year....

When NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover tried to collect its first rock core sample last August, the outcome presented a puzzle for the mission team: The rover’s sample tube came up empty. But why? Not long after, Perseverance successfully gathered a sample the size of a piece of chalk from a different rock. The team concluded that the first rock they had chosen was so crumbly that the rover’s percussive drill likely pulverized it....

Mars, for example, has geological features that suggest it once had — and still has — subsurface liquid water, an almost sure prerequisite for life. Scientists have also eyed Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus as well as Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as possible havens for life in the oceans under their icy crusts. Now, however, scientists are dusting off an old idea that promises a new vista in the hunt for life beyond Earth: the clouds of Venus....

More than a coincidence The Northeast of Brazil has the drier weather of its 5 regions. The northeastern backlands, locally known as “Sertão” and “Agreste,” are areas characterized by its semi-arid climate and the lowest rainfall in the country. Stricken frequently by dry seasons, the region faced an unforgiving drought from 2012 to 2017: the worst on record, according to data from the Brazilian National Institute of Meteorology. Nevertheless, the country suffered in the same period the greatest Zika epidemic in Latin America, which reached its most critical point in the years of 2015 and 2016....

The huge outburst occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, a large cosmic conglomerate with thousands of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter held together by gravity. It is located approximately 390 million light-years away from Earth. In particular, the eruption is linked to powerful jets released by the supermassive black hole that sits at the core of the cluster’s central galaxy and actively feeds on the surrounding gas, occasionally blasting off large amounts of matter and energy....

Superfoods like turmeric and honey have long been recognized for their ability to promote health and wellness. New studies being presented at NUTRITION 2021 LIVE ONLINE take a closer look at the science behind the health benefits of superfoods. Here are four highlights: Spicing up your diet could help lower blood pressure A new study shows that adding herbs and spices to your diet may do more than improve the flavor....

A paper reporting the results is published today in the journal Science Advances. Lindsay Arvin of UW is the paper’s lead author and co-authors are Cliff Riebe of UW, Sarah Aciego of UW and the University of Michigan (U-M), and Molly Blakowski of U-M. Arvin, Riebe, and colleagues took samples of live pine needles in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They used two biochemical “fingerprints” in the pine needles to trace the nutrients....

A microcomb is a photonic device capable of generating a myriad of optical frequencies — colors — on a tiny cavity known as microresonator. These colors are uniformly distributed so the microcomb behaves like a ‘ruler made of light’. The device can be used to measure or generate frequencies with extreme precision. In a recent article in the journal Nature Photonics, eight Chalmers researchers describe a new kind of microcomb on a chip, based on two microresonators....

To mask or not to mask — and which mask to use? With public health guidance about masks in the United States confused by political hedging, clarity around mask use is increasingly important, especially as the western U.S. battles the twin crises of wildfire smoke and COVID-19. “The CDC is the gold standard of where we find guidance to protect our health, but it’s also really important for that information to be spread in ways that people can access and understand it,” said Francisca Santana, a PhD student at Stanford University and lead author of a perspective review on mask use published in Environmental Research Letters today (October 28, 2020)....

Finding the earliest possible case is needed to better understand how the virus may have jumped from its animal host first to infect humans as well as the history of how the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome has mutated over time and spread globally. Since the first SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was detected in December 2019, well over a million genomes of SARS-CoV-2 have been sequenced worldwide, revealing that the coronavirus is mutating, albeit slowly, at a rate of 25 mutations per genome per year....

A recent study from the labs of James Hone (mechanical engineering) and Cory Dean (physics) demonstrates a new way to tune the properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials simply by adjusting the twist angle between them. The researchers built devices consisting of monolayer graphene encapsulated between two crystals of boron nitride and, by adjusting the relative twist angle between the layers, they were able to create multiple moiré patterns. Moiré patterns are of high interest to condensed matter physicists and materials scientists who use them to change or generate new electronic material properties....

Calibrating rates of information delivery to match the natural tempo of our brains increases our capacity to absorb and adapt to new information, according to the team behind the study. University of Cambridge researchers say that these techniques could help us retain “neuroplasticity” much later in life and advance lifelong learning. “Each brain has its own natural rhythm, generated by the oscillation of neurons working together,” said Prof Zoe Kourtzi, senior author of the study from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology....

The various roles of immune cells in the body are very strictly regulated in order to combat infections. How Toxoplasma infects so many people and animal species and spreads so quickly has long been a mystery to scientists. “We have now discovered a protein that the parasite uses to reprogram the immune system”, says Arne ten Hoeve, a researcher at the Department of Molecular Biosciences, Wenner-Gren Institute at Stockholm University....

An international team of astronomers, including Alexandre Santerne of the EXOEarths team at CAUP, has identified and characterized two new exoplanets thanks to combined observations from the Kepler space telescope plus the SOPHIE and HARPS-N spectrographs. The research has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. These planets, named KOI-200b and KOI-889b, are among the first detected with the new high-accuracy spectrograph HARPS-N, the northern hemisphere counterpart of the most prolific exoplanet hunter, HARPS (ESO)....

The scientists showed that low doses of an aerosolized nanobody named Pittsburgh inhalable Nanobody-21 (PiN-21) protected hamsters from the dramatic weight loss typically associated with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and reduced the number of infectious virus particles in the animals’ nasal cavities, throats and lungs by a million-fold, compared to placebo treatment with a nanobody that doesn’t neutralize the virus. “By using an inhalation therapy that can be directly administered to the infection site — the respiratory tract and lungs — we can make treatments more efficient,” said co-senior author Yi Shi, Ph....

At the core of a quantum computer is a qubit, which is used to make high-speed calculations. The qubits that Google, for example, in its Sycamore processor unveiled last year, and others are currently using are very sensitive to noise and interference from the computer’s surroundings, which introduces errors into the calculations. A new type of qubit, called a topological qubit, could solve this issue, and 1D Majorana zero energy modes may be the key to making them....

Launched on November 10 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket along with NOAA’s JPSS-2 mission, the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator, or LOFTID, will demonstrate the heat shield’s ability to slow down and survive atmospheric entry. Well, there are primarily two methods of thought for how spacecraft slow down and you really have to ask yourself, “Are we landing in an area that has an atmosphere?...

A decade-long study of the iconic fish has found male whale sharks grow quickly, before plateauing at an average adult length of about eight or nine meters. Female whale sharks grow more slowly but eventually overtake the males, reaching an average adult length of about 14 meters. Australian Institute of Marine Science fish biologist Dr. Mark Meekan, who led the research, said whale sharks have been reported up to 18 meters long....