The first-known, off-axis, high-temperature deep-sea hydrothermal vents along a portion of the northern East Pacific Rise are hotter and cover more area than any other hydrothermal vents studied to date along this section of the mid-ocean ridge. Finding a new, high-temperature, off-axis hydrothermal vent field on the floor of the Pacific Ocean at 2550 meters depth could change scientists’ understanding of the impact that such ocean-floor vent systems have on the life and chemistry of Earth’s oceans. A team of…

The understudied transcription factor RFX7 has a central role in growth and cancer. Proteins that are frequently altered in tumors play a prominent role in cancer research. The protein RFX7, a largely unknown transcription factor, has recently been linked to lymph node cancer. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena have now partially elucidated the function of this protein. RFX7 acts as a tumor suppressor and counteracts the development of cancer. Once activated,…

A large-scale neutral hydrogen (HI) survey of the local universe is one of the major science initiatives under the Five-hundred Meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) project. Equipped with a 19-beam array receiver and combined with super-high sensitivity owing to its large collection area, FAST is the most powerful survey tool for exploring the HI universe. The late Prof. NAN Rendong, who founded the FAST project and served as its chief scientist and engineer, noted that the FAST HI survey…

A new AI program observed physical phenomena and uncovered relevant variables–a necessary precursor to any physics theory. But the variables it discovered were unexpected. Energy, Mass, Velocity. These three variables make up Einstein’s iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing…

Space study offers clearest understanding yet of the life cycle of supermassive black holes. Research uses X-ray telescopes and a new data analysis technique to describe space objects. Black holes with varying light signatures but that were thought to be the same objects being viewed from different angles are actually in different stages of the life cycle, according to a study led by Dartmouth researchers. The research on black holes known as “active galactic nuclei,” or AGNs, says that it…

Transparent glassy material could be used to provide a light-based readout of stress in the body or buildings. Researchers have created a new glass-ceramic that emits light in response to mechanical stress, a property known as mechanoluminescence. With further development, the new material could be used to create a light source that is switched on by mechanical stress. This could be useful for monitoring stress in artificial joints in the body or providing warnings of dangerous stress or fractures in…

Tiny imaging device lays groundwork for high-resolution 3D imaging during clinical procedures. Researchers have created a photoacoustic imaging endoscope probe that can fit inside a medical needle with an inner diameter of just 0.6 millimeters. Photoacoustic imaging, which combines light and sound to create 3D images, can provide important clinical information, but until now the instruments have been either too bulky or too slow for practical use as forward-viewing endoscopes. “Traditional light-based endoscopes can only resolve tissue anatomical information on…

New sensor can measure unknown sugar concentrations in real-time. Researchers have harnessed the light-guiding properties of spider silk to develop a sensor that can detect and measure small changes in the refractive index of a biological solution, including glucose and other types of sugar solutions. The new light-based sensor might one day be useful for measuring blood sugar and other biochemical analytes. “Glucose sensors are crucial to people with diabetes, but these devices tend to be invasive, uncomfortable and not…

Scientists have created a novel technology that can help to tackle climate change and address the global energy crisis. Northumbria University’s Dr Shafeer Kalathil is among a team of esteemed academics behind the project, which uses a chemical process that converts sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into acetate and oxygen to produce high-value fuels and chemicals powered by renewable energy. As part of the process, bacteria are grown on a synthetic semiconductor device known as a photocatalyst sheet, which means…

Experiment demonstrates how software-optimized circuits execute less error-prone quantum algorithms. A research partnership at the Advanced Quantum Testbed (AQT) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Chicago-based Super.tech (acquired by ColdQuanta in May 2022) demonstrated how to optimize the execution of the ZZ SWAP network protocol, important to quantum computing. The team also introduced a new technique for quantum error mitigation that will improve the network protocol’s implementation in quantum processors. The experimental data was published this July in…

… lays groundwork for smaller, cheaper lidar. Technology could benefit lidar applications from autonomous driving to virtual reality. Researchers have developed a new chip-based beam steering technology that provides a promising route to small, cost-effective and high-performance lidar (or light detection and ranging) systems. Lidar, which uses laser pulses to acquire 3D information about a scene or object, is used in a wide range of applications such as autonomous driving, free-space optical communications, 3D holography, biomedical sensing and virtual reality….

A new biosynthesis method has been developed. A research team with members from Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Michigan in the USA is using bacterial biosynthesis to produce an antibiotic containing fluorine –The technology is being commercialized by a startup. Active drug agents have been chemically modified with fluorine for decades, owing to its numerous therapeutic effects: Fluorine can strengthen the bonding of the active agent to the target molecule, make it more accessible to the body, and…

Scientists explore the evolution of neurons. A new study into the neurons found in the earliest-diverging animal lineages reveals key clues about the form of the most ancestral nervous system, and how it first evolved. Neurons, the specialized cells of the nervous system, are possibly the most complicated cell type ever to have evolved. In humans, these cells are capable of processing and transmitting vast sums of information. But how such complicated cells first came about remains a long-standing debate….

Physics connects seismic data to properties of rocks and sediments. A new analysis of seismic data from NASA’s Mars InSight mission has revealed a couple of surprises. The first surprise: the top 300 meters of the subsurface beneath the landing site near the Martian equator contains little or no ice. “We find that Mars’ crust is weak and porous. The sediments are not well-cemented. And there’s no ice or not much ice filling the pore spaces,” said geophysicist Vashan Wright…

The fungus Ustilago maydis attacks corn and can cause significant damage to its host. To do this, it first ensures that the plant offers little resistance to the infection. The surgical precision it applies is shown by a new study from the University of Bonn, which has now been published in the journal New Phytologist. The Gregor Mendel Institute in Vienna and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben were also involved in the work….

… paves the way to cost-effective satellite-based quantum networks. Researchers demonstrate successful quantum key distribution between space lab and four ground stations. Researchers report an experimental demonstration of a space-to-ground quantum key distribution (QKD) network using a compact QKD terminal aboard the Chinese Space Lab Tiangong-2 and four ground stations. The new QKD system is less than half the weight of the system the researchers developed for the Micius satellite, which was used to perform the world’s first quantum-encrypted virtual…

Summer is in full swing in the U.S., and people are turning up their air conditioners to beat the heat. But the hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants in these and other cooling devices are potent greenhouse gases and major drivers of climate change. Today, scientists report a prototype device that could someday replace existing “A/Cs.” It’s much more environmentally friendly and uses solid refrigerants to efficiently cool a space. The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American…

An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet is slightly greater in size and mass than Earth and is located at a distance from its star where its temperature would…

Penn State-led collaboration builds on decades-old research to engineer advanced material. Someone taps your shoulder. The organized touch receptors in your skin send a message to your brain, which processes the information and directs you to look left, in the direction of the tap. Now, Penn State and U.S. Air Force researchers have harnessed this processing of mechanical information and integrated it into engineered materials that “think”. The work, published today (Aug. 24) in Nature, hinges on a novel, reconfigurable alternative…

Success in rapid and simultaneous identification of multiple types of food poisoning bacteria by color differences in scattered light from metals. Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have developed a simple, rapid method to simultaneously identify multiple food poisoning bacteria, based on color differences in the scattered light by nanometer-scaled organic metal nanohybrid structures (NHs) that bind via antibodies to those bacteria. This method is a promising tool for rapidly detecting bacteria at food manufacturing sites and thereby improving food safety. The…