Russian Court Extended the Detention of American Journalist with Dual Citizenship

At the center of our galaxy‚ the Milky Way‚ there is a turbulent dark cloud called "The Brick". It is dense‚ opaque‚ and full of cold gas‚ and for decades researchers couldn’t explain why a cloud that seems perfect to make stars was showing so little star formation. New observations from JWST have finally provided insights into what’s going on.First of all‚ let’s clarify that despite little star formation‚ there are still 56‚000 stars in The Brick. However‚ there are not as many as you would expect from a molecular cloud with a mass of 60 million suns. There could be many factors that come into play when explaining its inactivity. It might be too young‚ too turbulent‚ or have strong magnetic fields quenching new star formation.Using JWST‚ the team looked at the emission of carbon monoxide through the cloud and discovered that there is a lot of it in the center and it is in the form of ice – a peculiar discovery for certain.“Our observations compellingly demonstrate that ice is very prevalent there‚ to the point that every observation in the future must take it into account‚” Adam Ginsburg‚ an astronomer from the University of Florida‚ said in a statement. “With JWST‚ we're opening new paths to measure molecules in the solid phase (ice)‚ while previously we were limited to looking at gas. This new view gives us a more complete look at where molecules exist and how they are transported.”However‚ ice doesn’t explain why stars are not forming as quickly and as often as expected. In fact‚ it's quite the opposite. Stars only form from cold gas‚ because that’s when it can condense into a denser region. Over a certain threshold‚ that overdensity collapses under gravity and it will eventually become a star. Lots of ice should be a good sign for cool temperatures all around the cloud‚ but the team found quite the opposite.The gas at the center of The Brick is warmer than comparable regions and this is likely a crucial piece of the puzzle that is this molecular cloud. But this is just the beginning; JWST was able to provide incredible new details on a well-known object that has baffled astronomers for decades. These are only the initial findings of extensive observations of The Brick‚ and there is a lot more that the team plans to find out.  “We don't know‚ for example‚ the relative amounts of CO‚ water‚ CO2‚ and complex molecules‚” said Ginsburg. “With spectroscopy‚ we can measure those and get some sense of how chemistry progresses over time in these clouds.”The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The waters surrounding Antarctica are the coldest in the world‚ ranging from a frosty -2°C to a comparatively balmy 10°C (28 to 50°F). That might not sound like an ideal place to make roots‚ and yet life in the Southern Ocean thrives – but how? Antarctic octopuses (Pareledone) might hold some answers‚ with researchers having discovered a key molecular change that allows the creatures to survive even in the coolest of conditions.Enzymes‚ biological catalysts critical to cell function‚ are vulnerable to temperature – they often slow their activity in extreme cold. In determining why Antarctic octopuses can survive in freezing waters‚ enzymes are one of the most logical places to look; the cold reduces the rate of enzyme activity by 30 times‚ and yet the octopuses remain alive and well.An inter-institutional team of researchers focused on one of the most important enzymes in the nervous system – the sodium-potassium ion pump. This protein sits within the cellular membrane‚ pumping sodium ions out of the cell and bringing potassium ions in‚ a process critical to bringing neurons back to “rest” after activity.Previous research from the team had found that in the cold‚ sodium-potassium ion pumps slowed down far less in Antarctic octopuses than in those found in more temperate waters‚ suggesting that there may be molecular differences – aka mutations – in the pumps that have allowed the Antarctic species to function in colder waters.When investigating differences in proteins‚ the key place to look is the amino acid structure – these are the building blocks of proteins. The team examined the amino acid structure of the sodium-potassium ion pump in both Antarctic octopuses and Octopus bimaculatus‚ a temperate-living species.Although the pumps were largely the same‚ there were some differences between the two. To figure out which of these amino acid alterations played a role in adaptation to the cold‚ the researchers did some molecular jiggling around. They transferred the uniquely Antarctic amino acids into the temperate octopus’ pump‚ tested for cold tolerance‚ removed the changes‚ and tested again.Through this process‚ the team discovered 12 mutations that conferred cold tolerance‚ although one change contributed a fair bit more to this than the others – the 314th amino acid in the Pareledone sodium-potassium ion pump‚ which was a leucine.The researchers believe that this change affects how part of the pump moves against the membrane; they think that it could reduce drag‚ which in turn allows the pump to work more quickly. “It makes sense to us” that the interface between the protein and the membrane would be a site for such adaptations‚ said study author Miguel Holmgren in a statement. “Once we have studied more membrane proteins‚ I think we will see more examples of this.”The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A high-speed stream of solar wind from a large coronal hole is expected to cause moderate geomagnetic storms over the next few days.The sunspot‚ captured in a video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) between December 2-4‚ 2023‚ is large‚ but of no major concern. Though a little unsettling in appearance‚ sunspots look like this in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-ray images as they are cooler in temperature and less dense than the surrounding regions."Sunspots are areas where the magnetic field is about 2‚500 times stronger than Earth's‚ much higher than anywhere else on the Sun‚" the National Weather Service explains. "Because of the strong magnetic field‚ the magnetic pressure increases while the surrounding atmospheric pressure decreases.  This in turn lowers the temperature relative to its surroundings because the concentrated magnetic field inhibits the flow of hot‚ new gas from the Sun's interior to the surface."The sunspot should not pose too much of a problem for Earth‚ with the Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting a minor-moderate geomagnetic storm arriving from midday (UTC) on December 4.Sun activity increases and decreases in an 11-year cycle known as the Schwabe cycle. From 1826 to 1843‚ German amateur astronomer Heinrich Schwabe observed the Sun‚ discovering that it rotates on its axis once every 27 days. He noticed the Sun goes from quiet periods‚ where no sunspots can be seen‚ to the maximum phase where 20 or more groups of sunspots can be seen. Solar activity is increasing at the moment. The next solar maximum – when the Sun's activity peaks along this cycle – had been predicted by NASA to occur in 2025. However‚ NASA revised this prediction to between January and October 2024.“We expect that our new experimental forecast will be much more accurate than the 2019 panel prediction and‚ unlike previous solar cycle predictions‚ it will be continuously updated on a monthly basis as new sunspot observations become available‚” Mark Miesch‚ the solar cycle lead at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center‚ said in a statement at the time. “It’s a pretty significant change.”This forecast tracks with another team's prediction of mid-2024. This team looked at magnetic donuts which form at 55 degrees of latitude on both hemispheres of the Sun. These formations migrate towards the equator where they meet and cancel each other out‚ which the team dubbed a Hale cycle (two solar cycles) terminator.This terminator event tends to happen up to two years after the minimum‚ and by focusing on these events‚ the team believed they could make better predictions about the solar cycles."If you measure how long a cycle is‚ not the minimum to minimum‚ but from terminator to terminator‚ you see that there is a strong linear relationship between how long one cycle is and how strong the next one is going to be‚" NASA research scientist Robert Leamon told Space.com.Expect more big sunspots like this one as activity moves towards its peak.

