Accurately Measuring The Temperature Of Red Supergiant Stars

Red supergiants are a class of star that end their lives in supernova explosions. Their lifecycles are not fully understood, partly due to difficulties in measuring their temperatures. For the first time, astronomers develop an accurate method to determine the surface temperatures of red supergiants. Stars come in a wide range of sizes, masses and compositions. Our sun is considered a relatively small specimen, especially when compared to something like Betelgeuse which is known as a red supergiant. Red supergiants are stars over nine times the mass of our sun, and all this mass means that when they die they

Ozone Proved to Be Highly Efficient in Effective in Disinfecting Coronavirus

Dr. Ines Zucker. Credit: Tel Aviv University Studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 remains active on aerosols and surfaces for between several hours and several days, depending on the nature of the surface and environmental conditions. Presently, researchers from Tel Aviv University have demonstrated that ozone, which has already long been used as an antibacterial and antiviral agent in water treatment, effectively sanitizes surfaces against Coronavirus after short exposure to low concentrations of ozone. The research team was led by Dr. Ines Zucker from the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Ivy and Eldar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and the Porter

Learning From Trends & Opportunities Across Borders

Global networks of innovation will be needed to solve the healthcare challenges of the future getty The rapid pace of societal evolution in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is met by systemic challenges that accompany the changing face of healthcare – including evolving profiles of disease burden, rising costs of healthcare and resource scarcities that imperil the progress of global health security. These challenges have been aggravated manyfold by the Covid-19 pandemic, and must be met by solutions that appropriately consider the nuanced cultural, financial, and socio-political characteristics that influence population health. This inevitably requires a space for multidisciplinary dialogue and

Slime Mold Doesn’t Have a Brain, But It Can ‘Remember’ Where to Find Food

It may be a single-celled organism, but the slime mould Physarum polycephalum has some pretty fascinating tricks up its pretty yellow sleeves. Now new research has found that it seems to “remember” where it previously found sources of food – even without a brain or nervous system.   This could help explain how network organisms can not just live, but thrive, in complex environments, the researchers said – and could also be a key to understanding the mechanisms of memory formation in such species. P. polycephalum is one of the most peculiar forms of life on Earth. It is neither

Researchers Develop Speedier Network Analysis to Boost Recommendation Algorithms and Internet Search

MIT researchers developed software to more efficiently run graph applications on a range of computing hardware, including both CPUs and GPUs.Credit: Istockphoto images edited by MIT News Graphs — data structures that show the relationship among objects — are highly versatile. It’s easy to imagine a graph depicting a social media network’s web of connections. But graphs are also used in programs as diverse as content recommendation (what to watch next on Netflix?) and navigation (what’s the quickest route to the beach?). As Ajay Brahmakshatriya summarizes: “graphs are basically everywhere.” Brahmakshatriya has developed software to more efficiently run graph applications

This Is What Rolling Blackouts Look Like From Space

Extreme winter weather hit Texas hard this February. An air mass from the arctic extended deep into the United States from Canada, with disastrous results for the ordinarily warm state. Along with snow and unusually low temperatures, the state’s capacity for power generation was significantly reduced by weather-related equipment failures. Images hosted by NASA’s Earth Observatory show the effect of controlled, rolling blackouts across the Greater Houston Area.  One image, taken on February 7th, shows Houston before the arctic weather system, and another picture taken on the 16th shows large swaths of the city in darkness. Earth Observatory has conveniently

Perseverance Seen From Space by ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter

A little over a week ago (February 18th, 2021), NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero crater on the surface of Mars. In what was truly a media circus, people from all over the world tuned to watch the live coverage of the rover landing. When Perseverance touched down, it wasn’t just the mission controllers at NASA who triumphantly jumped to their feet to cheer and applaud. In the days that followed, the world was treated to all kinds of media that showed the surface of Mars and the descent. The most recent comes from the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO),

ESA is Working on a Mission to Explore Caves on the Moon

Infrastructure is going to be one of the biggest components of any permanent human settlement on the moon.  NASA Artemis missions are focused directly on building up the facilities and processes necessary to support a moon base.  ESA is also contributing both material and knowledge.  Most recently they made another step in their path to explore some lava tubes and caves in the subterranean lunar world. ESA recently started the third round of a series of studies that focus on exploring lunar caves.  The current round, called a Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) study builds off the work done in two

Your Indifferent Cat Won’t Choose Your Friend Over Your Enemy, Research Finds

There’s an old stereotype about the difference between cats and dogs. Dogs are loving and fiercely loyal, they say, while cats are aloof and indifferent. Most cat people probably disagree – I certainly find it hard to believe, with my cat purring away in my lap, that she doesn’t care about me.   Overall, cat cognition research suggests cats do form emotional bonds with their humans. Cats seem to experience separation anxiety, are more responsive to their owners’ voices than to strangers’ and look for reassurance from their owners in scary situations. But a new study, by researchers in Japan,

Fish Poop Helps Remove 1.65 Billion Tons of Carbon From the Atmosphere Each Year

Fish fecal pellets collected from the Santa Barbara Channel off California. Credit: Grace Saba New research has shown that carbon in feces, respiration, and other excretions from fishes make up about 16% of the total carbon that sinks below the ocean’s upper layers. Ecosystems provide a huge range of benefits and services to humans – one of these is the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its burial either in sediments or in the deep ocean. Now a team of scientists lead by Dr. Grace Saba at Rutgers University and including Dr. Clive Trueman from Southampton have amalgamated