Science, Space, Health & Robotics News - Page 183

A study on the treatment titled "Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy-Based Intervention in Preventing Gaming Disorder and Unspecified Internet Use Disorder in Adolescents" has been published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recognizes an unhealthy addiction to video games or the internet on its International Classification of Diseases. Such addictions are associated with mental health problems and decreased academic performance. Researchers have developed a new cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) approach called PROTECT (Professional Use of Technical Media) to address the issue.

"Results of this trial showed that the PROTECT intervention effectively reduced symptoms of gaming disorder and unspecified internet use disorder over 12 months," the researchers wrote.

A study on the incident titled "Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain" has been published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.

Researchers from the University of Tartu, Estonia, studied the brain waves of an 87-year old epilepsy patient using an electroencephalography (EEG) device. Unfortunately, the patient had a heart attack and passed away during the experiment while still connected to the EEG device. From this, the researchers were afforded the unique opportunity to study the brainwaves of a dying individual.

The researchers observed an increase in brain waves known as gamma oscillations, which are associated with dreaming and memory retrieval. The researchers suggested this may mean a person dying experiences memories from their life appearing before their eyes. A caveat of the study is that it examined only one patient who also had a history of seizures and brain swelling. Still, past research has shown similar brain activity in rats, potentially indicating a universal experience across many species.

Two studies on the fusion experiment titled "Design of inertial fusion implosions reaching the burning plasma regime" and "Burning plasma achieved in inertial fusion," have been published in the journal Nature Physics.

Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Northern California announced a record-breaking energy release during a nuclear fusion experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) last year, the world's largest laser. The experiment released 1.3 megajoules of energy in 100 trillionths of a second, equating to 10 quadrillion watts of power.

The experiment used a small pellet of hydrogen fuel encased in a spherical polycarbonate diamond shell, contained in a hohlraum, a small cylinder made of depleted uranium lined with gold. The pellet was heated with 192 lasers, resulting in high enough temperatures that the pellet "imploded" and created a "burning" plasma.

A new study published in the journal Small describes the treatment.

Researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) have used high-frequency sound waves to turn stem cells into bone cells. Considerable bone cells are needed to help regrow bone, which typically requires complicated and expensive equipment to enable mass production.

The majority of clinical trials focusing on bone regrowth have extracted the stem cells for the treatment from a patient's bone marrow, a highly painful process. Now, the RMIT research team has demonstrated their stem cell conversion method to be effective for multiple types of stem cells, such as fat-derived stem cells, which are much less painful to source from a patient.

Moderna is expanding its mRNA pipeline with three new vaccine development programs.

The latest press release by Moderna includes announcements for three different vaccine candidates: mRNA-1608, a vaccine candidate against Herpes simplex virus (HSV), mRNA-1468, a vaccine candidate against varicella-zoster virus (VZV) to reduce the rate of herpes zoster (shingles), and mRNA-4359, a new checkpoint cancer vaccine.

"We are pleased to announce these new development programs, which reflect the continued productivity of our platform and the potential of our mRNA technology to impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people. We are committed to addressing latent viruses with the goal of preventing the lifelong medical conditions that they cause with our mRNA vaccine programs," said Stephane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna.

A new study on the conversion process has been published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Researchers from Northwestern University and LanzaTech have engineered and optimized a strain of bacteria to convert carbon dioxide into the more valuable industrial chemicals acetone and isopropanol (IPA). The benefits of the new gas fermentation process are two-fold; removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere directly and bypassing the use of fossil fuels that would normally occur in generating acetone and IPA.

The combined global market for acetone and IPA is around $10 billion. IPA is the basis for one of the two World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended sanitizer formulas, while acetone is a widely used solvent. Starting with the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium autoethanogenum, researchers reprogrammed the bacteria at LanzaTech to ferment carbon dioxide to make acetone and IPA.

The exoplanet is named WASP-121b and is the focus of a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

WASP-121b is a type of gas giant exoplanet known as a "hot Jupiter" and is almost double the size of Jupiter. It was found in 2015, orbiting a star about 850 light-years from Earth. The planet is "tidally-locked" to its host star, resulting in a "day" side that permanently faces it and a "night" side that always faces away.

Astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have observed the perpetually dark side of the exoplanet with the most clarity yet, which, combined with their observations of the permanent dayside, have allowed them to study the atmosphere as a whole.

A new study that has yet to be peer-reviewed has explored the capabilities of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and whether it's possible the world's most powerful space telescope will be an instrument that reveals alien life on other worlds.

The best way researchers can find alien life on other worlds is by collecting information about a planet and comparing that information to how humans evolved on Earth. Humans produce quite a lot of chemicals into the atmosphere, as well as large amounts of heat, and if researchers were hunting for intelligent alien life, they would observe the atmosphere of a planet look for evidence of chemicals that wouldn't be in the atmosphere without some kind of external intervention.

It's possible that since humans are using chemical detection in the atmosphere to search for life that aliens are doing so as well, which means that the chemicals humans produce into the biosphere that are, not only slowly killing the planet, may also be acting as a cosmic flare to anyone looking. Within the new pre-print study, researchers proposed how scientists would search for these chemical compounds that wouldn't usually be in the atmosphere of planets, and suggested specifically searching "potent greenhouse agents with long atmospheric residence times".

NASA has published a short movie shot by one of its Mars rovers of Martian clouds drifting high sky, allowing scientists to understand the planet more.

If you have ever wondered if there are clouds on Mars, you now have your answer as NASA has recently published a short movie showcasing Martian clouds drifting over the agency's Curiosity rover. NASA's Mars rover used its navigation camera to take eight images of the sky on December 12, 2021, and the 3,325th Martian day of the mission.

While these images are certainly a spectacle, they also provide researchers with information to understand Mars better. NASA explains that from the video, scientists are able to calculate the altitude of the clouds, and according to NASA's Mars blog, these clouds are nearly 50 miles above the surface of Mars. It's extremely cold at that altitude, which is why NASA researchers believe that these clouds are composed of carbon dioxide ice.

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to showcase an image captured by its famous Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA has posted the image to its blog where the space agency explains that Hubble has snapped an image of a distant galaxy merger called IC 2431 that's located approximately 681 million light-years away from Earth within the constellation Cancer. The space agency writes that IC 2431 is three galaxies merging in slow motion with a thick cloud of dust residing in the center of the image.

However, light from the background galaxy is able to pierce the other regions of the galaxy where the density of dust is minimal. Additionally, NASA mentions that lots of star formation is happening within IC 2431 as the galaxies slowly collide, mixing all of their elements. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.