Scientists have long suspected that a large proportion of the universe is made up of invisible particles, or dark matter, and that these must be very cold and heavy. But the search for proof has been elusive, leading researchers to consider alternative theories. The new simulations show how stars and galaxies might have formed and grouped together at the origin of the universe if dark matter is very light in mass, rather than very heavy as most scientists have assumed....

A new method for quickly detecting signs of multiple sclerosis has been developed by a University of Huddersfield research team. The process will avoid the invasive, painful process of collecting fluid from the brain and spine. The discovery, using advanced mass spectrometry techniques, offers a diagnostic tool that enables the detection of multiple sclerosis (MS) to be made simply using blood samples. The current procedure for detection requires the invasive, often painful, process of collecting fluid from the brain and spine....

A supernova that signals the death of a massive star sends titanic shock waves rumbling through interstellar space. An ultra-dense neutron star is usually left behind, which is far from dead, as it spews out a blizzard of high-energy particles. Two new images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory provide fascinating views – including an enigmatic lobster-like feature – of the complex aftermath of a supernova. When a massive star runs out of fuel, the central regions usually collapse to form a neutron star....

Despite their huge world-wide culinary appeal, chilies are relatively difficult to cultivate, being prone to disease and sensitive to growing conditions. There are 35 species of pepper in the Capsicum family, including five domesticated species. The most well-known of these is C. annuum, which includes several varieties with widely differing shapes and tastes, including bell peppers, jalapeños, New Mexico chiles, and cayenne peppers. The team of scientists from the World Vegetable Center in Taiwan investigated the genetic relatedness between 38 samples of 15 species of wild and domesticated peppers collected from locations around the world....

The study, published in Nature Communications, also sheds light on the basic biology behind blood stem cell regeneration and the role of a specific molecular process that is blocked by the new drug. Blood stem cells reside in the bone marrow and produce all of the body’s blood and immune cells. “We’re very excited about the potential medical applications of these findings,” said Dr. John Chute, a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and a professor of medicine and radiation oncology in the division of hematology/oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA....

A new class of drug successfully targets treatment-resistant prostate cancers and prolongs the life of patients. The treatment delivers beta radiation directly to tumor cells, is well tolerated by patients and keeps them alive for longer than standard care, found a phase 3 trial to be presented at the European Association of Urology congress, EAU21. Despite progress in medicine in recent years, metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer remains untreatable and fatal....

The trial was conducted by St George Street Capital (SGSc) — a medical research charity — with the goal to find new purposes, where there is a real clinical need, for drugs that have already passed safety checks Professors John Martin (UCL Division of Medicine) and Pete Coffey (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) founded the charity along with an American philanthropist to trial new medicines four years ago. They focused on a number of medicines shown to be safe in phase I clinical trials which had been abandoned by the pharmaceutical industry, but may still be beneficial for other purposes....

Researchers have developed a data transfer system that can transmit information 10 times faster than a USB. The new link pairs high-frequency silicon chips with a polymer cable as thin a strand of hair. The system may one day boost energy efficiency in data centers and lighten the loads of electronics-rich spacecraft. The research was presented at February’s IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The lead author is Jack Holloway ’03, MNG ’04, who completed his PhD in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) last fall and currently works for Raytheon....

Titan’s polar atmosphere recently experiences an unexpected and significant cooling, contrary to all model predictions and differing from the behavior of all other terrestrial planets in our solar system. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, is bigger than the planet Mercury, and is the only moon in our solar system to have a substantial atmosphere. Usually, the high-altitude polar atmosphere in a planet’s winter hemisphere is warm because of sinking air being compressed and heated — similar to what happens in a bicycle pump....

A new canine coronavirus was first identified in two Malaysian human patients who developed pneumonia in 2017-18. A group of other scientists isolated the canine coronavirus, sequenced it, and published their findings in 2021. A team led by Cornell and Temple University scientists has now uncovered a pattern that appears in the canine coronavirus spike protein’s terminus – the portion of the virus that allows entrance into a host cell: The virus switches from infecting both the intestines and the respiratory system of the animal host to exclusively infecting the respiratory system of the human host....

