Hew research by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that planets still can form in the cosmic maelstrom of Milky Way's center.

The post Planets can form in the galactic center appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

This image shows the active star-forming galaxy M82 in three wavelengths: UV (blue), near-infrared (green) and far-infrared (red). New research indicates that even in the […]

The post Active star-forming galaxy M82 in three wavelengths appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Based on a treasure trove of recent discoveries, astronomers now know that planets are remarkably plentiful in our galaxy and may be common throughout the […]

The post Dust trap around distant star may unlock mystery as to how planets form appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Parents normally feel the need to provide well for their kids. For humans, that number of offspring is usually in the single digits, but a […]

The post The secret formula to feeding 900 babies: Scientists uncover milk composition of naked mole-rat queens appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

In the wild, wide milk chocolate-brown stripes adorn the beautiful smooth, white shells of the chambered nautilus, a deep-diving mollusk from the Indo-Pacific Ocean. But […]

The post Nautilus shell deformity puzzles scientists appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Stars form when gravity pulls together material within giant clouds of gas and dust. But gravity isn’t the only force at work. Both turbulence and […]

The post As Stars Form, Magnetic Fields Influence Regions Big and Small appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Astronomers announced today that they have found the organic molecule methyl alcohol, or methanol, in the TW Hydrae protoplanetary disk. This is the first such […]

The post Methanol reveals comets forming in distant solar system appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

A team of astrophysicists and planetary scientists has predicted that Neptune-like planets located near the center of the Milky Way galaxy have been transformed into […]

The post Black hole blasts may transform “Mini-Neptunes” into rocky worlds appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Samantha-Su Z. Taylor, Nicole L. Jacobsen, Tasha K. Pontifex, Paul Langlais, and Janis M. Burt

Connexin 37 (Cx37) expression profoundly suppresses proliferation of rat insulinoma (Rin) cells in a manner dependent on gap junction channel (GJCh) functionality and the presence and phosphorylation status of its carboxyl-terminus (CT). In Rin cells growth arrested by induced Cx37 expression, serine 319 (S319) is frequently phosphorylated. Preventing phosphorylation at this site (alanine substitution; S319A) relieved Cx37 of its growth suppressive effect whereas mimicking phosphorylation at this site (aspartate substitution; S319D) enhanced Cx37's growth suppressive properties. Like Cx37-WT, -S319D GJChs and hemichannels (HChs) preferred the closed state, rarely opening fully, and gated slowly. In contrast, Cx37-S319A channels preferred open states, opened fully, and gated rapidly. These data indicate that phosphorylation-dependent conformational differences in Cx37 protein and channel function underlie Cx37-induced growth arrest vs. growth permissive phenotypes. That the closed state of -WT and Cx37-S319D GJChs and HChs favors growth arrest suggests that rather than specific permeants mediating cell cycle arrest, the closed conformation instead supports interaction of Cx37 with growth regulatory proteins that result in growth arrest.

The number and diversity of tectonic landforms in our solar system “is truly remarkable,” Watters and Schultz write. Photographs of these structures have stimulated a range of scholarly investigations.

The post Book Review: Planetary Tectonics examines otherworldly landforms appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Appendices B4 and B5 of Cayron [Acta Cryst. (2019), A75, 411–437] contain equations involving the point group and the metric tensor in which the equality symbol should be substituted by the inclusion symbol.

Here come the stinkbugs...With the cooler temperatures of fall the brown marmorated stinkbug begins a determined quest to find a warm place to spend the winter. Crowding around window screens and searching for other ways to get inside, homeowners in the United States will share their indoor living space this winter with millions of brown marmorated stinkbugs. In this video Gary Hevel, an entomolgist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, shares some information about these interesting creatures, as well as some advice about how to deal with those that inevitably gain entry to your home.

The post Smithsonian entomologist Gary Hevel gives information and advice about stinkbugs in your home appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Jonathan Coddington, Curator of Spiders at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History describes how photography has transformed the study of arachnids.

The post How photography has transformed the study of spiders and their webs appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

The Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered. The Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, bringing together species and software experts from across the world. Lean more at www.eol.org

The post The Encyclopedia of Life is a global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants and other life forms on Earth appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

This work presents a technique for extracting the detailed shape of peaks with extended, overlapping tails in an X-ray powder diffraction pattern. The application discussed here concerns crystallite size broadening, though the technique can be applied to spectra of any origin and without regard to how the profiles are to be subsequently analyzed. Historically, the extraction of profile shapes has been difficult due to the complexity of determining the background under the peak, resulting in an offset of the low-frequency components of the Fourier transform of the peak known as the `hook' problem. The use of a carefully considered statistical weighting function in a non-linear least-squares fit, followed by summing the residuals from such a fit with the fit itself, allows one to extract the full shape of an isolated peak, without contributions from either the background or adjacent peaks. The extracted shape, consisting of the fit function recombined with the residuals, is not dependent on any specific shape model. The application of this to analysis of microstructure is performed independently of global parametric models, which would reduce the number of refined parameters; therefore the technique requires high-quality data to produce results of interest. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated by extraction of Fourier transforms of peaks from two sets of size-broadened materials with two differing pieces of equipment.

This work considers the scaling properties characterizing the hyperuniformity (or anti-hyperuniformity) of long-wavelength fluctuations in a broad class of one-dimensional substitution tilings. A simple argument is presented which predicts the exponent α governing the scaling of Fourier intensities at small wavenumbers, tilings with α > 0 being hyperuniform, and numerical computations confirm that the predictions are accurate for quasiperiodic tilings, tilings with singular continuous spectra and limit-periodic tilings. Quasiperiodic or singular continuous cases can be constructed with α arbitrarily close to any given value between −1 and 3. Limit-periodic tilings can be constructed with α between −1 and 1 or with Fourier intensities that approach zero faster than any power law.

