Science

Recycled pacemakers can function as well as new devices, according to a new study. These used and reconditioned devices have the potential to increase access to pacemaker therapy in low- and middle-income countries, where many patients cannot afford the treatment.

New research may make it possible to keep electronic devices powered with another piece of equipment you're likely to bring with you while exploring the great outdoors: camping stoves. The work focuses on using the excess heat produced by stoves to create a thermoacoustic engine, which converts thermal energy into acoustic energy. This acoustic energy can then be transformed into mechanical or electrical energy. When optimized, these engines can generate power ranging from tens to thousands of watts, depending on their size.

The pipe organ stands as a bastion in concert halls and church sanctuaries, and even when not in use, it affects the acoustical environment around it. Researchers performed a sine-sweep through loudspeakers facing the organ pipes and measured the response with a microphone at different positions. They verified experimentally that sympathetic resonance does occur in organ pipes during musical performances and speeches, and that the overall amplitude increases when the signal matches the resonance of one or more pipes.

Trust between humans and robots is improved when the movement between both is harmonized, researchers have discovered.

Trust between humans and robots is improved when the movement between both is harmonized, researchers have discovered.

A new method enables researchers to analyse magnetic nanostructures with a high resolution. The new method achieves a resolution of around 70 nanometers, whereas normal light microscopes have a resolution of just 500 nanometers. This result is important for the development of new, energy-efficient storage technologies based on spin electronics.

A new method enables researchers to analyse magnetic nanostructures with a high resolution. The new method achieves a resolution of around 70 nanometers, whereas normal light microscopes have a resolution of just 500 nanometers. This result is important for the development of new, energy-efficient storage technologies based on spin electronics.

Uranus is an oddball among the Solar System’s planets. While most planets’ axis of rotation is perpendicular to their orbital plane, Uranus has an extreme tilt angle of 98 degrees. It’s flopped over on its side, likely from an ancient collision. It also has a retrograde orbit, opposite of the other planets.

The ice giant also has an unusual relationship with the Sun that sets it apart from other planets.

Uranus’ uniqueness extends to its upper atmosphere, called the thermosphere-corona. That region’s temperature is above 500 Celsius, and the heat sources responsible have puzzled astronomers. The corona extends as far as 50,000 km above the surface, which also sets it apart from other planets. Even weirder, its temperature is dropping.

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it measured the thermosphere’s temperature. In the intervening decades, telescopes have continuously measured Uranus’s temperature. All these measurements show that the planet’s upper atmosphere is cooling and that the temperature has halved. None of the other planets experienced the same changes.

Uranus, as seen by NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1986. To Voyager 2, the ice giant was a featureless sphere that gave away none of its secrets. Credit: NASA/JPL

Scientists know that Uranus’ thermosphere is a tenuous layer. It has an embedded ionosphere, and it helps astronomers measure the thermosphere’s temperature. It’s a layer of ions that separates the lower atmosphere from the planet’s magnetosphere. H3+ ions in the ionosphere quickly reach thermal equilibrium with the surrounding neutrals. The ions emit photons in the near-infrared (NIR) that allow astronomers to monitor the thermosphere’s temperature with ground-based telescopes since some NIR wavelengths get through Earth’s atmosphere. That’s how they know that the upper atmosphere is cooling, while observations of the lower atmosphere show no cooling.

The cooling is puzzling, and seasonal effects were ruled out as the cause of the temperature drop. So was the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, which sees the energy level from the Sun change.

New research published in Geophysical Review Letters has an explanation for the temperature shift. It’s titled “Solar wind power likely governs Uranus’ thermosphere temperature.” The lead author is Dr. Adam Masters from the Department of Physics at Imperial College.

According to Masters and his colleagues, the solar wind is responsible for Uranus’ cooling. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles that comes from the Sun’s outermost layer, the corona. It’s a plasma composed of mostly electrons and protons and also contains atomic nuclei and heavy ions.

“This apparently very strong control of Uranus’ upper atmosphere by the solar wind is unlike what we have seen at any other planet in our Solar System,” Adams said.

While the Solar wind is unceasing, its properties gradually change over timescales that match the changes in Uranus’ upper atmosphere. Since about 1990, the solar wind’s average outward pressure has been dropping slowly but significantly. The drop doesn’t correlate with the Sun’s well-known 11-year cycle, but it does closely correlate with Uranus’ changing temperature.

This figure from the research shows how, as the solar wind’s pressure decreases, the size of Uranus’ magnetosphere increases and its temperature drops. Image Credit: Masters et al. 2024.

This suggested to the researchers that, unlike Earth, Uranus’ temperature isn’t controlled by photons.

It’s a well-known fact that photons from the Sun heat the Earth. It’s the basis for life. While our planet’s magnetosphere largely protects Earth from the solar wind, photons aren’t stopped.

Uranus is much further away from the Sun than Earth is, almost 3 billion km, while Earth is only about 228 million km from the Sun. The number of photons that reach Uranus is not enough to heat the planet. Instead, the decreasing solar wind is allowing Uranus’ magnetosphere to expand.

