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NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey speeds roughly 1,000 times faster than Hubble and a torrent of 1.4 terabytes of data per day, Roman could uncover cosmic surprises astronomers have never seen before.
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Alcohol-related liver disease may trap damaged liver cells in a regenerative limbo, preventing the organ from rebuilding itself even after drinking stops. Researchers linked the problem to inflammation-driven RNA errors and identified a pathway that could potentially be targeted to restore liver repair.
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Two widely used zero-calorie sweeteners, sucralose and stevia, may have effects that linger far longer than the sweet taste itself. In mice, researchers found that both sweeteners altered the gut microbiome, reduced beneficial compounds produced by gut bacteria, and changed the activity of genes involved in metabolism and inflammation. Some of those changes were also detected in later generations that had never consumed the sweeteners themselves.
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Adults aged 40 and older performed about 12% faster on a test of executive function after using a HEPA air purifier at home for one month. The findings suggest that cleaner indoor air could offer a simple way to help protect the brain from the effects of traffic-related pollution.
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Physicists have demonstrated a new way to entangle distant quantum bits without the constant measurements and active control normally required. The team created a “quantum bath,” a shared environment filled with correlated microwave photons that automatically pushes separated qubits into an entangled state and helps keep them there. The experiment confirms a theoretical prediction made more than 20 years ago and could offer a simpler way to connect modules in future quantum computers.