In 1984‚ a team of astronomers poring through images from NASA's Voyager spacecraft noticed small undulations in Saturn's rings.The movement was observed on either side of the Encke Gap‚ a 325-kilometer (200-mile) wide gap in Saturn's A ring. To the team who saw the undulations‚ they implied a moonlet 10 kilometers (6 miles) in radius orbiting within the gap‚ tidying it up as it went."The locations and wavelengths of the observed waves suggest that a single moonlet dominates the gap‚ but some smaller objects are also probably present with sizes still far larger than typical 1-100 cm [0.4-40 inch] sized ring particles‚" the team wrote in their paper."We believe that the morphology of these wavy edges and the relationship of edge waves to gravitational torque illustrate clearly for the first time the basic working of the shepherding process; however‚ many open questions remain as to the details of the observed structure and the mechanism responsible."Looking at the "waves" caused by the undiscovered object‚ another team was able to predict where it should be‚ publishing their paper in 1986. This gave astronomers somewhere to look. Thankfully‚ we didn't have to wait too long‚ as the moon had been captured in photographs by Voyager 1 and 2. Carefully going back through photographs of where the moon should appear‚ they found it very close to its predicted orbit‚ photographic proof of its existence.The moon‚ right where it was predicted to be.Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.The moon has been noted to look like a raviolo (a single filled pasta found in a bowl of ravioli)‚ or a tiny version of Saturn‚ complete with its own (significantly less elegant) ring. The unusual shape of the moon is due to the material it acquired from the rings as it orbits. In turn‚ the moon – named Pan after the god of nature and shepherds – clears a gap in Saturn's ring and shapes it as it orbits the planet every 13.8 hours."Pan creates stripes‚ called 'wakes‚' in the ring material on either side of it. Since ring particles closer to Saturn than Pan move faster in their orbits‚ these particles pass the moon and receive a gravitational 'kick' from Pan as they do‚" NASA explains. "This kick causes waves to develop in the gap and also throughout the ring‚ extending hundreds of miles into the rings. These waves intersect downstream to create the wakes‚ places where ring material has bunched up in an orderly manner thanks to Pan's gravitational kick."Pan is the innermost of Saturn's 117 officially recognized moons (so far). Though others‚ like Enceladus‚ may be far more interesting to scientists‚ when you are hungry accept no substitute for Pan‚ the tiny moon hurtling through Saturn's rings‚ unaware of its delicious raviolo shape.

