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Jan 12, 2023

Researchers devise a new way to control ‘3D’ effects in chemical reactions

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics

Researchers have observed steric effects—the interactions of molecules depending on their spatial orientation (not just between their electrons involved in bonding)—in a chemical reaction involving non-polar molecules for the first time. The breakthrough opens the door to an entirely new way to control the products of chemical reactions.

A paper describing the research team’s findings was published in the journal Science on Jan. 12.

One of the central goals of chemistry is to develop new methods of controlling chemical reactions. For the most part, control of chemical reactions involves understanding of the interactions between the electrons of different atoms. These “electronic” effects govern many of the properties and behavior of chemicals and the changes they undergo during reactions.

Jan 12, 2023

Common brain network for psychiatric illness discovered

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and depression, affect nearly one in five adults in the United States and nearly half of patients diagnosed with a psychiatric illness also meet the criteria for a second. With so much overlap, researchers have begun to suspect that there may be one neurobiological explanation for a variety of psychiatric illnesses. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, investigated four pre-existing, publicly available neurological and psychiatric datasets, and pinpointed a network of brain areas underlying psychiatric illnesses. Their results are published in Nature Human Behavior.

“Traditionally, neurology and psychiatry have different diagnostic strategies,” said corresponding author Joseph J. Taylor, MD, Ph.D., Medical Director of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation at the Brigham’s Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics and an associate psychiatrist in the Brigham’s Department of Psychiatry. “Neurology asks: ‘Where is the lesion?’ and psychiatry asks: ‘What are the symptoms?’ We now have tools to explore the ‘where’ question for psychiatry disorders. In this study, we examined whether psychiatric disorders share a common network.”

The researchers began by analyzing a set of structural brain data from over 15,000 healthy controls as well as patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, , depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or anxiety. They found gray matter decreases in anterior cingulate and insula, two commonly associated with psychiatric illness. However, only a third of studies showed gray matter decreases in these brain regions. Additionally, also showed gray matter decreases in these same regions.

Jan 12, 2023

From emotional maltreatment to psychiatric disorders in childhood and adolescence

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Emotional maltreatment, also known as psychological violence, is difficult to recognize and record both in research and in practice. That is why researchers at the Leipzig University Faculty of Medicine carried out a highly elaborate study on the psychological effects that abuse, neglect and emotional maltreatment have on children and adolescents. Examples of emotional abuse include when parents subject their children to extreme humiliation, threaten to put them in a home, or blame them for their own psychological distress or suicidal thoughts.

Physical violence between parents observed by children also plays a crucial role. “Our study findings clearly show that emotional is not only a very common form of maltreatment, but also one with psychiatric consequences that are similar to or even more severe than other forms of maltreatment,” explains study leader and last author Dr. Lars White, research group leader at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at Leipzig University Hospital.

In their study of 778 children, the Leipzig researchers, together with researchers from other German universities, found that 80 percent of the children and adolescents who reported having been maltreated had also experienced emotional maltreatment. This makes emotional maltreatment the most common form of child abuse.

Jan 12, 2023

Madagascar extinction recovery could take 23 million years

Posted by in categories: existential risks, sustainability

The long-term impact of biodiversity loss in Madagascar has been modelled by researchers. Their work suggests that recovery from the current wave of extinctions could take as long as 23 million years.

Madagascar is one of the world’s most biodiverse hotspots. Following the breakup of the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana, the island country split away from the Indian subcontinent about 80 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, over 90% of its wildlife is endemic and found nowhere else on Earth.

Jan 12, 2023

Shocked scientists discover black hole continually feasting on same stars. ‘Puzzled’

Posted by in category: cosmology

New telescope imagery suggests that stars can survive encounters with black holes, a phenomenon that has been modeled but seldom observed, astronomers say. Using an X-ray telescope orbiting the Earth, astronomers peered 1 billion light-years into deep space and observed black holes partially destroying the same stars over and over, according to the European Space Agency.

Jan 12, 2023

Astronomers find a group of zombie stars 20 times hotter than the Sun

Posted by in categories: evolution, particle physics, space

Of course, all stars are hot compared with anything we’re used to here on Earth. But while the Sun’s surface chills at a steady 6,000 degrees Kelvin, these stars’ extreme temperatures range from 100,000 to 180,000 degrees.

These are “stars which are a little bit outside the canonical evolution,” Klaus Werner of the University of Tuebingen’s Kepler Centre for Astro and Particle Physics, a co-author of the paper, tells Inverse. “These stars are strange.”

Even among the ultra-hot white dwarfs known by the designation PG1159, the selection that cropped up in this survey lack the helium normally found in their atmosphere: instead, they’ve burned it all away, fusing it into a solar atmosphere of pure carbon and oxygen.

Jan 12, 2023

Loss of Epigenetic Information Can Drive Aging, Restoration Can Reverse It

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

An international study 13 years in the making demonstrates for the first time that degradation in the way DNA is organized and regulated — known as epigenetics — can drive aging in an organism, independently of changes to the genetic code itself.

Jan 12, 2023

Webb Confirms Its First Exoplanet

Posted by in category: space

Researchers confirmed an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter. The research team is led by Kevin Stevenson and Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, both of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.


The planet is rocky and almost precisely the same size as Earth, but whips around its star in only two days.

Jan 12, 2023

Collapsed crypto exchange FTX recovers $5 billion worth of assets

Posted by in category: cryptocurrencies

The extent of losses faced by investors remains unknown so far.

FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that came crashing down in just a week in November last year, has now recovered assets worth $5 billion, its attorney told a U.S. court, BBC

Valued at over $32 billion just a year ago, the crypto exchange, with its head office in the Bahamas, faced a liquidity crunch. The founder, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), filed for bankruptcy protection on November 11.

Jan 12, 2023

A British company starts mass production of its 7.5-tonne electric truck

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

The company aims to hit a sales milestone of 1,000 electric trucks in 2023.

Tevva started commercial production of its medium-duty electric truck after it received the European Community Whole Vehicle Type Approval (ECWVTA). The British vehicle manufacturer will now be able to start mass production and sales of TEV75, its 7.5-tonne battery-electric truck. The critical regulatory approval, granted by the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) and the Swedish Transport Agency (STA), will enable Tevva to retail its product across the UK and Europe.

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