Ultra-faint dwarf galaxies—tiny satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way—have long been seen as cosmic fossils. Now, a new study published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society uses an unprecedented set of simulations to show just how powerfully these faint systems can reflect the conditions of the early universe and tell us why some galaxies grew and others did not.
Featuring gory attacks by bloodthirsty vampires, one may be quick to categorize "Sinners" as a horror movie. That classification, however, may not be fair to the artists who created it. In "Sinners," the creators cleverly use horror as a metaphor for violent racism in the Deep South during the early 20th century, making the film just as much a period drama as a horror film.
As space agencies and private companies look toward a sustained human presence on the moon, a fundamental challenge centers on how to build strong, durable infrastructure without hauling every material from Earth. New research from Rice University points to an unexpected solution—transforming one of the moon's most stubborn obstacles, its abrasive dust, into a valuable building resource. The study demonstrates that lunar regolith simulant, a terrestrial stand-in for the moon's fine, abrasive dust, can be used to strengthen advanced composite materials. The work, published in Advanced Engineering Materials, was also selected for the cover of the journal's latest issue.
Researchers have developed a new methodology that uses artificial intelligence tools to identify and count target viruses more efficiently than previous techniques. The new approach can be used in applications such as pharmaceutical biomanufacturing.
The South Asian summer monsoon sustains billions of people today. For a long time, the prevailing scientific view has held that the formation and intensification of the South Asian summer monsoon were primarily controlled by the rapid uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. However, geological records present a long-standing puzzle from the Early to Middle Miocene (25 to 15 million years ago): the South Asian monsoon rainfall was remarkably strong, even though the Somali Jet—the primary wind system transporting moisture—was relatively weak.
Today's octopuses are intelligent, remarkably flexible animals that lurk in reefs, hide in crevices, or drift through the deep sea. But new research suggests that their earliest relatives may have played a far more predatory role in ocean ecosystems. A study led by researchers at Hokkaido University has found that the earliest known octopuses were giant predators that hunted at the very top of the food web, alongside large marine vertebrates. The study is published in Science.
How did the earliest life on Earth build complex biological machinery with so few tools? A new study explores how the simplest building blocks of proteins—once limited to just half of today's amino acids—could still form the sophisticated structures life depends on.
Short-chain perfluorinated and polyfluorinated alkyl compounds (PFAS) such as perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA) are increasingly entering the environment via various pathways and contaminating groundwater and drinking water. Because PFAS are highly mobile, removing them has so far required a great deal of effort. But a research team at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has developed a new technology to do so. According to an article recently published in Chemical Engineering Journal, the new process is more environmentally friendly and less energy-intensive.
A paper appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a strikingly simple answer to a longstanding question: How do people learn and settle on shared social conventions, from everyday habits to workplace norms? Researchers from the CUNY Graduate Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University have found that people do not primarily learn by copying others or by calculating the most likely choice. Instead, they follow a two-stage process—sampling behaviors at first, then committing once enough evidence accumulates.
The most demanding calculations in quantum chemistry can now be solved with graphics processing unit (GPU) supercomputers. A recently published study shows that software adapted to use GPU hardware can provide not just speed, but also the accuracy needed to solve complex chemistry problems. The work solved the two chemical structures often seen as too complex and expensive to tackle. The advance, published in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, could allow researchers to make meaningful progress in designing new catalysts and improve predicted behaviors of magnetic and electronic materials.
