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'Oddball supernova' appears strangely cool before exploding
Led by Northwestern University, the international team used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to examine a massive star two-and-a-half years before it exploded into a supernova. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the star's hot, blue interior. But this yellow star, located 35 million lightyears from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster, was mysteriously lacking this crucial hydrogen layer at the time of its explosion.
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On the front line: The impact of suicide on health professionals and first responders
More research is urgently needed into the impact that attending suicide events is having on paramedics and other first responders, a researcher at the University of Otago, New Zealand, says.
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Revealed: Coral fights back against crown of thorns starfish
Coral can fight back against attacking juvenile crown of thorns starfish - using stinging cells to injure and even kill, showing that coral are not as passive as people may think.
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Being around children makes adults more generous
New psychology research suggests adults are more compassionate and donate more to charity when they are in the presence of children.
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A trait of the rare few whose bodies naturally control HIV: "trained" immune cells
Scientists at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard discover that "elite controllers" have myeloid dendritic cells that display characteristics of trained innate immune cells.
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UMD team demonstrates swarm of photons that somersault in lockstep
University of Maryland Professor Howard Milchberg and research group demonstrate the surprising result that photons in vacuum can have orbital angular momentum (OAM) vectors pointing sideways, at 90 degrees to the direction of propagation - a result literally orthogonal to the decades-long expectation that OAM vectors could only point forward or backward.
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Without commuter traffic, pandemic-era drivers are speeding up, increasing noise pollution
When millions of Americans began working from home, city traffic halted. Although the air became cleaner, researchers discovered that sound levels increased in nature conservation areas due to cars driving faster.
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Machine learning accelerates cosmological simulations
A universe evolves over billions upon billions of years, but researchers have developed a way to create a complex simulated universe in less than a day. The technique, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings together machine learning, high-performance computing and astrophysics and will help to usher in a new era of high-resolution cosmology simulations.
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Long-term monitoring shows successful restoration of mining-polluted streams
Many miles of streams and rivers are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within 10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work.
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New application of AI just removed one of the biggest roadblocks in astrophysics
Using a bit of machine learning magic, astrophysicists can now simulate vast, complex universes in a thousandth of the time it takes with conventional methods. The new method upscales low-resolution models to generate 'super-resolution' simulations. The process is akin to taking a blurry photograph and adding the missing details back in, making it sharp and clear, the researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Prenatal environmental contaminants and childhood disease
The latest evidence for epigenetic mechanisms associated with transgenerational disease and public policy implications
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Neighborhood disadvantage may be an environmental risk factor for brain development
A new USC study suggests that certain neighborhoods - particularly those characterized by poverty and unemployment - may pose an environmental risk to the developing brains of children, impacting neurocognitive performance and even brain size.
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New app makes Bitcoin more secure
Researchers from MSU are developing a mobile app to act as a safeguard for popular but vulnerable "wallet" applications used to manage cryptocurrency.
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With a zap of light, system switches objects' colors and patterns
ChromoUpdate is an MIT-developed "programmable matter" technique to quickly change objects' color. The method uses light to alter the saturation of photochromatic ink on an item's surface and could give product designers a boost in churning out prototypes.
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UNC Charlotte researchers analyzed the host origins of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses
To clarify the origins of coronavirus' infections in humans, researchers from the Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) performed the most comprehensive evolutionary analyses of these viruses to date. The UNC Charlotte team analyzed over 2,000 genomes of diverse coronaviruses that infect humans or other animals.
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Study finds potential therapeutic target for pediatric acute myeloid leukemia
Researchers have identified a gene expressed in children with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that could serve as a new immunotherapy treatment target, according to a new study published today in Blood Advances, a journal of the American Society of Hematology. The study, co-authored by researchers with Nemours Children's Health System, outlines the process and potential path for new immunotherapy drugs that improve survival and reduce treatment-related toxicity in children with AML.
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Study explores how private equity acquisitions impact hospitals
Private equity investment in hospitals has grown substantially in the 21st century, and it accelerated in the years leading up the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a new study of short-term acute care hospitals acquired by private equity firms finds they not only have higher markups and profit margins, they're also slower to expand their staffs.
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Examining the 'service cliff' for youth with autism and their family caregivers
A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University interviewed 174 families to examine the use of health, medical and social services for youth with autism--from 16 to 30 years old--and their family caregivers.
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Polarization-sensitive photodetection using 2D/3D perovskite heterostructure crystal
Polarization-sensitive photodetection is central to optics applications and has been successfully demonstrated in photodetectors of layered hybrid perovskites; however, achieving high polarization sensitivity in such a photodetector remains challenging. Scientists based in China demonstrate a high-performance polarization-sensitive photodetector using single-crystalline 2D/3D perovskite heterostructure crystal, which exhibits ultrahigh polarization sensitivity up to 17.6 under self-driven mode. This work offers a new source of polarization-sensitive materials and provides insights into designing other advanced optoelectronic devices.
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Gene therapy in alzheimer's disease mouse model preserves learning and memory
Researchers at UC San Diego have used gene therapy to prevent learning and memory loss in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, a key step toward eventually testing the approach in humans with the neurodegenerative disease.
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