A pottery sherd from Jackson Wall Manor (left), an image of Betty R. Ebanks’s Monkey Jar-style pot (center), and a piece of a handle found during excavation at Jackson Wall Manor (right). Credit: Petras and MacDonald 2024; and Betty R. Ebanks Ph.D. candidate Elysia Petras and archaeologist Dr. Brandi MacDonald recently discovered 15 shards of … Read more
Why are most cases of polio vaccine-derived variants? Most cases of paralytic polio are now vaccine-derived due to the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. OPV has been instrumental in the near-eradication of wild polioviruses around the world. However, in areas where vaccination rates drop and enough people are susceptible to infection, the weakened … Read more
Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky. Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness. … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Space is an unnatural environment for humans. We can’t survive unprotected in a pure vacuum for more than two minutes. Getting to space involves being strapped to a barely contained chemical explosion. Since 1961, fewer than 700 people have been into space. Private space companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin … Read more
California suffered a heat wave in early September. The 2024 northern summer saw the highest global temperatures on record, beating 2023’s high and making this year likely Earth’s hottest ever recorded, the EU’s climate monitor said Friday. The data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service followed a season of heat waves around the world that … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A new study has highlighted a critical issue within the rapidly developing Blue Economy; the need for “Blue Justice”—a new concept that originated from this study. As countries and industries increasingly turn to the oceans for economic growth, this study warns of the risk that current policies could deepen social inequalities … Read more
A formamide modification (yellow) to a therapeutic agent siRNA (blue) prevents siRNA to bind to non-target mRNA, which allows for treatment with less side effects. Credit: Reiko Matsushita Small interfering RNA (siRNA) drugs are a class of therapeutic agents that silence specific genes associated with inherited diseases. However, siRNA drugs have challenges because siRNAs often … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain If you’re a young person (or a parent of one), you may be thinking some big thoughts about your future. Am I going to go to university? Maybe I’ll look at a trade? I might want to travel? Or maybe I don’t? Do I have to decide now? I don’t know … Read more
by Light Publishing Center, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics And Physics, CAS The microsphere, levitated by the dual beam optical tweezer (green), is driven by the active optomechanical system (red) to generate nonlinear phonon lasers (colored waves). Meanwhile, the injected electrical signal, represented by the white lightning mark, acts as a simple but powerful … Read more
QSA All Personnel Meeting 2024. Credit: Berkeley Lab Before quantum computers can solve complex problems, researchers must develop technologies that manage larger numbers of qubits (the building blocks of quantum computers) for extended periods. Neutral atoms play an important role in this effort and are promising for quantum computing because they offer a stable, controllable, … Read more
