Every year, hundreds of thousands of pairs of black holes merge in a cosmic dance that emits gravitational waves in every direction. Since 2015, the large ground-based LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA interferometers have made it possible to detect these signals, although only about a hundred such events, an infinitesimal fraction of the total, have been observed. Most of the waves remain 'indistinguishable', superimposed and added together, creating a flat, diffuse background signal that scientists call the 'stochastic gravitational wave ...

The results of a study published in “Advances in Nutrition” that compared dietary and nutrition recommendations from dozens of clinical practice guidelines around the world for treating, managing and preventing major chronic diseases should increase clinician confidence on recommending consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains. The meta-epidemiological study from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) reviewed 78 clinical practice guidelines published between 2010 and 2021 in North America, Europe and Asia and found close alignment in their recommendations for encouraging daily intake of plant food sources, while ...

The knowledge of biodiversity in allegedly well-known places is not as complete as one would expect and its detailed study by researchers continues to offer surprises, is what we find out in a new study of the flora of south-central Spain.  Now, Spanish botanists from Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain) have described a new plant species of the papyrus family (Cyperaceae) restricted to the La Mancha region in south-central Spain. This region is in fact well-known for classic literary fans, who might recognise the name ...

SAN ANTONIO — March 27, 2023 —Southwest Research Institute recently delivered the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) to Firefly Aerospace in Cedar Park, Texas, for integration into the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander scheduled to arrive at the Moon in 2024. The sounder will determine the electrical conductivity of the interior of the Moon by measuring low-frequency electric and magnetic fields. “For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotelluric techniques, which use natural characteristics of the Earth’s electromagnetic fields to determine the electrical resistivity of the subsurface for research and resource exploration,” said SwRI’s Bob Grimm, ...

INDIANAPOLIS – The burden of the pandemic has disproportionately affected socially vulnerable populations. One of the first studies to look at the intersection of social vulnerability with COVID-19 vaccine utilization and effectiveness has found that while vaccination rates have varied substantially between socially vulnerable and communities that are not socially vulnerable, there has been no difference in vaccine effectiveness between those who are socially vulnerable and those who are not. “We found that protection against emergency room and urgent care center visits, hospitalization and death conveyed by a COVID-19 mRNA vaccination ...

Social relationships influence physical health, but questions remain about the nature of this connection. New research in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests that the way you feel about your close relationships may be affecting the way your body functions. Previous smaller-scale studies have examined the connection between relationship conflict or satisfaction with stress levels and blood pressure. The new research examines the effects of positive and negative relationship experiences on the body, as well as how these experiences and health outcomes change ...

Research findings from Rutgers, the University of Michigan, the University of Texas Southwestern, and the Medical University of South Carolina could save lives by enabling faster and more accurate identification of hospitalized patients who need liver transplants or are likely to recover. Retrospective analysis of blood samples and medical records from 270 patients admitted to the hospital with acute liver failure (ALF) found that concentrations of a short-lived but abundant serum protein called carbamoyl phosphate synthetase 1 (CPS1) helped predict which patients survive or die without a transplant. “We still need to validate these results in more patients to ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – A quick, affordable diagnostic test developed by a Washington State University researcher may help curb one of the most prevalent but least discussed sexually transmitted infections. More common than chlamydia or gonorrhea, Trichomonas vaginalis, also known as trich, causes no symptoms in about 70% of those infected. Even when asymptomatic, trich is linked to a host of bad health outcomes, including increased susceptibility to HIV, prostate cancer in men and infertility and pregnancy complications in women. Trich is easily ...

Most climate models do not yet account for a new UC Riverside discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth’s atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat. Greenhouse gases like methane create a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth’s surface, called longwave energy, and preventing it from radiating out into space. This makes the planet hotter.  “A blanket doesn’t create heat, unless it’s electric. You feel warm because ...

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Nobody likes needles, but they’re necessary for delivering many vaccines and biologics into the body. But what if those could be puffed through the skin instead, with just a little pressure, like being hit in the arm with a foam toy? Today, scientists report steps toward making that a reality. Using powdered vaccines that don’t require refrigeration and a system driven by compressed gas, their “MOF-Jet” could easily deliver therapeutics against cancer and other diseases in a relatively painless way. The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS ...

INDIANAPOLIS, March 27, 2023 — Squids and octopuses are masters of camouflage, blending into their environment to evade predators or surprise prey. Some aspects of how these cephalopods become reversibly transparent are still “unclear,” largely because researchers can’t culture cephalopod skin cells in the lab. Today, however, researchers report that they have replicated the tunable transparency of some squid skin cells in mammalian cells, which can be cultured. The work could not only shed light on basic squid biology, but ...

Statement Highlights: As health care professionals, researchers and consumers increasingly use genetic testing, they are uncovering incidental genetic abnormalities, or variants, that are associated with cardiovascular diseases. The statement writing committee cautions that incidentally identified single gene variants may or may not be risk factors for disease, so it is important to interpret them correctly and cautiously. The new scientific statement offers a framework to support health care professionals in appropriately assessing individual genetic variants, communicating findings with patients and families, and, when ...

Since the Paris Agreement to combat global warming was reached in 2015, many countries have committed to becoming climate neutral, i.e., achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The world's largest agricultural country, China, is also committed to join the green transition. As the largest agricultural country, China is also the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, yet it has set itself a target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.  According to Professor and Head of Land-CRAFT at Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University Klaus Butterbach-Bahl, this places huge demands on agricultural systems: "Agriculture in China accounts ...

A team of botanists from Ecuador, Germany, and the United States has described two new species of carnivorous plants with striking appearance. They are part of the butterworts (genus Pinguicula), a group of flowering plants with about 115 species that can catch and digest small insects with their sticky leaves. Whereas the majority of butterwort species is distributed in the northern hemisphere, these new species were discovered in the high Andes of southern Ecuador, close to the border with Peru. Carnivorous plants use animals (usually small insects) as an additional source of nutrients ...

The new projection is significantly lower than several prominent population estimates, including those of the United Nations. The researchers go further to say that if the world takes a “Giant Leap” in investment in economic development, education and health then global population could peak at 8.5 billion people by the middle of the century. The new projections by researchers from the Earth4All initiative for the Global Challenges Foundation is published as a working paper People and Planet, 21st Century Sustainable Population Scenarios and Possible Living Standards Within Planetary Boundaries. The team used a new system ...

Near-infrared light, whose wavelength is longer than visible light, is invisible and can pass through many substances. Organic materials that efficiently absorb near-infrared light are essential for technological innovations that utilize near-infrared light, such as the dyes in the infrared blocking filters of smartphone cameras and security inks. These and many more technical applications make developing new dyes that can absorb longer wavelengths of near-infrared light desirable. Previously, near-infrared absorbing organic materials were treated as closed-shell molecules without unpaired electrons. However, a joint research group led by Associate Professor Takeshi Maeda, Assistant Professor ...

New research shows that people with a lifetime history of mental disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, or anxiety disorders have blood markers suggesting that they are older than their actual age. This may go some way to explaining why people with mental health problems tend to have shorter lifespans and more age-related diseases than the general population. Dr Julian Mutz and Prof Cathryn Lewis, from King’s College London, looked at data on 168 different blood metabolites from 110,780 participants in the UK Biobank2. They linked these data to information on whether individuals had a history of mental illness and found that those with a mental illness ...

NRG Oncology GOG-0240 is the phase 3 randomized trial which demonstrated that the incorporation of bevacizumab with chemotherapy resulted in a statistically significant and clinically meaningful survival benefit for women with recurrent and metastatic cervical carcinoma (NCT00803062). GOG-0240 was a proof of concept in anti-angiogenesis therapy and a proof of principle in supportive care and led directly to an indication for bevacizumab in this disease in over 60 countries. Whole genome sequencing and whole exome sequencing of tumor samples obtained in GOG-0240 suggest that ARID1A and PIK3CA could represent potential targets ...

World-first ‘phase change inks’ that could transform how we heat and cool buildings, homes and cars – to achieve sophisticated ‘passive climate’ control – have been developed, with enormous potential to help reduce energy use and global greenhouse gas emissions. New research published in The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Journal of Materials Chemistry A led by Dr Mohammad Taha, documents proof-of-concept ‘phase change inks’ that use nanotechnology to control temperature in everyday environments. They achieve this by adjusting the amount of radiation that can pass through ...

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows that large infrastructure projects which are the focus of the UK government’s levelling up agenda and include support for business start-ups, must also offer sustainable, local investment in deprived communities. Through place-based micro-enterprise training and employment support over a longer time frame, lasting local impact can be demonstrated, according to the study’s policy recommendations. Supporting people to return to their communities, increasing social cohesion within them, boosting digital literacy and enabling net zero jobs are also likely to play a role. These goals can be easily ...

Embryos in pregnancies that end in miscarriage take longer to develop in the womb than those in pregnancies that result in live births, according to new research published today (Monday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals.   For the first time, researchers in The Netherlands have been able to look at the way embryos develop while pregnancies are ongoing. They used state-of-the-art imaging technology, including 3D ultrasound with high resolution transvaginal probes and ...

In a new study, researchers examined how a country’s number of published 3D protein structures for coronaviruses, including the one responsible for COVID-19, correlated with its economic output and population. The findings reveal important insights into how different countries' research establishments respond to disease outbreaks and could be useful for planning responses to future pandemics.   The study showed that countries with larger economies generated more 3D structure determinations for the protein components ...

For vulnerable premature babies, an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a lifesaver, but the consequences can last a lifetime. Many studies have shown that the NICU is a noisy environment and that babies who spend time there have higher rates of hearing impairment, which can lead to delays in language acquisition. Scientists from Vienna, Hamburg, Munich, and Osnabruck set out to investigate the role of the incubator, an underestimated element in the soundscape that surrounds babies during their time in the NICU. “The ...

□ A research team led by Dr. Sang-woo Song, Dr. Chan-kyu Kim, Dr. Kang-myung Seo at the Department of Joining Technology of the Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS), a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT, has developed a foundational technology for controlling the volume of molten metal in the process of 3D printing metal using welding techniques. They achieved this through collaborative research with a research team led by Professor Young-tae Cho and Professor ...

Owing to the worldwide trend of utilizing electric vehicles, there has been a rise in demand for next-generation secondary batteries with higher capacity and faster charging than the lithium-ion batteries currently in use. Lithium metal batteries have been recognized as promising rechargeable batteries because lithium metal anode exhibits theoretical capacity 10 times higher than commercial graphite anode. During charging-discharging processes, however, lithium dendrites grow on the anode, leading to poor battery performance and short-circuit. Dr. Sungho Lee, Head of the ...