A new polymorph (form II) is reported for the 1:1 dimethyl sulfoxide solvate of 2,3,5,6-tetra­fluoro-1,4-di­iodo­benzene (TFDIB·DMSO or C6F4I2·C2H6SO). The structure is similar to that of a previously reported polymorph (form I) [Britton (2003). Acta Cryst. E59, o1332–o1333], containing layers of TFDIB mol­ecules with DMSO mol­ecules between, accepting I⋯O halogen bonds from two TFDIB mol­ecules. Re-examination of form I over the temperature range 300–120 K shows that it undergoes a phase transformation around 220 K, where the DMSO mol­ecules undergo re-orientation and become ordered. The unit cell expands by ca 0.5 Å along the c axis and contracts by ca 1.0 Å along the a axis, and the space-group symmetry is reduced from Pnma to P212121. Refinement of form I against data collected at 220 K captures the (average) structure of the crystal prior to the phase transformation, with the DMSO mol­ecules showing four distinct disorder com­ponents, corresponding to an overlay of the 297 and 120 K structures. Assessment of the inter­molecular inter­action energies using the PIXEL method indicates that the various orientations of the DMSO mol­ecules have very similar total inter­action energies with the molecules of the TFDIB framework. The phase transformation is driven by inter­actions between DMSO mol­ecules, whereby re-orientation at lower temperature yields significantly closer and more stabilizing inter­actions between neighbouring DMSO mol­ecules, which lock in an ordered arrangement along the shortened a axis.

A Landau theory for the wurtzite-based heterovalent ternary semiconductor ZnSnN2 is developed and a first-order reconstructive phase transition is proposed as the cause of observed crystal structure disorder. The model infers that the phase transition is paraelectric to antiferroelectric.

(The Paypers) Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) has achieved ISO 27001 certification for the second year running.

India-based digital payments platform Mintoak has secured a...

Sopra Banking Software (SBS), a global digital banking...

Georgi Dimchev
Apr 9, 2020; 133:jcs239020-jcs239020
Articles

MP3 -> Wave or Wave -> MP3

Widespread reforms are needed to ensure that all children are equipped with the skills and instruction they need to learn to read, according to a new report from a committee of the National Research Council.

The explosive growth of information technology is having a profound impact on our lives.

Welcome to the public release of the latest Institute of Medicine report on the quality of health care in America.

To significantly reduce the tens of thousands of deaths and injuries caused by medical errors every year, health care organizations must adopt information technology systems that are capable of collecting and sharing essential health information on patients and their care, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Although most people who receive and manage Social Security benefits on behalf of other individuals perform their duties well.

Each year, tens of millions of Americans, young and old, choose to learn about science in informal ways -- by visiting museums and aquariums, attending after-school programs, pursuing personal hobbies, and watching TV documentaries, for example.

Nurses roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in Americas increasingly complex health system, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

Every year, approximately 100 million* adult Americans experience chronic pain, a condition that costs the nation between $560 billion and $635 billion annually, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

Americas health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine

Legal responses to juvenile offending should be grounded in scientific knowledge about adolescent development and tailored to an individual offenders needs and social environment, says a new report from the National Research Council.

A new report from the National Research Council has upheld the listing of formaldehyde as “known to be a human carcinogen” in the National Toxicology Program 12th Report on Carcinogens (RoC).

The best indicator of whether a disabled adult who receives Social Security benefits is capable of managing his or her benefits is evidence of real-world performance of meeting his or her own basic needs, rather than an office-based assessment of financial competence, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The end of a roadside guardrail must be designed so that it is not a hazard to occupants of a vehicle striking it and so that it absorbs energy in a crash and redirects the vehicle into a safe trajectory.

The number of patients in the U.S. awaiting organ transplantation outpaces the amount of transplants performed in the U.S., and many donated organs are not transplanted each year due to several factors, such as poor organ function, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

We are pleased to announce that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are exploring ways to mobilize our expertise to counter misinformation on the web related to science, engineering, and health.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine calls for a series of substantial reforms to strengthen the U.S. biomedical research system for the next generation of scientists.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicines Task Force on the 2020 Census today issued a letter report and submitted it as a public comment to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which recently requested public comments on the 2020 Census.

If the dilute and dispose approach for disposing of the surplus plutonium in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is fully implemented, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) should use two independent review teams to develop public trust in and improve its decisions, says a new interim report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Chemical separations — which are used to divide chemical mixtures into their distinct elements — are critical in providing many of the foods and services needed to maintain our quality of life.

The National Academies today released Criteria for Selecting the Leading Health Indicators for Healthy People 2030, the first of two reports that will help inform the development of Healthy People 2030 (HP2030).

You can find a nurse navigating city streets, on her way to a home visit. Or, maybe he is recording educational videos on preventing ear infections. She might even be running for city council.

For her role in transforming a safety net hospital into a national model for high-quality, cost-efficient health care, the National Academy of Medicine today announced Patricia Gabow is the recipient of the 2019 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care.

Medicine regulatory authorities — including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — should strengthen cooperation with other countries’ regulators to ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of medicines, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

National Academy of Sciences President Emeritus Frank Press — distinguished geophysicist, science adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and National Medal of Science recipient — died on Wednesday, Jan. 29, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He was 95.