Newly created strontium, an element used in fireworks, detected in space for the first time following observations with ESO telescope. For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and is published on October 23, 2019, in Nature. The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the Universe can form in neutron star mergers, providing a missing piece of the puzzle of chemical element formation....

These findings combine computer simulations with data from recent exoplanet findings, and X-ray and ultraviolet observations of stars and black holes. “It’s pretty wild to think of black holes shaping the evolutionary destiny of a planet, but that very well may be the case in the center of our Galaxy,” said Howard Chen of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, who led the study. Howard Chen and collaborators from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, examined the environment around the closest supermassive black hole to Earth: the four-million-solar mass black hole known as Sagittarius A*....

Now scientists have traced where that reaction to a threat arises. In a new study, University of Iowa researchers confirmed a neural circuit linking two separate regions in the brain governs how animals, including humans, react to a stressful situation. Through experiments, the researchers demonstrated how rats responded to a threat either passively or actively—and linked each reaction to a specific pathway in the brain. In another experiment, the scientists successfully manipulated the neural circuit, so that rats overcame what would have been a paralyzing response to danger....

Filling in the links of the evolutionary chain with a fossil record of a ‘‘snake with four legs” connecting lizards and early snakes would be a dream come true for paleontologists. But a specimen formerly thought to fit the bill is not the missing piece of the puzzle, according to a new Journal of Systematic Palaeontology study led by University of Alberta paleontologist Michael Caldwell. “It has long been understood that snakes are members of a lineage of four-legged vertebrates that, as a result of evolutionary specializations, lost their limbs,” said Caldwell, lead author of the study and professor in the departments of biological sciences and earth and atmospheric sciences....

We all start life as a single cell, which multiplies and develops into specialized cells that carry out different functions. This complex process relies on precise controls along the way, but these new findings suggest random processes also contribute to patterning. In research published today (February 19, 2020) in Nature Communications, the scientists from James Locke’s team at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University and collaborators at Microsoft Research describe their discovery of surprising order in randomness while studying bacterial biofilms....

“Like a factory line, plants are only as fast as their slowest machines,” said Patricia Lopez-Calcagno, a postdoctoral researcher at Essex, who led this work for the RIPE project. “We have identified some steps that are slower, and what we’re doing is enabling these plants to build more machines to speed up these slower steps in photosynthesis.” The RIPE project is an international effort led by the University of Illinois to develop more productive crops by improving photosynthesis—the natural, sunlight-powered process that all plants use to fix carbon dioxide into sugars that fuel growth, development, and ultimately yield....

It means that a single year for this hot Jupiter — a gas giant similar in size and composition to Jupiter in our own solar system — passes in less than a day of Earth time. The discovery is detailed in a new paper published today (February 20, 2020) for the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and the scientists believe that it may help to solve the mystery of whether or not such planets are in the process of spiraling towards their suns to their destruction....

An adhesive plastic film designed to protect surfaces such as doorknobs, handrails, elevator buttons, and touch screens inactivates the novel coronavirus on contact. The manufacturer of the film is Promaflex. It has nanoparticles of silver and silica built into its polyethylene structure, thanks to technology developed by Nanox, a Brazilian company based on São Paulo and supported by São Paulo Research Foundation, through FAPESP’s Innovative Research in Small Business Program (PIPE)....

A groundbreaking study by researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University has uncovered the process by which a small cellular machine called TRiC controls the folding of tubulin, a human protein that is the foundation of microtubules, which act as the structural support and transportation system of cells. This challenges the previous understanding that TRiC and other machines like it, known as chaperonins, only passively create a favorable environment for folding but do not actively take part in it....

SLS proved to be the world’s most powerful rocket, when its two solid rocket boosters and four RS-25 engines produced more than 8.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff to send NASA’s Orion spacecraft beyond the Moon and back on Artemis I. Data from the first flight of SLS is helping engineers build confidence in the rocket’s systems to safely fly crew on future lunar missions. “The power that NASA’s Space Launch System rocket provides will enable astronauts to explore farther in our solar system than ever before and discover more about the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” said John Honeycutt, SLS program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama....

