Most of the world’s electricity-producing power plants — whether powered by coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission — make electricity by generating steam that turns a turbine. That steam then is condensed back to water, and the cycle begins again. But the condensers that collect the steam are quite inefficient, and improving them could make a big difference in overall power plant efficiency. Now, a team of researchers at MIT has developed a way of coating these condenser surfaces with a layer of graphene, just one atom thick, and found that this can improve the rate of heat transfer by a factor of four — and potentially even more than that, with further work....

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. on October 24, 2020. This groundbreaking all-sky survey will bolster our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies — including our own Milky Way — and the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers. The newly-launched SDSS-V will continue the path-breaking tradition set by the survey’s previous generations, with a focus on the ever-changing night sky and the physical processes that drive these changes, from flickers and flares of supermassive black holes to the back-and-forth shifts of stars being orbited by distant worlds....

The song comes from waves that are generated in the Earth’s magnetic field by the collision of the storm. The storm itself is the eruption of electrically charged particles from the Sun’s atmosphere. A team led by Lucile Turc, a former ESA research fellow who is now based at the University of Helsinki, Finland, made the discovery after analyzing data from the Cluster Science Archive. The archive provides access to all data obtained during Cluster’s ongoing mission over almost two decades....

Devices tend to store that information in two ways: through electric fields (think of a flash drive) or through magnetic fields (like a computer’s spinning hard disk). Each method has advantages and disadvantages. However, in the future, our electronics could benefit from the best of each. “There’s an interesting concept,” says Chang-Beom Eom, the Theodore H. Geballe Professor and Harvey D. Spangler Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison....

Work Has Potential Applications for Medical Diagnostics and COVID-19. A team of New York University scientists has developed a method using holographic imaging to detect both viruses and antibodies. The breakthrough has the potential to aid in medical diagnoses and, specifically, those related to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our approach is based on physical principles that have not previously been used for diagnostic testing,” explains David Grier, a professor of physics at NYU and one of the researchers on the project, which is reported in the journal Soft Matter....

Animals are remarkably diverse in their sleep and activity patterns due to foraging strategies, social behavior and their desire to avoid predators. With more than 3,000 types of cichlids, these freshwater fish may just be one of the most diverse species in the world. Lake Malawi alone, which stretches 350 miles through eastern Africa, is home to more than 500 cichlid species. They evolved from a few species that likely entered the lake about 3 million years ago and now display very different behaviors and inhabit well-defined niches throughout the lake....

Using bats’ responses to SARS-CoV-2 may provide key insights into therapies for COVID-19. A paper published in the prestigious journal, Science Immunology, explores the idea that studying bats’ responses to SARS-CoV-2 may provide key insights into how and when to best use existing therapies for COVID-19, and to develop new treatments. The review, led by Professor Marcel Nold and Associate Professor Claudia Nold, from Monash University’s Department of Paediatrics and Hudson Institute of Medical Research, written in collaboration with colleagues in Australia and China, is a major review of how the virus that has caused the current pandemic wreaks havoc on the human immune system....

Yet, from this record, an unexpected pattern has been identified: Most individual basins preserve an abundant and diverse assemblage of dinosaur species, often with multiple groups of co-occurring large (moose- to elephant-sized) herbivorous species, yet few individual species occur across multiple putatively contemporaneous geological formations (despite them often being less than a few hundred kilometers apart). This is in fairly stark contrast to the pattern seen in modern terrestrial mammal communities, where large-bodied species often have very extensive, often continent-spanning ranges....

Falling may be painful, especially if the landing is less than graceful. Even a few steps out the front door can carry with them the risk of falling. “Don’t wait until you fall to start thinking about bone strength,” said Dr. Philip Bosha, a physician with Penn State Sports Medicine in State College. “Bone health is important for women and men at any age, but especially for older people.” The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons offers the following suggestions for building and taking care of your bones throughout your life:...

It may look like something from The Lord of the Rings, but this fiery swirl is actually a planetary nebula known as ESO 456-67. Set against a backdrop of bright stars, the rust-colored object lies in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), in the southern sky. Despite the name, these ethereal objects have nothing at all to do with planets. The misnomer came about over a century ago, when the first astronomers to observe them only had small, poor-quality telescopes....