South Asia, reaching from Afghanistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east, is home to at least six hundred languages belonging to six large language families, including Dravidian, Indo-European, and Sino-Tibetan. The Dravidian language family, consisting of about 80 language varieties (both languages and dialects) is today spoken by about 220 million people, mostly in southern and central India but also in surrounding countries. Its four largest languages, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu have literary traditions spanning centuries, of which Tamil reaches back the furthest....

When mechanical parts slide against each other for long periods of time, the constant grinding may wear down the metal surfaces until the parts are no longer functional. The study of friction, wear, and lubrication as two or more surfaces interact in relative motion is known as tribology, and its importance in material science and engineering has led researchers to find new ways to examine dry mechanical contact. Researchers at the U....

CuxO/TiO2 inactivates various variant types (Alfa, Beta, Gamma, and Delta) of SARS-CoV-2 below their detection limit for 2 h under visible light irradiation (Figure 1).CuxO/TiO2 also exhibits the antiviral activity even under dark conditions.Antiviral activity on CuxO/TiO2 is caused by denaturation of spike proteins and RNA fragmentation of SARS-CoV-2 viruses. The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, has affected millions of people worldwide. The main transmission pathway of the virus is through droplets released by infected people into the air....

Called the Earth First Origins project, the effort has been awarded a $9 million grant from the NASA Astrobiology Program. The five-year project will focus on identifying, replicating, and exploring how prebiotic molecules and chemical pathways could have formed under realistic early Earth conditions. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) is leading the project, which will include researchers from around the country. “The origin of life on Earth is something I’ve been interested in for a long time....

One of the open questions in quantum research is how heat and thermodynamics coexist with quantum physics. This research field, “quantum thermodynamics,” is one of the areas Professor Jukka Pekola, the leader of the QTF Center of Excellence of the Academy of Finland, has worked on in his career. “This field has up to now been dominated by theory, and only now important experiments are starting to emerge,” says Professor Pekola....

According to a new study conducted by Bruce Schatz of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues, passive smartphone monitoring of people’s walking activity can be used to create population-level models of health and mortality risk. The research, which found that smartphone sensors could accurately predict an individual’s 5-year risk of mortality, was recently published in the journal PLOS Digital Health. Previous research has employed physical fitness tests and self-reported walk speeds to estimate mortality risk for specific individuals....

Infertility affects around 10 percent of the U.S. population, and roughly 15 to 20 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage. In many cases, the causes of infertility and miscarriage are unknown. A team led by Clark, a UCLA professor of molecular cell and developmental biology and member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, set out to find how epigenomic changes — non-genetic influences on gene expression — in human embryonic stem cells could explain why some embryos are not viable....

Massive stars tend to form in clusters as the gas and dust in molecular clouds collapses and fragments under the influence of gravity. In the classic picture of star formation, gravity must eventually compete against the thermal pressure that develops in the collapsing core as the material heats up. Astronomers think they understand those steps, but there is a debate about the possible role of two other physical processes: turbulent motions and magnetic fields....

A multi-university research team has used a new spectroscopic method to gain a key insight into how light is emitted from layered nanomaterials and other thin films. The technique, called energy-momentum spectroscopy, enables researchers to look at the light emerging from a thin film and determine whether it is coming from emitters oriented along the plane of the film or from emitters oriented perpendicular to the film. Knowing the orientations of emitters could help engineers make better use of thin-film materials in optical devices like LEDs or solar cells....

A newly published study contradicts the findings from a previous study that suggested that heavy cannabis use as a teenager lowers the person’s IQ by middle age. The new study is titled, “Correlations between cannabis use and IQ change in the Dunedin cohort are consistent with confounding from socioeconomic status” and is published in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ole Røgeberg, lead author of the new study and a labor economist at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Oslo, used simulations to show that an alternative confounding model based on time-varying effects of socioeconomic status could explain the previous study’s results....