A photon can run through a complex optical apparatus and disappear for good into a detector without being specifically a wave or a particle, assuming its nature only after it has been destroyed. Scientists published their findings in the journal Science. Photons act as a wave or a particle only when they are forced to. As an example, if a photon is steered by a beam splitter onto one of two paths, each leading to a photon detector, the photon will appear at one or the other detector with equal probability....

Radio emission from a star-planet interaction has been long predicted, but this is the first time astronomers have been able to detect and decipher these signals. The discovery paves the way for a novel and unique way to probe the environment around exoplanets — planets that orbit stars in other solar systems — and to determine their habitability. Notably, follow-up observations with the HARPS-N telescope in Spain ruled out the alternate possibility that the interacting companion is another star as opposed to an exoplanet....

A new meta-analysis published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases finds that a diet that includes plant protein, fiber, nuts, and plant sterols lowers cholesterol, improves blood pressure, and improves other markers for cardiovascular disease risk. The diet is based on the “Portfolio Diet,” which is a plant-based dietary pattern that emphasizes a portfolio of four proven cholesterol-lowering foods: 42 grams of nuts (tree nuts or peanuts) per day50 grams of plant protein per day from soy products or dietary pulses (beans, peas, chickpeas, or lentils) per day20 grams of viscous soluble fiber per day from oats, barley, psyllium, eggplant, okra, apples, oranges, or berries2 grams of plant sterols per day from supplements or plant-sterol enriched products...

Researchers have found a simple way to eliminate almost all sequencing errors produced by a widely used portable DNA sequencer, potentially enabling scientists working outside the lab to study and track microorganisms like the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (the virus that causes COVID-19) more efficiently. Using special molecular tags, the team was able to reduce the five-to-15 percent error rate of Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION device to less than 0.005 percent — even when sequencing many long stretches of DNA at a time....

“We hope that this humanized antibody will prove to be as effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in patients as it has proven to be thus far in preclinical evaluations,” says Frederick Alt, Ph.D., of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, who co-led the research. In a study that was recently published in Science Immunology, Alt and Sai Luo, Ph.D., utilized a modified version of a humanized mouse model that his lab had previously used to look for broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV, another virus that often mutates....

New research out of South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave led by anthropologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) shows that the climate of the interior of southern Africa almost two million years ago was like no modern African environment — it was much wetter. In a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, lead author Michaela Ecker, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at U of T, alongside an international team of scientists that included Michael Chazan, director of U of T’s Archaeology Center, recreated the environmental change in the interior of southern Africa over a span of almost two million years....

In the face of a global pandemic, with more than 200 million global infections and 4 million deaths, and despite unprecedented efforts by public health officials, celebrities, and influencers to convince everyone to wear masks and get vaccinated as soon possible, the results are mixed. Now, two Princeton researchers have discovered an approach that they found successfully motivated people to make appointments for vaccinations and to consistently follow measures such as social distancing and mask wearing....

A presumed trigger for the development of Alzheimer’s disease is the accumulation of proteinaceous, extracellular amyloid-beta plaques in the brain. High levels of amyloid-beta in mice leads to neurodegeneration and cognitive symptoms reminiscent of human Alzheimer’s disease, and reduction of amyloid-beta is a major goal in development of new treatments. One potential pathway for getting rid of amyloid-beta is the migration of blood-derived myeloid cells into the brain, and their maturation into macrophages, which, along with resident microglia, can consume amyloid-beta....

The retrospective study, published online in the journal Lancet, solves a medical riddle posed by previous research, which found that cutting “door-to-balloon” times had no effect on patient outcomes. Balloon, in this case, refers to the tiny balloons that are inflated in patients to reopen blocked blood vessels. In recent years, doctors and emergency medical personnel at all levels have worked diligently to reduce “D2B” times nationwide. The key factor, the new research discovered, is that many more people are receiving emergency heart treatment than even a decade earlier — including patients with more complicated health issues that put them at higher risk for death....

Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world’s oceans. By reacting with seawater, CO2 increases the water’s acidity, which may significantly reduce the calcification rate of such marine organisms as corals and mollusks. The extent to which human activities have raised the surface level of acidity, however, has been difficult to detect on regional scales because it varies naturally from one season and one year to the next, and between regions, and direct observations go back only 30 years....

