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During the past several years, many strains of bacteria have become resistant to existing antibiotics, and very few new drugs have been added to the antibiotic arsenal. To help combat this growing public health problem, some scientists are exploring antimicrobial peptides — naturally occurring peptides found in most organisms. Most of these are not powerful enough to fight off infections in humans, so researchers are trying to come up with new, more potent versions....

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy. They have found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied properties. The final stages of life for a star like our Sun result in the star puffing its outer layers out into the surrounding space, forming objects known as planetary nebulae in a wide range of beautiful and striking shapes....

What sounds like science fiction is actually reality: using the 30m-telescope of the Institute for Radio Astronomy for astronomical observations in the millimeter range of wavelengths, astronomers have detected, for the first time, the interstellar molecule C3H+, in our galaxy. It belongs to the hydrocarbon family and is thus part of major energy resources of our planet, i.e. petroleum and natural gas. The discovery of this molecule at the heart of the famous Horsehead Nebula in the Constellation of Orion also confirms that this region is an active cosmic refinery....

Using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s VLT, a team led by Thomas Collett from the University of Portsmouth in the UK first calculated the mass of ESO 325-G004 by measuring the movement of stars within this nearby elliptical galaxy. Collett explains “We used data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile to measure how fast the stars were moving in ESO 325-G004 — this allowed us to infer how much mass there must be in the galaxy to hold these stars in orbit....

A new study using observations from a novel instrument provides the best look to date at magnetic fields at the heart of gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe. An international team of astronomers from Britain, Slovenia and Italy has glimpsed the infrastructure of a burst’s high-speed jet. Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos. Most are thought to be triggered when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole....

According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are fused together in a quantity known as spacetime. Within this theory, massive objects cause spacetime to curve, and gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime. As light travels through spacetime, the theory predicts that the path taken by the light will also be curved by an object’s mass. Gravitational lensing is a dramatic and observable example of Einstein’s theory in action....

Saturn is one of the two gas giants in the Solar System, the other being Jupiter. It is 95 times more massive than Earth, and its radius is an extraordinary nine times greater than Earth’s. With its hugely inflated atmosphere, it is much less dense than Jupiter. In fact, because Saturn has an average density less than that of water, Saturn would actually be able to float (were there a bath big enough)....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Current Biology. There were fewer than 1 million marine species, including 226,000 species that had been described by science and 72,000 in collections awaiting description. The rate of discovery is increasing, with an additional 20,000 new marine species described in the last decade, indicating that most marine species would be discovered in this century. This is by far the most comprehensive assessment of how many marine species have been described to date, and how many undescribed species there could be, states Mark Costello, co-author....

Dark matter makes up more than 80 percent of mass in the universe, but it has so far evaded detection on Earth, despite decades of experimental efforts. A key component of these searches is an assumption about the local density of dark matter, which determines the number of dark matter particles passing through the detector at any given time, and therefore the experimental sensitivity. In some models, this density can be much higher than is usually assumed, and dark matter can become more concentrated in some regions compared to others....

A novel workflow published in ACS Energy Letters combines robotics and machine learning to study metal halide perovskites, or MHPs — thin, lightweight, flexible materials with outstanding properties for harnessing light that can be used to make solar cells, energy-efficient lighting and sensors. “Our approach speeds exploration of perovskite materials, making it exponentially faster to synthesize and characterize many material compositions at once and identify areas of interest,” said ORNL’s Sergei Kalinin....

Columbia researchers found that babies born during the pandemic’s first year scored lower on a developmental screening test of social and motor skills at 6 months—regardless of whether their mothers had COVID during pregnancy—compared to babies born just before the pandemic. The study, which included 255 babies born at a NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Allen Hospital between March and December 2020, was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics....

It is estimated that half of all Australians are born with one of two genes that cause celiac disease, and approximately one in 40 are likely to develop the condition. People with celiac disease must follow a lifelong gluten-free diet, as even small amounts of gluten can cause health problems. While environmental factors are known to trigger Celiac Disease in those with the genetic predisposition, exactly how that works has remained unclear....

One way that cars, bicycles, airplanes, and other modes of transportation have become lighter over the last several decades is by using carbon fiber composites. Carbon fiber is five times stronger than steel, twice as stiff, and substantially lighter, making it the ideal manufacturing material for many parts. But with the industry relying on petroleum products to make carbon fiber today, could we instead use renewable sources? In the December 2017 issue of Science, Gregg Beckham, a group leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and an interdisciplinary team reported the results of experimental and computational investigations on the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into a bio-based chemical called acrylonitrile, the key precursor to manufacturing carbon fiber....

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are molecular machines that are embedded in cell membranes. These receptors detect external impulses and send them into the cell. Light photons, lipid molecules, tiny proteins, and DNA fragments are some of the origins of the signals. A GPCR can trigger diverse events in the cell, such as division, relocation, or even death. The “communication” between cells that is mediated by GPCRs is essential for an organism to operate....

Giving moderately ill, hospitalized patients with COVID-19 a full dose of a blood thinner improved their chances of leaving the hospital without needing mechanical ventilation. But this strategy did not yield the same results for patients with COVID-19 who were critically ill and needed intensive care–level support at the time of enrollment. These are the findings of two new studies published online on August 4, 2021, in The New England Journal of Medicine....

Some people look at an equation and see a bunch of numbers and symbols; others see beauty. Thanks to a new tool created at Carnegie Mellon University, anyone can now translate the abstractions of mathematics into beautiful and instructive illustrations. The tool enables users to create diagrams simply by typing an ordinary mathematical expression and letting the software do the drawing. Unlike a graphing calculator, these expressions aren’t limited to basic functions, but can be complex relationships from any area of mathematics....

“Along with the global science community, the Parker Solar Probe team can’t wait to see this new data,” said Nour Raouafi, the Parker Solar Probe project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Combining it with contributions from observatories around the globe will help us to put Parker observations in a broader context and build a complete picture of the phenomena observed in the solar atmosphere....

Though vaccination rates have rebounded, declines in proportions of children vaccinated persisted or worsened in many age groups. The numbers of recommended vaccine doses, including measles vaccine, administered to children decreased dramatically after the declaration of a national state of emergency on March 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics. While the decrease was lower and recovered in children under 2 years of age, it was more severe and persistent in older children....

In the field of consumer research, self-control is often conceptualized as, and tested through, the ability or inability to abstain from ‘hedonic consumption’ — at its most base level, eating sugary, fatty foods. According to this common conceptualization, food decisions involve a trade-off between health and pleasure, where deciding on pleasure is associated with a self-control failure. But, as the authors of Exerting Self-Control ≠ Sacrificing Pleasure argue, for a choice to constitute a self-control failure, it must be accompanied by anticipated regret and violate a long-term goal held by the consumer....

These results add to evidence suggesting that glo may have the potential to be substantially reduced risk compared to smoking conventional cigarettes. Glo is a tobacco heating product (THP) designed to heat rather than burn tobacco. This means it does not produce smoke and certain toxicants associated with tobacco combustion are substantially reduced. Previous studies revealed toxicant levels in the heated tobacco vapor from glo to be around 90-95% less than in cigarette smoke....