Physical activity of any kind can prevent heart disease and death, says a large international study involving more than 130,000 people from 17 countries published this week in The Lancet. The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, led by the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences, shows any activity is good for people to meet the current guideline of 30 minutes of activity a day, or 150 min/ week to raise heart rate.

Although previous research, from high income countries, shows leisure time activity helps prevent heart disease and death, the PURE study also includes people from low and middle-income countries where people don’t generally don’t participant in leisure-time physical activity...

This is an image of diamonds with different properties ready to be measured. Credit: Dima Farfurnik

Simple method can give diamonds the special properties needed for quantum applications such as sensing magnetic fields. When a nitrogen atom is next to the space vacated by a carbon atom, it forms what is called a nitrogen-vacancy center. Now, researchers have shown how they can create more NV centers, which makes sensing magnetic fields easier, using a relatively simple method that can be done in many labs.

Pure diamond consists of carbon atoms in a perfect crystal lattice. But remove a few carbons and swap some others for nitrogen, and you get a diamond with special quantum-sensing properties...

At the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, cosmic rays have been detected from far off galaxies. Credit: Pierre Auger Observatory

Where do cosmic rays come from? Solving a 50-year-old mystery, a collaboration of researchers has discovered it’s much farther than the Milky Way. In an article published today in the journal Science, the Pierre Auger Collaboration has definitively answered the question of whether cosmic particles from outside the Milky Way Galaxy. The article notes that studying the distribution of the cosmic ray arrival directions is the first step in determining where extragalactic particles originate.

The collaborating scientists were able to make their recordings using the largest cosmic-ray observatory ever built, the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina...

Top Photo: A rendering of the Mars 20/20 Rover, courtesy of NASA.
Top right photo: False-color micro-XRF distribution maps for V, Fe, and S of a single leiosphaerid. Maximal area densities are given in µg/cm2 for each element at the top of each map. The scatter is shown in the Sa, which can be used as an indicator of thickness and density of the sample.
Bottom right: Bright field photomicrograph image of the large leiosphaerid acritarch analyzed in this work. Photos courtesy Craig Marshall.

A new article suggests NASA and others hunting for proof of Martian biology in the form of ‘microfossils’ could use the element vanadium in combination with Raman spectroscopy to confirm traces of extraterrestrial life...