In a paper appearing online today in Nature, they reveal that a subtype of muscle fibers in flatworms is required for triggering the activity of genes that initiate the regeneration program. Notably, in the absence of these muscles, regeneration fails to proceed. Another type of muscle, they report, is required for giving regenerated tissue the proper pattern — for example, forming one head instead of two. “One of the central mysteries in organ and tissue regeneration is: How do animals initiate all of the cellular and molecular steps that lead to regeneration?...

Since the spread of virus causing COVID-19 continues, experts recommended wearing homemade facemasks when surgical or N95 masks are not available to prevent the spread of the pandemic. While such makeshift masks are more economical and accessible in low-capita countries, the effectiveness of cloth masks has not been studied in depth. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science studied the fate of large-sized surrogate cough droplets at different velocities, corresponding from mild to severe, while using various locally procured fabrics as masks....

Galaxies today come very roughly in two types: reddish, elliptically shaped collections of older stars, and bluer, spiral-shaped objects dominated by young stars. The conventional wisdom is that the two types are related to one another, ellipticals representing an older, more evolved stage of galaxies. Astronomers have discovered during the past decade that these two categories seem also to apply to galaxies in the early universe. In particular, galaxies so distant from us that their light has been traveling for about eleven and one-half billion years, 84% of the age of the universe, also generally fall into these two groups....

A familiar subject of today’s popular culture, the T. rex was a massive, carnivorous dinosaur that roamed what is now the western United States millions of years ago. In 2010, a commercial paleontologist working in Carter County, Montana, discovered one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found. The fossilized skeleton dates back approximately 68 million years to the Late Cretaceous period. It was sold to an investment banker, who dubbed it “Tristan Otto” before loaning it out to the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin in Germany....

Superconductors — materials that conduct electricity without resistance — are remarkable. They provide a macroscopic glimpse into quantum phenomena, which are usually observable only at the atomic level. Beyond their physical peculiarity, superconductors are also useful. They’re found in medical imaging, quantum computers, and cameras used with telescopes. But superconducting devices can be finicky. Often, they’re expensive to manufacture and prone to err from environmental noise. That could change, thanks to research from Karl Berggren’s group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science....

An international team of physicists has proposed a revolutionary laser system, inspired by the telecommunications technology, to produce the next generation of particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The International Coherent Amplification Network (ICAN) sets out a new laser system composed of massive arrays of thousands of fiber lasers, for both fundamental research at laboratories such as CERN and more applied tasks such as proton therapy and nuclear transmutation....

The study, which was published in the journal Nature Materials, was conducted by a team from the Penn State Center for Nanoscale Science (CNS), which is one of the 19 Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) in the US supported by the National Science Foundation. A regular computer consists of billions of transistors, known as bits, and are governed by binary code (“0” = off and “1” = on)....

Now, two articles recently published in the journal Nature Plants are rewriting history with the first full-length genomes for homosporous ferns, a huge group that encompasses 99% of all modern fern diversity. “Every genome tells a different story,” said co-author Doug Soltis, a distinguished professor with the Florida Museum of Natural History. “Ferns are the closest living relatives of all seed plants, and they produce chemical deterrents to herbivores that may be useful for agricultural research....

Collaborators at Rice University and the University of Connecticut further engineered the RNA-editing CRISPR-Cas13 system to boost its power for detecting minute amounts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in biological samples. A huge benefit is that it does this without the time-consuming RNA extraction and amplification step necessary in gold-standard PCR testing. The new platform was highly successful compared to PCR testing. In fact, it found 10 out of 11 positives and no false positives for the virus in tests on clinical samples directly from nasal swabs....

Imagine having your own digital personal chef; ready to cook up whatever you want; able to tailor the shape, texture, and flavor just for you; and it’s all at the push of a button. Columbia engineers have been working on doing just that, using lasers for cooking and 3D printing technology for assembling foods. Under the guidance of Mechanical Engineering Professor Hod Lipson, the “Digital Food” team of his Creative Machines Lab has been building a fully autonomous digital personal chef....