An enormous burial mound in southern Spain has been hailed as one of the most impressive structures of the Neolithic period following a new examination of its humongous features. Known as the Menga dolmen‚ the incredible monument is thought to have been built around 5‚700 years ago and contains the skeletons of several hundred ancient individuals.Weighing around 150 tons‚ Menga’s capstone is the second largest stone ever used in a Neolithic dolmen‚ and the overall structure is described by the researchers as “the most colossal stone monument built in its time in Europe.” After analyzing the dolmen’s oversized building blocks‚ the study authors discovered that the ancient builders also chose to work with soft stone that required a huge amount of technical skill and logistical organization to erect.Using a range of petrographic and stratigraphic analysis techniques‚ the researchers learned that the Menga stones are “mostly calcarenites‚ a poorly cemented detrital sedimentary rock comparable to those known as 'soft stones' in modern civil engineering.” Such stones are particularly tricky to transport without damaging them‚ which means whoever built Menga must have planned the project meticulously.“Working with these large and fragile stones must have involved a massive labor investment not only in stone working‚ but also in wood-working and rope-making‚” write the study authors. “Large amounts of wood must have been used to build the scaffolding used in the quarrying process and to prepare the roads on which the massive stones were transported.”Artistic representation of quarrying activities for the extraction the capstone.Drawing by Moisés Bellilty under guidance of José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez and Leonardo García Sanjuán (CC BY 4.0)Located on a hilltop‚ the tomb was carefully oriented to provide “three major locational advantages”. For instance‚ the dolmen’s position perfectly aligns with the nearby mountain known as "Lover’s Rock" and the sunrise‚ “which produces a complex pattern of light and shadow inside the chamber.”On top of this‚ the site’s location slightly below the quarry that provided the raw materials enabled the ancient builders to transport the massive rocks in a constant downhill trajectory. Finally‚ the substrate on the hilltop is considerably more stable than the surrounding soft clay soils‚ thus providing a firmer and more secure base for the dolmen.Despite these advantages‚ the porous nature of the stones used to construct the tomb would ordinarily have left them vulnerable to water damage. To overcome this problem‚ Menga’s designers insulated the largest stones with large mounds - or tumuli - made of “alternating layers of carefully interlocking flat sandstones and pressed ground.”Taking into account all of these innovations‚ the researchers gush that “the construction of Menga embodies a unique accomplishment representing the state-of-the-art in megalithic engineering in prehistoric Iberia and possibly in Europe.”The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

