Culture
Astronomers are still searching for a hypothetical "Planet Nine" in the distant reaches of our solar system, but an exoplanet 336 light years from Earth is looking more and more like the Planet Nine of its star system .
Planet Nine, potentially 10 times the size of Earth and orbiting far beyond Neptune in a highly eccentric orbit about the sun, was proposed in 2012 to explain perturbations in the orbits of dwarf planets just beyond Neptune's orbit, so-called detached Kuiper Belt objects. It has yet to be found, if it exists.
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from Russia and the US have described two new, compact Cas9 nucleases, the cutting components of CRISPR-Cas systems, that will potentially expand the Cas9 toolbox for genome editing. One of the two nucleases has been shown to work in human cells and thus can have biomedical applications. The paper was published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
SARS-CoV-2 was introduced to the Boston area of Massachusetts many times in early 2020, according to a new analysis of virus genomes, but only a small number of importations - including one related to an international business conference - led to most cases there. Because viruses circulating at the conference happened to be marked by distinct genomic signatures, the study's authors were able to track its downstream effects far beyond the superspreading event itself.
Dartmouth Researchers Work to Reduce Child-Directed Food Marketing on Educational Websites
A new article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by a team of researchers and advocates including Dartmouth faculty, asserts that current gaps in the regulation of commercial educational websites are exposing children to unhealthy food marketing.
A new computational mass spectrometry imaging method enables researchers to achieve high mass resolution and high spatial resolution for biological samples while providing data sets exponentially faster.
Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology developed a subspace mass spectrometry imaging approach that accelerates the speed of data acquisition -- without sacrificing the quality -- by designing a model-based reconstruction strategy.
COVID-19 has been found in conjunctival swabs and tears of infected patients, according to a new study published in The Ocular Surface.
The 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed "Planet Nine." This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disc.
LA JOLLA--(December 10, 2020) When you touch a hot stove, your hand reflexively pulls away; if you miss a rung on a ladder, you instinctively catch yourself. Both motions take a fraction of a second and require no forethought. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute have mapped the physical organization of cells in the spinal cord that help mediate these and similar critical "sensorimotor reflexes."
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- U.S. public health officials have reported that Black communities are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with higher infection and mortality rates than the general population. These disparities relate to the prevalence of underlying chronic diseases, and social and economic inequality, according to Mayo experts. Now as the number of COVID-19 cases across the U.S. surge, Mayo Clinic researchers are working closely with Black churches on disparities in emergency preparedness and providing access to culturally relevant, evidence-based health information.
More older adults are hospitalized in the month following hurricanes while fewer primary care doctors, surgeons and specialists are available in some of their communities in the long term, according to a pair of University of Michigan studies.
Like a parent being pestered with endless questions from a young child, most people will now and again find themselves following an infinite chain of cause and effect when considering what led to some particular event. And while many factors can contribute to an event, we often single out only a few as its causes. So how do we decide?
In a step toward making more accurate and uniform 3D-printed parts such as personalized prosthetics and dental materials, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a method of measuring the rate at which microscopic regions of a liquid raw material harden into a solid plastic when exposed to light.
The COVID-19 pandemic has once again highlighted the uncertainty inherent in science. The results of a Germany-wide study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charite - Universitaetsmedizin Berlin show that most Germans want to be openly informed about this uncertainty. The results have now been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
A new technology, called Artificial Chemist 2.0, allows users to go from requesting a custom quantum dot to completing the relevant R&D and beginning manufacturing in less than an hour. The tech is completely autonomous, and uses artificial intelligence (AI) and automated robotic systems to perform multi-step chemical synthesis and analysis.
Quantum dots are colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, which are used in applications such as LED displays and solar cells.
All human groups create systems for regulating cultural norms to maintain cooperation in society. Most large-scale populations employ a punitive judicial system where a third party doles out punishment. Yet, there's little evidence that this system achieves cooperation in a community. Advocates have long called for a more restorative justice system that repairs harm done to victims and reintegrates wrongdoers back into society.