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Building infrastructure in space is currently prohibitively expensive and difficult to achieve. Future space construction will need to rely on simple materials that are easily available to astronauts, StarCrete offers one possible solution. The scientists behind the invention used simulated Martian soil mixed with potato starch and a pinch of salt to create the material that is twice as strong as ordinary concrete and is perfectly suited for construction work in extra-terrestrial environments....

Many real-world application tasks such as planning and scheduling in logistics and automation are mathematically formulated as combinatorial optimization problems. Conventional digital computers, including supercomputers, are inadequate to solve these complex problems in practically permissible time as the number of candidate solutions they need to evaluate increases exponentially with the problem size — also known as combinatorial explosion. Thus new computers called “Ising machines,” including “quantum annealers,” have been actively developed in recent years....

The base pairs that hold together two pieces of RNA, the older cousin of DNA, are some of the most important molecular interactions in living cells. Many scientists believe that these base pairs were part of life from the very beginning and that RNA was one of the first polymers of life. But there is a problem. The RNA bases don’t form base pairs in water unless they are connected to a polymer backbone, a trait that has baffled origin-of-life scientists for decades....

Most methods of removing carbon dioxide from a stream of gas require higher concentrations, such as those found in the flue emissions from fossil fuel-based power plants. A few variations have been developed that can work with the low concentrations found in air, but the new method is significantly less energy-intensive and expensive, the researchers say. The technique, based on passing air through a stack of charged electrochemical plates, is described in a new paper in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, by MIT postdoc Sahag Voskian, who developed the work during his Ph....

By making nanoparticles bioadhesive, or “sticky,” the researchers have answered a long-standing question: Once you get the particles to the brain, how do you get them to interact with the cancer cells there? Their findings are published May 19 in Nature Communications. “Until now, research has focused on whether you can load the nanoparticles with drugs and whether we can get them into the brain at all, without thinking too much about what cells they go to,” said senior author W....

The work published today in PLoS Pathogens describes the control of HIV infection after early treatment of 14 patients who have been off therapy for 7.5 years (the cohort ANRS EP47 VISCONTI). This work suggests on a larger and durable scale what the functionally cured “Mississippi baby” case potentially indicates: that early therapeutic intervention may be instrumental in HIV control and has important implications for HIV cure research. It is known that following acute infection, HIV establishes viral reservoirs in long-lived cells which allow its persistence even after prolonged treatment....

The recent systematic review and meta-analysis, which was published in the journal Psychological Medicine, indicated that psychotic disorders may be more closely related to dementia than other mental disorders such as depression or anxiety. Senior author Dr. Jean Stafford (MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL) said: “We found that having a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder is linked to a much higher risk of developing dementia later in life....

The discovery of graphene, a material just one atom thick and possessing exceptional strength and other novel properties, started an avalanche of research around its use for everything from electronics to optics to structural materials. But new research suggests that was just the beginning: A whole family of two-dimensional materials may open up even broader possibilities for applications that could change many aspects of modern life. The latest “new” material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) — which has actually been used for decades, but not in its 2D form — was first described just a year ago by researchers in Switzerland....

Editing tool makes fabrication process available to all. Picture a birthday card that flickers between images of a birthday cake and flowers as you turn the card and view it from different angles. No doubt you can think of other examples of such morphing images in, say, advertisements. Until now, however, the effect has been limited to flat surfaces. Enter the work of MIT researchers who, for the first time, have developed a system for creating 3D objects that change their appearance when seen from different viewpoints....

See: Spectacular Space Shuttle Launch Gallery Aboard the spacecraft were commander John W. Young and pilot Crippen. The flight was a test mission and the first time a shuttle was flown to space. Columbia lifted off at 7 a.m. from Launch Pad 39A and was NASA’s first crewed mission since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975. The launch occurred 20 years to the day after the first human launch when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth in the Vostok 1 capsule on April 12, 1961....

In the southwest Pacific Ocean, a seafloor ridge with the highest density of underwater volcanoes in the world stretches from New Zealand to Tonga. On September 10, 2022, one of these underwater volcanoes awoke. Since then, the Home Reef seamount in the Central Tonga Islands has repeatedly ejected plumes of steam and ash, oozed lava, and discolored the surrounding water. Eleven hours after the eruption first began, a new island rose above the water surface....

Emerging forms of thin-film device technologies that rely on alternative semiconductor materials, such as printable organics, nanocarbon allotropes, and metal oxides, could contribute to a more economically and environmentally sustainable internet of things (IoT), a KAUST-led international team suggests. The IoT is set to have a major impact on daily life and many industries. It connects and facilitates data exchange between a multitude of smart objects of various shape and size — such as remote-controlled home security systems, self-driving cars equipped with sensors that detect obstacles on the road, and temperature-controlled factory equipment — over the internet and other sensing and communications networks....

As Artemis I prepares for launch, the second European Service Module (ESM-2) is about to ship to the US with ESM-3 also currently under construction. The second Artemis mission, however, has a crucial difference: it will carry four astronauts for a lunar flyby. ESM-2 will provide propulsion, power, oxygen, water, and life support as well as controlling the temperature in the orbiting crew module. ESM-3 will go one step further and put the first person on the Moon for 50 years....

A new class of polymer that promotes healing in hard-to-treat diabetic wounds has been discovered by researchers from the University of Nottingham. The polymer gives instructions to both immune and non-immune cells, according to a study published in the journal Advanced Materials. Wound healing is a complex biological process that involves various cell types working together, with a cell type called fibroblasts playing a critical role in forming new tissue required for healing....

HKUMed develops a novel therapeutic approach against nasopharyngeal carcinoma by using exosomes derived from γδ-T cells synergized with radiotherapy A research team at LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (HKUMed) discovered that exosomes derived from γδ-T cells (γδ-T-Exos) synergised with radiotherapy can control nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) by overcoming the radioresistance of NPC cancer stem cells (CSCs) and preserve their tumor-killing and T cell-promoting activities in the immunosuppressive NPC microenvironment....

However, a recent study has uncovered an instance where a female zebra shark in captivity has reproduced through parthenogenesis, despite the presence of healthy, reproductive males within the same enclosure. This discovery has significant implications for the management of zebra sharks in captivity and conservation efforts for their wild counterparts. “We’ve known for several years that parthenogenesis occurs in animals like sharks, but some aspects of it remain unknown, like why it occurs and what triggers it,” says Kevin Feldheim, a researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and the study’s corresponding author....

“Invasive species are a key factor in the crisis that is affecting biological diversity now,” says Michael D. Martin, professor of evolutionary genomics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) University Museum. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified the five most serious threats to species diversity throughout the world. Land use change takes the lead, followed by direct resource exploitation, climate change, and pollution....

Previous research led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture had shown evidence of antibodies in wild deer. This study, published today (December. 23, 2021) in Nature, details the first report of active COVID-19 infection in white-tailed deer supported by the growth of viral isolates in the lab, indicating researchers had recovered viable samples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and not only its genetic traces. Based on genomic sequencing of the samples collected between January and March 2021, researchers determined that variants infecting wild deer matched strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that had been prevalent in Ohio COVID-19 patients at the time....

Ongoing observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), however, have discovered surprising examples of massive, star-filled galaxies seen when the cosmos was less than a billion years old. This suggests that smaller galactic building blocks were able to assemble into large galaxies quite quickly. The latest ALMA observations push back this epoch of massive-galaxy formation even further by identifying two giant galaxies seen when the universe was only 780 million years old, or about 5 percent of its current age....