The image was made using an electron microscope and can be found in their article about 3D printing synthetic microswimmers in the scientific journal Soft Matter. Microswimmers Kraft’s research group researches microswimmers, small particles moving in fluids like water, that can be followed using a microscope. One of their goals is understanding biological microswimmers, such as bacteria. Most research of this type is carried out on sphere shaped particles, but 3D printing offers new possibilities, as the researchers show in this article....

Exercise science researchers at Brigham Young University have tried to address the issue since they are familiar with the feeling. Good news: they think they’ve figured out the code. The team’s recently released study reveals a more practical method for figuring out the level of intensity that each individual should exercise to get the best results. A study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology describes a new system for creating “prescribed” workouts that provide results regardless of an individual’s current health....

The new study combined diagnosis of facial deformities using historical portraits with genetic analysis of the degree of relatedness to determine whether there was a direct link. The researchers also investigated the genetic basis of the relationship. Generations of intermarriage secured the family’s influence across a European empire including Spain and Austria for more than 200 years but led to its demise when the final Habsburg monarch was unable to produce an heir....

“Neutrinos continue to intrigue us and stretch our imagination. These ‘ghost particles’ are the least understood in the standard model, but they hold the key to what lies beyond,” said Bhupal Dev, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and author of a new study in Physical Review Letters. “So far, all nonstandard interaction studies at IceCube have focused only on the low-energy atmospheric neutrino data,” said Dev, who is part of Washington University’s McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences....

Every day, their baby stopped breathing, his collapsed bronchus blocking the crucial flow of air to his lungs. April and Bryan Gionfriddo watched helplessly, just praying that somehow the dire predictions weren’t true. “Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive,” says April Gionfriddo, about her now 20-month-old son, Kaiba. “At that point, we were desperate. Anything that would work, we would take it and run with it....

An international team of researchers, led by Professor Lee Berger from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (Wits University) has revealed the first partial skull of a Homo naledi child that was found in the remote depths of the Rising Star cave in Johannesburg, South Africa. Describing the skull and its context in two separate papers in the Open Access journal, PaleoAnthropology, the team of 21 researchers from Wits University and thirteen other universities announced the discovery of parts of the skull and teeth of the child that died almost 250,000 years ago when it was approximately four to six years old....

With more than 80 percent of its 1,190 coral islands standing less than 1 meter above sea level, the Maldives has the lowest terrain of any country in the world. This makes the archipelago in the Indian Ocean particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. With global sea level rising 3 to 4 millimeters per year, and that rate expected to rise in coming decades, some analysts anticipate a grim future for the Maldives and other low-lying islands....

Hundreds of thousands of asteroids are known to orbit our Sun at distances ranging from near the Earth to beyond Saturn. The most widely known collection of asteroids, the “main belt,” contains some of the largest and brightest asteroids and lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers think that the asteroids, like the planets, formed in the early solar system from the gradual agglomeration of smaller particles but that, in the case of asteroids, their growth was interrupted by mutual collisions that caused them to fragment rather than to coalesce into planets....

The engineered silica particles are created from purified sand and have a high surface area, allowing them to absorb enormous quantities of digestive enzymes, fats, and sugars in the gastrointestinal tract. The research, which was supported by the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation, is the first to confirm how porous silica particles might hinder digestive processes and stop fat and sugar absorption. The novel silica-based treatment, which was created in collaboration with Glantreo Limited, will be gentler on the stomach and have fewer negative side effects than Orlistat, the mainstream anti-obesity drug....

Relatively few galaxies possess the sweeping, luminous spiral arms or brightly glowing center of our home galaxy the Milky Way. In fact, most of the Universe’s galaxies look like small, amorphous clouds of vapor. One of these galaxies is DDO 82, captured here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Though tiny compared to the Milky Way, such dwarf galaxies still contain between a few million and a few billion stars....

According to a recent study conducted by the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, incorporating just one ounce (or a handful) of walnuts into the diets of individuals who don’t typically consume nuts can improve their dietary quality and increase their intake of crucial nutrients that are often lacking in the average diet. There is a wealth of consistent evidence indicating that incorporating walnuts as a snack or as part of a meal can contribute to good nutrition and support a healthy diet for an individual’s lifetime....

The research team investigated the change in the magnetic properties of a layer of cobalt-platinum alloy (CoPt) induced by the electrical polarization of an overlying zinc oxide (ZnO) layer. Computational simulations showed that switching the electrical polarization of the ZnO layer had a large effect on the chemical potential at the interface between ZnO and CoPt, which in turn led to a considerable change in the magnetic behavior of the CoPt layer....

One of the most upsetting aspects of age-related memory decline is not being able to remember the face that accompanies the name of a person you just talked with hours earlier. While researchers don’t understand why this dysfunction occurs, a new study conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) has provided some important new clues. The study was published recently in the journal Aging Cell. Using aging mice, researchers have identified a new mechanism in neurons that causes memories associated with these social interactions to decline with age....

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine used an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to sift through terabytes of gene expression data — which genes are “on” or “off” during infection — to look for shared patterns in patients with past pandemic viral infections, including SARS, MERS and swine flu. Two telltale signatures emerged from the study, published today (June 11, 2021) in eBiomedicine. One, a set of 166 genes, reveals how the human immune system responds to viral infections....

Allergy sufferers are no strangers to problems with pollen. But now — due to climate change — the pollen season is lasting longer and starting earlier than ever before, meaning more days of itchy eyes and runny noses. Warmer temperatures cause flowers to bloom earlier, while higher CO2 levels cause more pollen to be produced. The effects of climate change on the pollen season have been studied at-length, and according to some scientists, has grown by as much as 20 days in the past 30 years, at least in the US and Canada....

The rings are made mostly of particles of water ice that range in size from smaller than a grain of sand to as large as mountains. The ring system extends up to 175,000 miles (282,000 kilometers) from the planet, but for all their immense width, the rings are razor-thin, about 30 feet (10 meters) thick in most places. From the right angle you can see straight through the rings, as in this natural-color view that looks from south to north....

In a recent breakthrough, a team of researchers led by Professor Hiroaki Kitagishi from the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Doshisha University, Japan has developed a synthetic heme-model compound termed “hemoCD-Twins,” that acts as an antidote for CO and HCN poisoning. Prof. Kitagishi and his collaborators—Dr. Qiyue Mao from Doshisha University, Dr. Xuansu Zhao from the Building Research Institute, Japan, Dr. Akiko Kiriyama from Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts, Japan, and Dr....

Both low- and high-mass young stars, or protostars, propel jets outward perpendicular to a disk of material closely orbiting the star. In stars with masses similar to the Sun, these jets are narrowed, or focused, relatively tightly near to the star in a process called collimation. Because most high-mass protostars are more distant, studying the regions close to them has been more difficult, so astronomers were unclear if this was the case with them....

Astronomers May Have Found a Signature of Life on Venus Evidence indicates phosphine, a gas associated with living organisms, is present in the habitable region of Venus’ atmosphere. The search for life beyond Earth has largely revolved around our rocky red neighbor. NASA has launched multiple rovers over the years, with a new one currently en route, to sift through Mars’ dusty surface for signs of water and other hints of habitability....

An international collaboration of astronomers, led by a group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, has used the unrivaled observing power of MUSE on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory to study gas around distant active galaxies, less than two billion years after the Big Bang. These active galaxies, called quasars, contain supermassive black holes in their centers, which consume stars, gas, and other material at an extremely high rate....