From Italy and the World

When NASA’s Mars rovers found manganese oxides in rocks in the Gale and Endeavor craters on Mars in 2014, the discovery sparked some scientists to suggest that the red planet might have once had more oxygen in its atmosphere billions of years ago. The minerals probably required abundant water and…

CNN  —  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech at the US Capitol on Wednesday, where he expressed gratitude for US support, was a historic moment, and one which resonated with people in his home country. CNN spoke to members of the public in Ukraine to gauge their reaction to Zelensky’s visit…

New research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine speaks to the benefits of a COVID-19 booster. The new findings shed light on how mRNA boosters — both Pfizer and Moderna — affect the durability of our antibodies to COVID-19. A booster, the researchers report, made for longer-lasting antibodies…

Men are less likely to seek careers in early education and some other fields traditionally associated with women because of male gender bias in those fields, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Bias against men in health care, early education and domestic (HEED) fields has been documented…

Exploring a new way to teach robots, Princeton researchers have found that human-language descriptions of tools can accelerate the learning of a simulated robotic arm lifting and using a variety of tools. The results build on evidence that providing richer information during artificial intelligence (AI) training can make autonomous robots…

X-ray diffraction (XRD) is an experimental technique to discern the atomic structure of a material by irradiating it with x-rays at different angles. Essentially, the intensity of the reflected x-rays becomes high at specific irradiation angles, producing a pattern of diffraction peaks. An XRD serves as a fingerprint for a…

Philosophers seeking to answer questions around inequality in household labour and the invisibility of women’s work in the home have proposed a new theory — that men and women are trained by society to see different possibilities for action in the same domestic environment. They say a view called “affordance…

Dr. Manel Esteller and Dr. Verónica Dávalos, researchers at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, describe in a new article the impact of epigenetics on cancer treatment and how it has become a crucial tool to improve early detection, predict disease progression and become a target for new treatments. In…

Pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and pneumococcus can cause severe pneumonia. If the airways then fill with fluid, the patient risks developing acute respiratory distress syndrome. Researchers at Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now discovered the molecular mechanisms that trigger fluid accumulation in the lungs. This also led them to discover…

An international team of scientists led by Lucile Turc, an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and supported by the International Space Science Institute in Bern has studied the propagation of electromagnetic waves in near-Earth space for three years. The team has studied the waves in the area…

In a study examining the link between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and brain dysfunction, scientists at the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology, affiliated to King’s College London and the University of Lausanne, found an accumulation of fat in the liver causes a decrease in oxygen to the brain and…

Sedentary behavior, a large waist circumference, and advanced age: These factors are clearly associated with inferior physical fitness among people aged 50 to 64. In a study with over 5,000 participants, investigating the correlations in detail, major fitness disparities are shown. Fitness is a vital factor for performance in sports,…

Children exhale significantly fewer potentially infectious particles than adults — at least this is true for the small respiratory droplets that are predominantly produced in the lungs. This is a key finding of a study conducted by the Max Planck Institutes for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) and for Chemistry in…

It has long been known that beyond a certain dose, X-rays damage living tissue, so there are clear medical indications for X-rays to keep radiation exposure to a minimum. In basic research on the properties and characteristics of mineralised tissue samples such as bone, researchers rely on increasingly powerful X-ray…

The medical community has never researched the simultaneous impact of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), and genetic risk factors in a large cohort … until now. In a study of Veterans led by Dr. Mark Logue, a statistician in the National Center for PTSD at the VA…

Researchers have discovered a process that can contribute to the melting of ice shelves in the Antarctic. An international team of scientists found that adjacent ice shelves play a role in causing instability in others downstream. The study, led by the University of East Anglia in the UK, also identified…

The “Cosmic Cliffs” are the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. This was one of the first batch of images released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope in July. The telescope’s infrared view reveals previously invisible areas of star birth.…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a historic speech from the United States Capitol Wednesday night, expressing gratitude for American support in fighting Russian aggression since the war began — and asking for more. “I hope my words of respect and gratitude resonate in each American heart,” Zelensky said during the…

House Republicans released a report Wednesday focused on security failures at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, highlighting well-documented breakdowns in intelligence sharing, Capitol security and coordination between various law enforcement agencies that responded that day. Their primary recommendation centers around reforming the Capitol Police Board and bolstering congressional…

(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) Three-hundred days after his country was invaded by Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky jetted to Washington, DC, for talks on what the next 300 days might bring. US President Joe Biden and the Ukrainian leader appeared as a united front, but Biden wouldn’t invite Zelensky to Washington — and endure…

Imagine messaging an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot about a missing package and getting the response that it would be “delighted” to help. Once the bot creates the new order, they say they are “happy” to resolve the issue. After, you receive a survey about your interaction, but would you be…

Ten young children born without functioning immune systems and lacking the ability to fight infections are on track for healthier lives thanks to a new gene therapy treatment pioneered at UC San Francisco, reports a Dec. 22 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The children have Artemis-SCID, a…

In people with active secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), hematopoietic stem cell transplants may delay disability longer than some other MS medications, according to a study published in the December 21, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study involved autologous hematopoietic…