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New fear unlocked: runaway black holes

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Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our Solar System from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometres per second, just over double Earth’s speed around the Sun. Imagine if it had been something much bigger and faster: a black hole travelling at more like 3,000km per second. We wouldn’t see it coming until its intense gravitational forces started knocking around the orbits of the outer planets. This may sound a bit ridiculous – but in the past year several lines of evidence have come together to show such a visitor is not impossible. Astronomers have seen clear signs of runaway supermassive black holes tearing through other galaxies, and have uncovered evidence that smaller, undetectable runaways are probably out there too. Runaway black holes: the theory The story begins in the 1960s, when New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution of Einstein’s general relativity equations that described spinning black holes. This led ...
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Anomeric effect cannot be explained by hyperconjugation alone

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  Computational analysis suggests that the anomeric effect arises from a combination of factors and is not limited to just hyperconjugation. Researchers say that this ‘curiosity-driven’ work reminds chemists that attributing the effect to one dominant cause oversimplifies a ‘fundamentally complex phenomenon’. The anomeric effect helps chemists rationalise why substituents next to a heteroatom in a ring preferentially adopt an axial configuration, rather than the less sterically hindered equatorial orientation. Hyperconjugation of a heteroatom’s lone pair of electrons into the anti-bonding orbital of an adjacent substituent is a common explanation for this effect. However, previous studies suggest that other factors such as stereoelectronics and solvent interactions also play a part.1 Researchers at Florida State University in the US have now tried to quantify the influence of such factors.2 To do this, the team computationally analysed 49 monosubstituted tetrahydropyrans – rings wi...
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Scientists warn of a new biological risk and call for an international summit

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Thirty-eight researchers from around the world are urging caution over mirror life – a hypothetical form of biology built from mirror-image molecules that could behave unpredictably in natural systems. In response, a major biomedical research institute in Paris is convening an international summit to examine the risks and consider early boundaries before the science moves closer to reality. Why the summit matters In 1847, while working at the Pasteur Institute, Louis Pasteur described chirality – molecules existing in two mirror forms. That same institute has spent generations tracking microbes and immunity, giving credibility when it flags new dangers. In 2025, a public symposium on mirror life streamed from Paris. Organized with the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, it opened the discussion to scientists, policymakers, and the public. A risk worth naming In 2024, authors warned that mirror bacteria – bacteria made from reversed biomolecules – should not be created, even if such work re...
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Cells use Morse code-like rhythms to coordinate growth

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  Cells experience many different types of stress, such as starvation or stress caused by too much salt or too high a temperature. Insulin signals respond to such stress signals by sending the protein DAF-16 into the cell nucleus where it activates the stress-specific genes to protect the worm from stress. AMOLF researchers have discovered a mysterious interplay of insulin signals in the worm C. elegans. The insulin-driven protein DAF-16 does not only move in and out of the cell nucleus in a complex rhythm, it does so at exactly the same moment in all cells of the body. Because of the many similarities between C. elegans and humans, the research may contribute to a better understanding of diseases such as diabetes, cancer and of aging. Morse code But how does DAF-16 know for which type of stress it should activate the genes? By coincidence, the researchers from Jeroen van Zon's Quantitative Developmental Biology group found the answer to this question. Guest researcher Maria Olmedo...
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Brain Connectivity & Post-Surgery Delirium!

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Brain connectivity & post-surgery delirium highlights how disruptions in neural networks after surgery can impair attention, memory, and awareness. understanding functional brain connections helps improve early detection, prevention strategies, and recovery outcomes for patients experiencing postoperative cognitive disturbances. Global Academic Awards Nomination Link: https://globalacademicawards.com/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee Visit Our Website: globalacademicawards.com Contact us: contact@globalacademicawards.com Get Connected Here: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harita-r-1b9861224/ Blogger: https://academicawards2022.blogspot.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harita_2021/ Pinterest: https://in.pinterest.com/academicawards/ Tumbler: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/academicawardsworld Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093671170511 #academicawards #researchawards #brainconnectivity #postsurgerydelirium #cognitiveneuroscie...
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Confidential Computing Needs to Go Mainstream

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  Confidential computing is a term you may have heard in the past, but it is also one that a lot of the industry is sleeping on. Many cloud providers are looking towards a world in the not-too-distant future where confidential computing is ubiquitous. While it is challenging to secure a computing environment to ensure the data brought into that environment is safe from even a cloud provider, it is even more challenging to expand that past the CPU motherboard and to AI and other accelerators. As such, it was time to get into confidential computing. As a quick note: Confidential computing is an industry-wide effort, and needs to be. At the same time, we cannot go into every unique implementation of it, so instead, we are going to use AMD SEV-SNP for our examples since AMD is already powering many of the confidential computing cloud offerings and they are rapidly growing server CPU market share. We need to say AMD is sponsoring this. Confidential Computing: Protecting Data in Use When...
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Scientists may have found the planet that made the Moon

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About 4.5 billion years ago, a dramatic event transformed the young Earth when a large protoplanet known as Theia struck our planet. Scientists still cannot fully reconstruct the sequence of the impact or what followed, but the consequences are clear. The collision altered Earth's size, structure, and orbit, and it ultimately led to the creation of the Moon, which has remained our constant companion in space ever since. This raises several important questions. What kind of object collided with Earth so violently? How massive was Theia, what was it composed of, and from what region of the Solar System did it originate? These questions remain challenging because Theia did not survive the encounter. Even so, chemical clues linked to its existence persist within the modern Earth and Moon. A new study published on November 20, 2025, in Science and conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and the University of Chicago uses these clues to rec...
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