This program has given us this new image of the planet Uranus, the seventh planet in the Solar System in order of increasing distance from the Sun. Past observations of Uranus using Hubble have led to many interesting insights about the cold ice giant; in 2006 the telescope managed to capture a shot in which the moon Ariel and its accompanying shadow were traversing the face of Uranus, and in 2011 Hubble was able to spot faint auroras in its atmosphere....

When stars that are around the mass of the Sun reach their final stages of life, they shed their outer layers into space, which appear as glowing clouds of gas called planetary nebulae. The ejection of mass in stellar burnout is irregular and not symmetrical, so that planetary nebulae can have very complex shapes. In the case of Menzel 2 the nebula forms a winding blue cloud that perfectly aligns with two stars at its center....

With the charming name of SDSS J0146-0929, this is a galaxy cluster — a monstrous collection of hundreds of galaxies all shackled together in the unyielding grip of gravity. The mass of this galaxy cluster is large enough to severely distort the space-time around it, creating the odd, looping curves that almost encircle the center of the cluster. These graceful arcs are examples of a cosmic phenomenon known as an Einstein ring....

In late 2014, NASA spacecraft detected a substantial change in the solar wind. For the first time in nearly a decade, the solar wind pressure — a combined measure of its speed and density — had increased by approximately 50 percent and remained that way for several years thereafter. Two years later, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft detected the first sign of the aftermath. Solar wind particles from the 2014 pressure increase had reached the edge of the heliosphere, neutralized themselves, and shot all the way back to Earth....

Some people get really sick from COVID-19, and others don’t. Nobody knows why. Now, a study by investigators at the Stanford University of Medicine and other institutions has turned up immunological deviations and lapses that appear to spell the difference between severe and mild cases of COVID-19. That difference may stem from how our evolutionarily ancient innate immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. Found in all creatures from fruit flies to humans, the innate immune system rapidly senses viruses and other pathogens....

A joint venture between graphene specialists at The University of Manchester and alumni-led construction firm Nationwide Engineering has developed a product that could revolutionize the concrete industry and its impact on the environment. In a world-first for the sector, the team has laid the floor slab of a new gym in Amesbury, Wiltshire with graphene-enhanced ‘Concretene’, removing 30% of material and all steel reinforcement. Depending on the size of onward projects, Nationwide Engineering estimates a 10-20% saving to its customers....

Researchers at Rutgers University have discovered a potential biological process for drug and alcohol addiction and believe that current treatments for insomnia could potentially be utilized to reduce or eliminate cravings. An article recently published in the journal Biological Psychiatry discusses the findings of researchers at the Rutgers Brain Health Institute and other institutions on the role of the orexin system in drug addiction. The orexin system, which regulates sleep patterns, reward pathways, and mood, has been found to drive drug-seeking behavior....

In early December 2022, the tallest and most active volcano on Java erupted again, just one year after Indonesia’s Mount Semeru unleashed a destructive, deadly eruption. Late on December 3, a series of explosions from the summit crater expelled gas and ash that, according to the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Center, rose as high as 6,100 meters (20,000 feet) at times. Intense activity continued throughout the night into the next day....

The team recently published their findings in the journal Heliyon. The researchers conducted a direct quantitative evaluation of the biological impact of space radiation in their study by transporting frozen mouse embryonic stem cells from Earth to the International Space Station, subjecting them to space radiation for four years, and quantifying the biological effect by evaluating chromosome aberrations. The results of their experiment demonstrate, for the first time, that the biological impact of space radiation is closely in line with prior predictions derived from the physical measurement of space radiation....

Unhealthy diet linked to greater fatigue: Key factor in heightened crash risk, say researchers. A junk food diet may increase the risk of dangerous driving among truck/lorry drivers by boosting fatigue, which is often a key factor in vehicle collisions, suggests research published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Some 1.35 million people die in road traffic collisions every year, with professional drivers at greater risk because of the time they spend behind the wheel....