Doods—chill.

You just ate a bunch of poisonous stuff. Some of it was especially nasty, and I don't mean the cooking, rather, the chemicals in the food. Chances are that you are fine. 

So am I, with the exception of sitting (mostly still) for two hours in a car with my mother (wonderful woman and I love her to death, but good lord, can she talk!) on the Long Island Expressway (LIE)—a misnomer if ever there were one—to attend Thanksgiving dinner. 

The day was not lacking in stress. This is me channeling Lloyd Bridges: 

An international team of astrophysicists led by a Johns Hopkins University scientist has for the first time witnessed a star being swallowed by a black hole and ejecting a flare of matter moving at nearly the speed of light.

The finding reported Thursday in the journal Science tracks the star -- about the size of our sun -- as it shifts from its customary path, slips into the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole and is sucked in, said Sjoert van Velzen, a Hubble fellow at Johns Hopkins.

"These events are extremely rare," van Velzen said. "It's the first time we see everything from the stellar destruction followed by the launch of a conical outflow, also called a jet, and we watched it unfold over several months."

New research finds that progesterone supplements in the first trimester of pregnancy do not improve outcomes in women with a history of unexplained recurrent miscarriages.

The study of 826 women with previously unexplained recurrent miscarriage showed that those who received progesterone treatment in early pregnancy were no less likely to miscarry than those who received a placebo. This was true whatever their age, ethnicity, medical history and pregnancy history.

Two new studies report dramatic changes in phytoplankton abundance and nature, changes that have important implications for storing excess carbon. Collectively, these studies suggest that certain types of carbon-intensive algae are flourishing and will play increasingly prominent roles as carbon pumps, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Using the isotopic signature of phytoplankton amino acids embedded in skeletons of deep water soft corals, Kelton McMahon and colleagues determined how plankton dominance changed in the North Pacific over the past millennium. Their analysis reveals that there was a transition from dominance by non-nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria to that by eukaryotic microalgae.

A James Cook University scientist says a new study shows more than half of all tree species in the world's most diverse forest -- the Amazon -- may be globally threatened.

Long-time Amazon researcher, Professor William Laurance from JCU, is a co-author of the study, published this week in the journal Science Advances.

It compared data from forest surveys across the Amazon with maps of current and projected deforestation to estimate how many tree species have been lost, and where.

Professor Laurance said the study suggests existing Amazonian parks and reserves, if properly managed, could protect many of the threatened species. But it was not a forgone conclusion.

A new study reveals that many European hospitals fail to routinely test people who may be at risk of an HIV-infection. If tests were more widely offered in the healthcare system, fewer HIV-patients would go unnoticed, especially in Northern Europe.

When a patient is admitted to hospital with a disease that could indicate an HIV-infection, they are not always offered an HIV-test. However, if offered a test, almost all patients accept, as revealed in the currently largest study on the subject, which has just now been published in the renowned scientific journal, PlosOne.

Research efforts on the intestine have increased in recent years. Owing to its enormous surface area - comparable to that of a one-bedroom apartment - and the huge number of neurons it contains - comparable to that in the brain - the intestine is sometimes referred to as the abdominal brain. In addition to absorbing nutrients from the foods we eat, it influences our immune status and metabolism.

With the help of sensors, specialized cells in the intestinal wall determine which hormones, if any, should be released into the bloodstream. Overall, it acts as a highly sophisticated control center.

How an organoid grows from cells

Scientists have mapped out the genes that keep our cells alive, creating a long-awaited foothold for understanding how our genome works and which genes are crucial in disease like cancer.

A team of Toronto researchers, led by Professor Jason Moffat from the University of Toronto's Donnelly Centre, with a contribution from Stephane Angers from the Faculty of Pharmacy, have switched off, one by one, almost 18,000 genes -- 90 per cent of the entire human genome -- to find the genes that are essential for cell survival.

The data, published in Cell on November 25, revealed a "core" set of more than 1,500 essential genes. This lays the foundation for reaching the long-standing goal in biomedical research of pinpointing a role for every single gene in the genome.

Both in materials science and in biomedical research it is important to be able to view minute nanostructures, for example in carbon-fiber materials and bones. A team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the University of Lund, Charite hospital in Berlin and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have now developed a new computed tomography method based on the scattering, rather than on the absorption, of X-rays. The technique makes it possible for the first time to visualize nanostructures in objects measuring just a few millimeters, allowing the researchers to view the precise three-dimensional structure of collagen fibers in a piece of human tooth.