Research team studies kombucha cultures under simulated extraterrestrial conditions. An international research team including the University of Göttingen has investigated the chances of survival of kombucha cultures under Mars-like conditions. Kombucha is known as a drink, sometimes called tea fungus or mushroom tea, which is produced by fermenting sugared tea using kombucha cultures – a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. Although the simulated Martian environment destroyed the microbial ecology of the kombucha cultures, surprisingly, a cellulose-producing bacterial species survived. The results were published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

The scientists of the “Biology and Mars Experiment” (BIOMEX) project had already sent kombucha cultures to the International Space Statio...

Poor sleep is associated with a significantly increased risk of life-threatening flare-ups in people withchronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, according to a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The risk for these flare-ups – sudden bouts of worsening breathing – was 25% to 95% higher in people who experienced poor sleep than in people who had good quality sleep. The findings suggest that poor sleep may be a better predictor of flare-ups than even a person’s history of smoking.

The observational study, one of the largest to look at the links between sleep quality and COPD flare-ups, was largely funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the NIH. Its findings appear online on June 6 in the journal SLEEP.

COPD, a progres...

Photonics researchers have introduced a novel method to control a light beam with another beam through a unique plasmonic metasurface in a linear medium at ultralow power. This simple linear switching method makes nanophotonic devices such as optical computing and communication systems more sustainable requiring low intensity of light.

All-optical switching is the modulation of signal light due to control light in such a way that it possesses the ON/OFF conversion function. In general, a light beam can be modulated with another intense laser beam in the presence of a nonlinear medium.

The switching method developed by the researchers is fundamentally based on the quantum optical phenomenon known as Enhancementof Index of Refraction (EIR).

“Our work is...

An international team of scientists today released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated. Named 3D-DASH, this high-resolution survey will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission.

A preprint of the paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal is available on arXiv.

“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Teles...