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NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on Tuesday, to be mated to its Pegasus launch vehicle. The observatory will detect X-rays from objects ranging from our sun to giant black holes billions of light-years away. It is scheduled to launch on March 14 from an aircraft operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. “The NuSTAR mission is unique because it will be the first NASA mission to focus X-rays in the high-energy range, creating the most detailed images ever taken in this slice of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Fiona Harrison, the mission’s principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California....

The process began when a 60-ton hoist on the roof of the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 lifted the nose cone, otherwise known as the payload fairing, 129 feet (39 meters) to the top of the waiting rocket. There, engineers made the physical and electrical connections that will remain between booster and spacecraft until about 50 to 60 minutes after launch, when the two are pyrotechnically separated and Perseverance is on its way....

Below is a look at the International Space Station as seen from inside Crew Dragon Endeavor. Crew-2: Crew Dragon Undocked at 2:05 p.m. EST from International Space Station The SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft with NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet inside undocked from the space-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 2:05 p....

The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction. In a step toward understanding how these faulty memories arise, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories....

Stellar explosions are most often associated with supernovae, the spectacular deaths of stars. But new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array provide insights into explosions at the other end of the stellar life cycle, star birth. Astronomers captured these dramatic images as they explored the firework-like debris from the birth of a group of massive stars, demonstrating that star formation can be a violent and explosive process too. The dense and active star formation factory called the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 (OMC-1) is located 1350 light years away in the constellation of Orion, part of the same complex as the Orion Nebula....

Engineers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a small tabletop device that can detect SARS-CoV-2 from a saliva sample in about an hour. In a new study, they showed that the diagnostic is just as accurate as the PCR tests now used. The device can also be used to detect specific viral mutations linked to some of the SARS-CoV-2 variants that are now circulating. This result can also be obtained within an hour, potentially making it much easier to track different variants of the virus, especially in regions that don’t have access to genetic sequencing facilities....

A basic organic solar cell consists of a thin film of organic semiconductors sandwiched between two electrodes which extract charges generated in the organic semiconductor layer to the external circuit. It has long been assumed that 100% of the surface of each electrode should be electrically conductive to maximize the efficiency of charge extraction. Scientists at the University of Warwick have discovered that the electrodes in organic solar cells actually only need ~1% of their surface area to be electrically conductive to be fully effective, which opens the door to using a range of composite materials at the interface between the electrodes and the light-harvesting organic semiconductor layers to improve device performance and reduce cost....

The researchers suggest the test could be deployed in remote locations, clinics, and airports due to its ease of use and portability. Simon Fraser University researchers have validated a faster, cheaper COVID-19 test that could kickstart the expansion of more widespread rapid testing. Study results have been published in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. “This research offers a cheaper, faster alternative to the most reliable and sensitive test currently used worldwide, without sacrificing sensitivity and reproducibility,” says molecular biology and biochemistry professor Peter Unrau, who led the team evaluating the COVID-19 test kit....

The paper, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, is based on the new generation of climate models which are used in the newly published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, reviewing scientific, technical, and socio-economic information regarding climate change. The project brought together over 60 researchers from 44 institutions to produce, for the first time, process-based community projections of the sea level rise from the ice sheets....

An international team of scientists from the UK’s University of Exeter and University of Bristol, and Australia’s James Cook University and Australian Institute of Marine Science, say this “acoustic enrichment” could be a valuable tool in helping to restore damaged coral reefs. Working on Australia’s recently devastated Great Barrier Reef, the scientists placed underwater loudspeakers playing healthy reef recordings in patches of dead coral and found twice as many fish arrived — and stayed — compared to equivalent patches where no sound was played....

Water is a mysterious substance. Understanding how it behaves at the atomic level is still a challenge for experimental physicists, as light hydrogen and oxygen atoms are difficult to observe using conventional experimental methods. This is especially true for any researcher looking to study the microscopic movements of individual water molecules that run off a surface in a matter of picoseconds. As they report in their paper, entitled ‘Nanoscopic diffusion of water on a topological insulator’, researchers from the Exotic Surfaces working group at TU Graz’s Institute of Experimental Physics joined forces with counterparts from the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, the University of Surrey and Aarhus University....

“Astronomers have struck a bonanza in searching for and detecting exoplanets of every size and stripe since the first confirmed exoplanet, a hot Jupiter, was discovered in 1995,” Boss explained. “Literally thousands upon thousands have been found to date, with masses ranging from less than that of Earth, to many times the mass of Jupiter.” But there are still gaping holes in scientists’ knowledge about exoplanets that orbit their stars at distances similar to those at which our Solar System’s gas giants orbit the Sun....

NASA | Earthrise: The 45th Anniversary In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth. Using photo mosaics and elevation data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this video commemorates the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8’s historic flight by recreating the moment when the crew first saw and photographed the Earth rising from behind the Moon....

Scientists from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), both part of the NIH, and Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, led the study. Their findings were recently published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. “Combining findings across three species and different types of research studies, and then seeing similarities in those data gives us confidence that we are onto something potentially important scientifically and clinically....

Kaiser Permanente study shows 2-dose Moderna vaccine is highly effective against COVID-19 hospitalization, but protection against delta infection decreases over time. Kaiser Permanente research published today (December 15, 2021) in The British Medical Journal showed 2 doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine were highly effective against all SARS-CoV-2 variants; however, vaccine effectiveness against the delta variant moderately declined with increasing time after vaccination. “We conducted a previous study that showed the high effectiveness of the 2-dose Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, but as the delta variant became predominant in early summer of 2021, questions arose about effectiveness against variants,” said the lead author of the study, Katia Bruxvoort, PhD, an adjunct investigator with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation....

In an analysis of nationwide data from the Veterans Health Administration, approximately one-quarter of individuals with kidney stones had a diagnosis of osteoporosis or bone fracture around the time of their kidney stone diagnosis. The findings are published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. Investigators identified 531,431 patients with kidney stone disease between 2007 and 2015, and they found that 23.6% of patients had a diagnosis of osteoporosis or fracture around the time of their kidney stone diagnosis....

Researchers at Yale University studied 50 years of data about nesting birds in North America and tracked biodiversity changes on a local, regional, and continental scale. They found significant differences in how much change had occurred, based upon how wide a geographic net they cast. The findings have implications for how to assess biodiversity in a rapidly changing world, as well as how biodiversity information should be presented. The study appears on July 2 in the journal Nature Communications....

“As vascular dysfunction drives all major pathologies, from heart failure to atherosclerosis and neurodegeneration, our research shows how bad eating habits molecularly promote the development of diverse diseases,” explains Dr. Olga Bondareva, the first author of the study. “We want to elucidate molecular mechanisms of obesity in order to be able to offer patients tailor-made therapies in the future,” adds HI-MAG director Professor Matthias Blüher. The speaker of Collaborative Research Centre 1052 Obesity Mechanisms has been conducting research on morbid obesity at Leipzig University for years....

The ancient practice of yoga could provide a sustainable exercise alternative for thousands of people isolating at home, as new research from the University of South Australia, shows that movement-based yoga can significantly improve mental health. The world first study conducted in partnership with the Federal University of Santa Maria, UNSW Sydney, Kings College London and Western Sydney University found that movement-based yoga improves the mental health of people living with a range of mental disorders, with the benefits being incremental with the amount of yoga they practiced....

Now, a new study from the University of South Australia provides compelling evidence that vitamin D deficiency is linked to early mortality, prompting calls for individuals to follow healthy vitamin D level guidelines. The research, which was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, indicated that the risk of death increased with the severity of the vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is an essential nutrient that helps us maintain good health by keeping our bones and muscles strong and healthy....