One of the biggest mysteries in cosmology is the rate at which the universe is expanding. This can be predicted using the standard model of cosmology‚ also known as Lambda-cold dark matter (ΛCDM). This model is based on detailed observations of the light left over from the Big Bang – the so-called cosmic microwave background (CMB). The universe’s expansion makes galaxies move away from each other. The further away they are from us‚ the more quickly they move. The relationship between a galaxy’s speed and distance is governed by “Hubble’s constant”‚ which is about 43 miles (70 km) per second per Megaparsec (a unit of length in astronomy). This means that a galaxy gains about 50‚000 miles per hour for every million light years it is away from us. But unfortunately for the standard model‚ this value has recently been disputed‚ leading to what scientists call the “Hubble tension”. When we measure the expansion rate using nearby galaxies and supernovas (exploding stars)‚ it is 10% larger than when we predict it based on the CMB. In our new paper‚ we present one possible explanation: that we live in a giant void in space (an area with below average density). We show that this could inflate local measurements through outflows of matter from the void. Outflows would arise when denser regions surrounding a void pull it apart – they’d exert a bigger gravitational pull than the lower density matter inside the void. In this scenario‚ we would need to be near the centre of a void about a billion light years in radius and with density about 20% below the average for the universe as a whole – so not completely empty. Such a large and deep void is unexpected in the standard model – and therefore controversial. The CMB gives a snapshot of structure in the infant universe‚ suggesting that matter today should be rather uniformly spread out. However‚ directly counting the number of galaxies in different regions does indeed suggest we are in a local void. Tweaking the laws of gravity We wanted to test this idea further by matching many different cosmological observations by assuming that we live in a large void that grew from a small density fluctuation at early times. To do this‚ our model didn’t incorporate ΛCDM but an alternative theory called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). MOND was originally proposed to explain anomalies in the rotation speeds of galaxies‚ which is what led to the suggestion of an invisible substance called “dark matter”. MOND instead suggests that the anomalies can be explained by Newton’s law of gravity breaking down when the gravitational pull is very weak – as is the case in the outer regions of galaxies. The overall cosmic expansion history in MOND would be similar to the standard model‚ but structure (such as galaxy clusters) would grow faster in MOND. Our model captures what the local universe might look like in a MOND universe. And we found it would allow local measurements of the expansion rate today to fluctuate depending on our location. Recent galaxy observations have allowed a crucial new test of our model based on the velocity it predicts at different locations. This can be done by measuring something called the bulk flow‚ which is the average velocity of matter in a given sphere‚ dense or not. This varies with the radius of the sphere‚ with recent observations showing it continues out to a billion light years. Interestingly‚ the bulk flow of galaxies on this scale has quadruple the speed expected in the standard model. It also seems to increase with the size of the region considered – opposite to what the standard model predicts. The likelihood of this being consistent with the standard model is below one in a million. This prompted us to see what our study predicted for the bulk flow. We found it yields a quite good match to the observations. That requires that we are fairly close to the void centre‚ and the void being most empty at its centre. Case closed? Our results come at a time when popular solutions to the Hubble tension are in trouble. Some believe we just need more precise measurements. Others think it can be solved by assuming the high expansion rate we measure locally is actually the correct one. But that requires a slight tweak to the expansion history in the early universe so the CMB still looks right. Unfortunately‚ an influential review highlights seven problems with this approach. If the universe expanded 10% faster over the vast majority of cosmic history‚ it would also be about 10% younger – contradicting the ages of the oldest stars. The existence of a deep and extended local void in the galaxy number counts and the fast observed bulk flows strongly suggest that structure grows faster than expected in ΛCDM on scales of tens to hundreds of millions of light years. Interestingly‚ we know that the massive galaxy cluster El Gordo formed too early in cosmic history and has too high a mass and collision speed to be compatible with the standard model. This is yet more evidence that structure forms too slowly in this model. Since gravity is the dominant force on such large scales‚ we most likely need to extend Einstein’s theory of gravity‚ General Relativity – but only on scales larger than a million light years. However‚ we have no good way to measure how gravity behaves on much larger scales – there are no gravitationally bound objects that huge. We can assume General Relativity remains valid and compare with observations‚ but it is precisely this approach which leads to the very severe tensions currently faced by our best model of cosmology. Einstein is thought to have said that we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that led to the problems in the first place. Even if the required changes are not drastic‚ we could well be witnessing the first reliable evidence for more than a century that we need to change our theory of gravity. Indranil Banik‚ Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Astrophysics‚ University of St Andrews This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The post Puzzle of the universe’s expansion: do we live in a giant void? appeared first on Anomalien.com.

On one fateful day in August‚ a kind young woman discovered a cat in need lying on the grass. The cat looked weak and bothered by bothersome flies‚ making the woman worry about its well-being. Despite its frailty‚ the cat showed small signs of life that sparked hope in the woman’s heart. Determined to help‚... The post Woman saves famished cat covered by swarm of flies and gives it a second chance at life appeared first on Animal Channel.

A sweet video showcases the extraordinary bond between Buddy‚ a golden retriever‚ and his human siblings‚ Nathan and Amelia. From the moment Buddy entered their lives‚ his instinct to nurture and protect was unmistakable. This video‚ uploaded by the channel Life with Malamutes‚ captures the essence of unconditional love and the unique relationships that can... The post Golden retriever melts hearts adorably ‘adopting’ little baby as his own appeared first on Animal Channel.

This article of part 2 of a 2-part series based on the book: The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell‚ scientist‚ writer‚ and UK Space Agency research fellow at the University of Leichester. The post How to Rebuild the World from Scratch – Part 2 appeared first on Survivopedia.