This image shows the impact of saturated fatty acids on the liver, muscles and fatty tissue. Credit: © DDZ

The global proliferation of overweight and obese people and people with type 2 diabetes is often associated with the consumption of saturated fats. Scientists at the German Diabetes Center and the Helmholtz Center in Munich (HMGU) have found that even the one-off consumption of a greater amount of palm oil reduces the body’s sensitivity to insulin and causes increased fat deposits as well as changes in the energy metabolism of the liver. The results of the study provide information on the earliest changes in the metabolism of the liver that in the long term lead to fatty liver disease in overweight persons as well as in those with type 2 diabetes.

DZD researchers working at the Germa...

UChicago researchers achieved levitation of macroscopic objects between warm and cold plates in a vacuum chamber. Credit: Chicago Jean Lachat

UChicago undergraduate physics students helped take the levitation science to a new level. 3rd-year Frankie Fung and 4th-year Mykhaylo Usatyuk led a team of UChicago researchers who demonstrated how to levitate a variety of objects – ceramic and polyethylene spheres, glass bubbles, ice particles, lint strands and thistle seeds – between a warm plate and a cold plate in a vacuum chamber. “They made lots of intriguing observations that blew my mind,” said Prof. Cheng Chin, whose ultracold lab in the Gordon Center for Integrative Science was home to the experiments.

In their work, researchers achieved a number of levitation breakthroughs, in terms of du...

Image sensor and lens size comparison. Credit: Simon Thiele

A new study presents a miniaturized camera inspired by the natural vision of predators such as eagles that captures images with a high central acuity. The camera demonstrates for the first time direct, 3D printing of a complex imaging system onto a chip to form a multi-aperture camera. The design has potential applications in areas such as endoscopy, optical sensors, and surveillance drones, and it builds upon the growing field of micro-optics that has been revolutionized by advances in 3D printing. The system presented here involves so-called “foveated imaging,” named after the fovea area of the eye, which gives the highest acuity in vision.

It is based on the idea that since many tasks do not require equal clarity across a field...

This artist’s concept illustrates a close-up view of a cool brown dwarf. Objects like this, drifting just beyond our solar system, have been imaged by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and could be discovered by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space. A new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. It highlight objects that have gradually moved across the sky.

“There are just over 4 light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this...