Since the magnetosphere shields Uranus from the solar wind, its expansion makes it more difficult for the solar wind to reach the planet. Energy flows through the space around the planet, eventually reaching the thermosphere and controlling its temperature.

“Declining solar wind kinetic power, or near-identically total solar wind power, should mean weakening heating of Uranus’ thermosphere, leading to the observed long-term temperature decline,” the authors explain in their paper.

This means that for close-in planets like Earth, starlight controls the temperature of the thermosphere, while for planets further away, the solar wind takes over.

This discovery could affect a proposed future mission to Uranus. The Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 identified a mission to Uranus as a top priority, though so far, none have been approved. The mission concept is called Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP), and one of its main goals is to study the ice giant’s atmosphere.

This image of a potential Uranus spacecraft comes from the 2023-2032 Decadal Survey Mission Concept: Journey to an Ice Giant System. Image Credit: NASA

The mission would address the mystery of Uranus’ cooling, but scientists struggled to understand it. These findings mean the mission goals can be updated, and the question becomes how the energy from the solar wind gets into Uranus’ unusual magnetosphere.

This study not only answers a puzzling question about Uranus but also extends to exoplanets. If this solar-wind cooling can happen here, it can happen elsewhere.

“Beyond the solar system, this explanation for Uranus’ thermosphere cooling implies that exoplanet companions to host stars without strong local driving (like at Jupiter) and with sufficiently large magnetospheres will undergo a predominantly electrodynamic interaction with their parent star,” the authors write. For these exoplanets, the stellar wind will strongly govern the thermal evolution of the upper atmosphere, not stellar radiation. The stellar wind may also drive certain types of aurorae.

“This strong star-planet interaction at Uranus could have implications for establishing if different exoplanets generate strong magnetic fields in their interiors – an important factor in the search for habitable worlds outside our Solar System,” Adams concluded.

The post Uranus is Getting Colder and Now We Know Why appeared first on Universe Today.

A re-engineered wearable ultrasound patch for continuous and noninvasive blood pressure monitoring has undergone comprehensive clinical validation on over 100 patients, marking a major milestone in wearable technology research. The soft, stretchy patch provides precise, real-time readings of blood pressure deep within the body. It could offer a simpler and more reliable alternative to current clinical methods.

While toxic in high concentrations, copper is essential to life as a trace element. Many tumors require significantly more copper than healthy cells for growth -- a possible new point of attack for cancer treatment. Medical researchers have now introduced a novel method by which copper is effectively removed from tumor cells, killing them.

Antibacterial drugs are important for treating infections. But increasingly, bacterial resistance to current drugs -- so they don't work well, or even at all -- means new ones are urgently needed. Researchers have demonstrated a potential antibacterial treatment from a modified darobactin, a compound originally from a bacterium. The team reports proof-of-concept animal trials on infections caused by bacteria, including E. coli, that are known to develop drug resistance.

New spray developed by scientists could help boost UK farming and increase the UK's food security.

Traditional police training lacks practical tools for handling mental health crises, leaving officers underprepared. New research provides a promising avenue for addressing this gap using VR training by immersing officers in realistic scenarios. Results show moderate to high engagement in the VR environment, which enhances empathy and highlights its potential as a complement to traditional training. Improving immersion, engagement, and VR familiarity can enhance emotional connections, making well-designed simulations more effective for fostering empathy and sympathy.

A study by researchers presents their low cost, scalable methodology for the early identification of individuals at risk of developing dementia. While the condition remains incurable, there are a number of common risk factors that, if targeted and addressed, can potentially reduce the odds of developing dementia or slow the pace of cognitive decline.

Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses. As many as 280 million people worldwide are affected by this disease, which is why researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that helps to identify depression based on both speech and brain neural activity. This multimodal approach, combining two different data sources, allows a more accurate and objective analysis of a person's emotional state, opening the door to a new phase of depression diagnosis.

Inspired by the jets of water that squids use to propel themselves through the ocean, a team developed an ingestible capsule that releases a burst of drugs directly into the lining of the stomach or other organs of the digestive tract.

Researchers ahave found a new approach for breaking down PFAS -- a group of human-made 'forever' chemicals commonly used for their water-resistant properties that can carry health risks from long-term exposure. Researchers showcase an effective LED light-based photocatalytic system that can be used at room temperature to break down those key carbon-fluorine bonds. The system is an improvement over traditional chemical manufacturing processes that typically require high temperatures to achieve similar results.

Asking children 'What does a scientist look like?' now results in more illustrations of women and people of color than decades ago. But do generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools also depict the diversity among scientists? Researchers prompted AI image generators for portraits of chemists. They found that none of the collections accurately represents the gender, racial or disability diversity among real chemists today.

Asking children 'What does a scientist look like?' now results in more illustrations of women and people of color than decades ago. But do generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools also depict the diversity among scientists? Researchers prompted AI image generators for portraits of chemists. They found that none of the collections accurately represents the gender, racial or disability diversity among real chemists today.

Using GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling