Category Archives: Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine -January 19, 2024

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Science Magazine – January 18, 2024: The new issue features ‘Plants And People’ – Global Hotspots of Utilized Plants; Long Covid Markers of Immune Dysfunction; A mammoth’s life story, written in tusk, and more…

Immune damage in Long Covid

Links between the complement and coagulation systems could lead to Long Covid therapies

Second image of ‘shadow’ confirms giant black hole is real

To zoom in farther, Event Horizon Telescope wants to add more radio dishes to its network—and go to space

Research Preview: Nature Magazine- January 18, 2024

Volume 625 Issue 7995

Nature Magazine – January 17, 2024: The latest issue cover features the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki, thought to be the largest primate that ever lived, which lived in China between 2 million and 300,000 years ago.

Why the immune response to a vaccine varies from person to person

A dormant immune system before receiving the BCG vaccine is tied to a greater innate immune response afterwards.

The Higgs boson is caught in a singular transformation

Detectors at the Large Hadron Collider spot the famed particle decaying into a photon and a ‘Z boson’.

Scientific American – February 2024 Preview

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Scientific American (January 16, 2024): The February 2024 issue features ‘The Milky Way’s Secret History’ – New star maps reveal our galaxy’s turbulent past; Why Aren’t We Made of Antimatter? – To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron…

The New Story of the Milky Way’s Surprisingly Turbulent Past

The latest star maps are rewriting the story of our Milky Way, revealing a much more tumultuous history than astronomers suspected

Why Aren’t We Made of Antimatter?

To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron

Tiny Fossils Reveal Dinosaurs’ Lost Worlds

Special assemblages of minuscule fossils bring dinosaur ecosystems to life

Research Preview: Science Magazine -January 12, 2024

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Science Magazine – January 11, 2024: The new issue features ‘Lost City’ – Ancient development in the Upper Amazon; What SARS-CoV-2’s mild cousins reveal about Covid-19; Specifying laws of friction and a Continued decline in sharks despite regulation…

The hottest year was even hotter than expected

Greenhouse gases, El Niño, and cleaner air fueled record heat in 2023

Tectonic plate under Tibet may be splitting in two

Peeled-apart Indian Plate could be affecting earthquake hazards

Research Preview: Nature Magazine January 11, 2024

Volume 625 Issue 7994

Nature Magazine – January 10, 2024: The latest issue cover features Steppe Change’ – Migration and lifestyle shifts in prehistoric Eurasia linked to raised genetic risk of multiple sclerosis.

Cancer-fighting CAR T cells could be made inside body with viral injection

Scientists are devising ways to edit the genomes of immune cells without having to extract them from the people being treated.

Japan earthquakes: the science behind the deadly tremors

A massive quake that triggered tsunamis, fires and multiple aftershocks was the largest on the country’s west coast in more than a century.

Boosting microbiome science worldwide could save millions of children’s lives

Studies of the microbes living on and in our bodies are conducted mainly in a few rich countries, squandering opportunities to improve the health of people globally.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – January 5, 2024

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Science Magazine – December 21, 2023: The new issue features a carnivorous Nepenthes gracilis pitcher plant luring an ant into a precarious position under the roof-like trap lid.

Dopamine regulates attitude toward risk

Specific brain pathways can lower or raise the willingness of monkeys to take risks

Magellanic cloud may be two galaxies, not one

Rethink of familiar object may boost odds that its name, offensive to some, will be changed

Research Preview: Nature Magazine January 4, 2024

Volume 625 Issue 7993

Nature Magazine – January 3, 2024: The latest issue cover features  an artist’s impression of a massive young star in the process of forming.

US nuclear-fusion lab enters new era: achieving ‘ignition’ over and over

NIF beamlines entering the lower hemisphere of the NIF Target Chamber, as seen from the ground floor of the Target Bay.

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility are consistently creating reactions that make more energy than they consume.

By Jeff Tollefson

In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed — a phenomenon known as ignition. They have now proved that the feat was no accident by replicating it again and again, and the administration of US President Joe Biden is looking to build on this success by establishing a trio of US research centres to help advance the science.

DeepMind AI outdoes human mathematicians on unsolved problem

A player holds a hand of Set game cards over a green table.

Large language model improves on efforts to solve combinatorics problems inspired by the card game Set.

Davide Castelvecchi

The card game Set has long inspired mathematicians to create interesting problems.

Now, a technique based on large language models (LLMs) is showing that artificial intelligence (AI) can help mathematicians to generate new solutions.

Nature Magazine Podcast: ‘A New Kind Of Solar Cell’

nature podcasts (December 29, 2023) – A new kind of solar cell is coming: is it the future of green energy? Firms commercializing perovskite–silicon ‘tandem’ photovoltaics say that the panels will be more efficient and could lead to cheaper electricity.

Rooftop Solar Energy Facility In Yongzhou, China.

On the outskirts of Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany, nestled among car dealerships and hardware shops, sits a two-storey factory stuffed with solar-power secrets. It’s here where UK firm Oxford PV is producing commercial solar cells using perovskites: cheap, abundant photovoltaic (PV) materials that some have hailed as the future of green energy. Surrounded by unkempt grass and a weed-strewn car park, the factory is a modest cradle for such a potentially transformative technology, but the firm’s chief technology officer Chris Case is clearly in love with the place. “This is the culmination of my dreams,” he says.

2023: Top Discoveries In Biology & Neuroscience

Quanta Magazine (December 21, 2023): 2023’s Biggest Breakthroughs in Biology and Neuroscience.

Video timeline: 00:05 The Investigation of Consciousness – Our minds are constantly taking in new external information while also creating their own internal imagery and narratives. How do we distinguish reality from fantasy? This year, researchers discovered that the brain has a “reality threshold” against which it constantly evaluates processed signals. Original paper: “Subjective signal strength distinguishes reality from imagination”

04:30 Microbiomes Evolve With Us – This year, scientists provided clear evidence that the organisms in our microbiome —the collection of bacteria and other cells that live in our guts and elsewhere on our body — spread between people, especially those with whom we spend the most time. This raises the intriguing possibility that some illnesses that aren’t usually considered communicable might be.

08:43 How Life Keeps Time – The rate at which an embryo develops and the timing of when its tissues mature vary dramatically between species. What controls the ticking of this developmental clock that determines an animal’s final form? This year, a series of careful experiments suggest that mitochondria may very well serve dual roles as both the timekeeper and power source for complex cells.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Dec 22, 2023

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Science Magazine – December 21, 2023: The new issue featuresAI-Powered Forecasting – Predicting worldwide weather and cyclone tracks with greater speed and accuracy; Fifty years after the Endangered Species Act, what’s next?; Long-sought quasiparticle could transform quantum computing and What Salvadorans feared about bitcoin…

The quantum phantom

A ghostly quasiparticle rooted in a century-old Italian mystery could unlock quantum computing’s potential—if only it could be pinned down

Are cryptocurrencies currencies? Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador

Preference for cash and privacy fears deterred bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.

Mimicking polar bear hairs in aerogel fibers

Encapsulated aerogel fibers offer thermal insulation, breathability, and strength