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- A new class of supermassive black holes embedded in a thick gas shell could explain small red dots in images from the James Webb Space Telescope.
- Fossil remains of a large, now-extinct bird species have been discovered in Australia's Boodjamulla National Park.
- Excitons, bound states between an electron (i.e., a negatively charged particle) and a hole (i.e., the absence of an electron) in materials, are a key focus of condensed matter physics studies. These bound states can give rise to interesting and uncommon quantum physical effects, which could be leveraged to develop optoelectronic and quantum technologies.
- This week, researchers reported evidence of a cosmic impact at classic Clovis archaeological sites. Biologists in Texas discovered a rare hybrid bird, the offspring of a blue jay and a green jay. And a study suggests that low-dose aspirin halves the risk of recurrence after surgery for colon and rectal tumors with a particular genetic alteration.
- A new study has made a counterintuitive discovery about how El Niño affects India's summer monsoon. Instead of reducing rainfall overall and causing widespread droughts, the periodic climatic phenomenon increases rainfall daily in the country's wettest regions.
- Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 3,300-year-old whistle made from a cow's toe bone, believed to have been used by police to guard royal tomb workers. The artifact was found in the ruins of the ancient city of Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna) in 2008, but has only now been identified. It is the first known bone whistle from ancient Egypt and offers new clues about daily life and security.
- Recent research has found a new way to make graphene that adds structural defects to improve the performance of the material that could have benefits across a range of applications—from sensors and batteries, to electronics.
- A new trick for modeling molecules with quantum accuracy takes a step toward revealing the equation at the center of a popular simulation approach, which is used in fundamental chemistry and materials science studies.
- When people hear about hurricanes, they often focus on the category rating: Category 1 through 5, based on maximum wind speeds. But not all hurricanes with the same wind speeds are alike. Some are compact storms while others can span the size of entire states. Larger hurricanes bring far greater damage, generating wider footprints of high winds, heavier rainfall and more dangerous storm surge.
- Scientists have uncovered how the plant hormone auxin helps roots bend and downwards towards gravity—a process called gravitropism—even after encountering obstacles in soil.
- Scientists observing from boats knew little of the underwater behavior of the world's smallest marine dolphin, the Hector's dolphin.
- When model cell membranes bind to biomaterials, it is not the binding strength but the speed of the receptors in the membranes that is crucial. This was discovered by an international research team led by chemist Professor Dr. Shikha Dhiman from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
- Scientists have shown that two previously separate modes of plant branching regulation can be connected, revealing the most complete picture yet of how plants control their architecture.
- When it comes to eliminating toxic and expensive heavy metals in the chemical industry, a new study from the University of Würzburg points the way forward.
- Buried deep in Greenland's ice sheet lies a puzzling chemical signature that has sparked intense scientific debate. A sharp spike in platinum concentrations, discovered in an ice core (a cylinder of ice drilled out of ice sheets and glaciers) and dated to around 12,800 years ago, has provided support for a hypothesis that Earth was struck by an exotic meteorite or comet at that time.
- Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, together with international collaborators, have developed a new electron microscopy method that has enabled the first-ever imaging of vibrations, or phonons, in specific directions at the atomic scale.
- A team led by University of Georgia ecologists documented two new species of black bass, Bartram's bass and Altamaha bass, in a new paper.
- In quantum mechanics, particles such as electrons act like waves and can even interfere with themselves—a striking and counterintuitive feature that defies our classical view of reality. We know this kind of interference happens in space, where different paths can overlap and combine, but what if we could take it further? What if we could control quantum interference in time, where electrons created at different moments interfere?
- Researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have revealed for the first time how gas flows from vast distances toward the disk surrounding a nascent massive star in the process of star formation.
- A team of scientists from the University of Cologne's Institute of Biochemistry has made a decisive discovery about the molecular basis of synapse formation in the central nervous system. They studied inhibitory synapses, the so-called "brakes" in our brain, which regulate that a signal is no longer transmitted.
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