. Global arginine bioavailability ratio is decreased in patients with major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 2018; 229: 145 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2017.12.030

People suffering from major depressive disorder, MDD, have reduced arginine levels, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows. Arginine is an amino acid which the body uses to produce, e.g., nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, in turn, is a nervous system and immune defence mediator, and it also plays a role in vascular regulation. The global arginine bioavailability ratio, GABR, is an indicator of the body’s arginine levels, and the ratio has previously been used to measure the body’s capacity to produce nitric oxide...

This is a sketch of the experiment. Credit: HZB

Thermoelectric materials can use thermal differences to generate electricity. Now there is an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way of producing them with the simplest of components: a normal pencil, photocopy paper, and conductive paint are sufficient to convert a temperature difference into electricity via the thermoelectric effect. Thermoelectric materials need to have low thermal conductivity despite their high electrical conductivity. Thermoelectric devices made of inorganic semiconductor materials such as bismuth telluride are already being used today in certain technological applications. However, such material systems are expensive and their use only pays off in certain situations...

A spacetime diagram of the gravitational collapse of a charged spherical star to form a charged black hole. An observer traveling across the event horizon will eventually encounter the Cauchy horizon, the boundary of the region of spacetime that can be predicted from the initial data. UC Berkeley’s Peter Hintz and his colleagues found that a region of spacetime, denoted by a question mark, cannot be predicted from the initial data in a universe with accelerating expansion, like our own. This violates the principle of strong cosmic censorship. Credit: APS/Alan Stonebraker

Einstein’s equations allow a non-determinist future inside some black holes. Physicists insist on determinism: your past and present determine your future uniquely, per Einstein’s equations of general relativity...

Supernova 2016gkg (indicated by red bars) in the galaxy NGC 613, located about 40 million light years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor. Credit: Image by UC Santa Cruz and Las Campanas Observatory, Chile

First observation of optical light from shock breakout in a supernova explosion. First light from a supernova is hard to capture; no one can predict where and when a star will explode. An amateur astronomer has now captured on film this first light, emitted when the exploding core hits the star’s outer layers: shock breakout. Subsequent observations by astronomers using the Lick and Keck observatories helped identify it as a Type IIb supernova that slimmed down from 20 to 5 solar masses before exploding.

During tests of a new camera, Víctor Buso captured images of a distant galaxy b...