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NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun. New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident....

The detection was serendipitous — the asteroid was found in calibration images of a different asteroid. The lucky finding suggests Webb can detect many such objects. James Webb Space Telescope Detects Extremely Small Main Belt Asteroid An asteroid roughly the size of Rome’s Colosseum — between 300 to 650 feet (100 to 200 meters) in length — has been detected by an international team of European astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope....

The spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy and is scheduled to arrive at the space station around 1:30 p.m. Monday, December 7, performing the first autonomous docking for SpaceX and remaining at the station for about a month. Coverage of arrival will begin at 11:30 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website. This 21st contracted resupply mission for SpaceX is the first flight of an upgraded Dragon design, similar to that of the Crew Dragon used to transport astronauts to and from the station....

The first controlled studies of extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown the widely accepted 50-year-old model used to explain how ions influence each other’s behavior in a dense plasma. The results should benefit a wide range of fields, from research aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy source to understanding the inner workings of stars. The study also demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser at the U....

Surviving a case of COVID-19 that’s bad enough to land you in the hospital is hard enough. But life after the hospital stay — and especially after an intensive care stay — is no bed of roses, either, according to a new study. Within two months of leaving the hospital, nearly 7% of the patients had died, including more than 10% of the patients treated in an ICU. Fifteen percent had ended up back in the hospital....

In contrast, maple leaves survive for only one season, while blueberry leaves have a lifespan of a mere three months. So, what determines the lifespan of a tree leaf? The answer to that superficially simple question is reported today in a paper in Science Advances by an international team of researchers from China, the UK, Japan, Norway, USA, and Australia. “It’s all about the economic choices faced by plants,” says first author, Dr....

These special llama antibodies, called “nanobodies,” are much smaller than human antibodies and many times more effective at neutralizing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They’re also much more stable. “Nature is our best inventor,” said senior author Yi Shi, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell biology at Pitt. “The technology we developed surveys SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing nanobodies at an unprecedented scale, which allowed us to quickly discover thousands of nanobodies with unrivaled affinity and specificity....

Mounting scientific evidence shows sleep problems are associated with a higher risk of developing obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. The role of sleep as a cardiovascular health metric: Does it improve cardiovascular disease risk prediction? Results from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (Abstract 36) A new study suggests that sleep should be added as the eighth metric of heart health to the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 (LS7)....

If you live in the western part of North America, Alaska, and the Hawaiian islands, you might set your alarm early the morning of Wednesday, January 31 for a lunar trifecta: a pre-dawn “super blue blood moon.” Beginning at 5:30 a.m. EST on January 31, a live feed of the Moon will be offered on NASA TV and NASA.gov/live. You can also follow at @NASAMoon. “For the (continental) U.S., the viewing will be best in the West,” said Gordon Johnston, program executive and lunar blogger at NASA Headquarters in Washington....

As this industry grows dynamically, so does the number of new diseases. There are many reasons for this increase according to a new review in Plant Disease. First, these seasonal products are grown under high crop density in five to six cycles annually in the same specialized farms with a lack of adequate crop rotation and a shortage of applicable fungicides. Additionally, international trade has moved crops away from their original environments to foreign soils, where they encounter new diseases....

Astronomers have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to measure the mass of what may be the most massive black hole yet — 17 billion times our sun’s mass — in galaxy NGC 1277. The unusual black hole makes up 14 percent of its galaxy’s mass, rather than the usual 0.1 percent. This galaxy and several more in the same study could change theories about how black holes and galaxies form and evolve....

Materials, such as solids and gels, that change volume depending on temperature or pH have long been available. Such materials are used in control units (one example of which is windows in greenhouses that automatically open and close depending on the temperature). They are also used in robots and in other electromechanical systems and in applications in biomedicine. One property that researchers have, however, long-sought is the change of a material from a solid form to a gel state with the aid of an electrical signal....

A new study from the University of Barcelona found that eating a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or tree nuts reduced the risk of suffering a cardiovascular-related death by around 30 percent. The results of the study PREDIMED, aimed to assess the efficacy of the Mediterranean diet in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases, have been published in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine. They prove that the Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or tree nuts reduces by 30 % the risk of suffering a cardiovascular death, a myocardial infarction or a stroke....

Before consuming a meal, many people with diabetes need to inject themselves with insulin. This is a time-consuming process that often requires estimating the carbohydrate content of the meal, drawing blood to measure blood glucose levels, and then calculating and delivering the correct insulin dose. Those steps, which typically must be repeated for every meal, make it difficult for many patients with diabetes to stick with their treatment regimen. A team of MIT researchers has now come up with a new approach to streamline the process and help patients maintain healthy glucose levels....

Last week, MIT began piloting a wastewater testing program as a new tool to help keep the campus community safe this semester. In a project that will run through the fall semester, wastewater from seven buildings on campus will be tested each day for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The project is designed to determine if wastewater testing can be an effective early warning system for COVID-19 outbreaks on campus, and is being evaluated as a complementary tool in the Institute’s response to the pandemic, along with clinical testing, contact tracing, and other measures....

Cell growth and cell differentiation as well as the release and efficacy of hormones such as insulin depend on the presence of lipids. Lipids are small molecules resembling fat. They are the building blocks of cell membranes, and they also serve as molecular switches in signaling cascades. Such cascades play a crucial role in the control of cell growth and division as well as in differentiation processes such as the formation of new blood vessels referred to as angiogenesis....

Umbrella species are species which when preserved, indirectly protect many other plant and animal species. University of Queensland Ph.D. candidate Michelle Ward said different choices in Australia could provide more assistance for threatened species. “The Australian Federal Government’s umbrella prioritization list identifies 73 species as conservation priorities,” she said. “But this only ends up benefiting six percent of all Australia’s threatened terrestrial species. This figure could be increased to benefit nearly half of all threatened terrestrial species for the same budget....

A new study from the University of Florida provides more evidence that the breast milk of people vaccinated against COVID-19 provides protection to infants too young to receive the vaccine. This latest study follows up on findings published in 2021 showing that the breast milk of vaccinated people contained antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The new study, published today (January 12) in the Journal of Perinatology, analyzed the stool of infants that consumed this breast milk and found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies there as well....

Music training does not have a positive impact on children’s cognitive skills, such as memory, and academic achievement, such as mathematicss, reading or writing, according to a study published in Memory & Cognition. Previous research trials, carried out to examine a potential causal link between music training and improved cognitive and academic performance, have reached inconsistent conclusions, with some suggesting that there may be a link between music training and better cognitive and academic performance and others finding little effect....

About 70 of these structures are known to exist in Ukraine and the west Russian Plain. New analysis shows the bones at one site are more than 20,000 years old, making it the oldest such circular structure built by humans discovered in the region. The bones were likely sourced from animal graveyards, and the circle was then hidden by sediment and is now a foot below the current surface level....