Paper-based lateral flow tests work the same way as a pregnancy test in that a strip of paper is soaked in a fluid sample and a change in colour – or fluorescent signal – indicates a positive result and the detection of virus proteins or DNA. They are widely used to detect viruses ranging from HIV to SARS-CoV-2 (lateral flow tests for COVID-19 are currently being piloted across England) and can provide a rapid diagnosis, as the results do not have to be processed in a lab....

Havekes, associate professor of Neuroscience of Memory and Sleep at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and his team have extensively studied how sleep deprivation affects memory processes. “We previously focused on finding ways to support memory processes during a sleep deprivation episode”, says Havekes. However, in his latest study, his team examined whether amnesia as a result of sleep deprivation was a direct result of information loss, or merely caused by difficulties retrieving information....

Plamen Nikolov, assistant professor of economics, and Shahadath Hossain, a doctoral student in economics, both from Binghamton University, examined China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) and the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS) to determine how retirement plans affect cognitive performance among plan participants. CHARLS, a nationally representative survey of people ages 45 and above within the Chinese population, directly tests cognition with a focus on episodic memory and components of intact mental status....

With adherence to masking and distancing, COVID-19 cases introduced into a school unlikely to lead to community transmission. A modeling study found that with controlled community transmission and moderate COVID mitigation strategies in place, schools can reopen safely. Asymptomatic screening is one mitigation strategy identified that could facilitate reopening at higher local incidence while minimizing transmission risk. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Harvard University, Stanford University, and Massachusetts General Hospital used a simulation model to assess the risk for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in schools....

The Hall effect, discovered in 1879 by Edwin Hall, occurs because of the interaction between charged particles and electromagnetic fields. In an electric field, negatively charged particles (electrons) experience a force opposite to the direction of the field. In a magnetic field, moving electrons experience a force in the direction perpendicular to both their motion and the magnetic field. These two forces combine in the Hall effect, where perpendicular electric and magnetic fields combine to generate an electric current....

The biggest carbon storage on Earth is the Earth’s core, where 90% of the carbon is buried. Scientists have shown that the oceanic crust, which rests on top of tectonic plates and falls into the interior, contains hydrous minerals and can occasionally reach the boundary between the core and the mantle. At the core-mantle border, the temperature is at least two times that of lava and is high enough to allow water to escape from the hydrous minerals....

Long-lived worms “We found a gene in worms, called PUF60, that is involved in RNA splicing and regulates life span,” says Max Planck scientist Dr. Wenming Huang who made the discovery. This gene’s mutations resulted in inaccurate splicing and the retention of introns within certain RNAs. As a result, less of the corresponding proteins were produced from this RNA. Surprisingly, worms with the PUF60 gene mutation survived significantly longer than normal worms....

Led by University of Colorado Boulder atmospheric scientist Katja Friedrich and her colleagues, the research began on a chilly day in January 2017. That’s when the team watched as a flurry settled over a patch of land in western Idaho. The gentle snow wasn’t a natural occurrence. It had been triggered through cloud seeding, a technique in which tiny particles are mixed into the atmosphere to try to generate more precipitation than might normally fall....

The discovery is another step forward in the effort to find alternative uses for Wyoming’s Powder River Basin coal, at a time when demand for coal to generate electricity is declining due to concerns about climate change. In a paper published in the journal Nano-Structures & Nano-Objects, the UW researchers report that they created an environment in a microwave oven to successfully convert raw coal powder into nano-graphite, which is used as a lubricant and in items ranging from fire extinguishers to lithium ion batteries....

Researchers are now able to wirelessly record the directly measured brain activity of patients living with Parkinson’s disease and to then use that information to adjust the stimulation delivered by an implanted device. Direct recording of deep and surface brain activity offers a unique look into the underlying causes of many brain disorders; however, technological challenges up to this point have limited direct human brain recordings to relatively short periods of time in controlled clinical settings....