An international team of over 200 scientists has captured the first direct images of a black hole. They accomplished this remarkable feat by coordinating the power of eight major radio observatories on four continents, to work together as a virtual, Earth-sized telescope.

In a series of papers published today in a special issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team has revealed four images of the supermassive black hole at the heart of Messier 87, or M87, a galaxy within the Virgo galaxy cluster, 55 million light years from Earth.

All four images show a central dark region surrounded by a ring of light that appears lopsided — brighter on one side than the other.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole.

Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.

Approximately a million people in the U.S. are living with HIV and up to 15 percent may not even know they are infected. In Februrary, the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services announced a new initiative, Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America, to reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in the next ten years, averting more than 250,000 HIV infections in that span.

With a tricky disease like multiple sclerosis, where symptoms and MRI testing results can look like other conditions, such as stroke, migraines and vitamin B12 deficiency, it's common to be misdiagnosed with other things first. A new analysis of patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis before being referred to two major Los Angeles medical centers flipped the script; it found that 18 percent didn't have the autoimmune disease at all.  

The results showed that nearly 18 percent of patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis before being referred to two major Los Angeles medical centers for treatment actually had been misdiagnosed with the autoimmune disease. The patients spent an average of four years being treated for MS before receiving a correct diagnosis.

Canine leishmaniosis is a potentially fatal infection caused by the parasite Leishmania infantum, carried by the female sand fly and transmitted in its bite. It is zoonotic, so can be passed on to people but dogs have been known to pick up the infection after being bitten or wounded by another infected dog.

That's rare, and in the UK cases to-date have only been associated with blood transfusion, breeding programs, or overseas travel but a 3 year old neutered male shih tzu cross, which had been with its owner since a puppy and had none of the known risk factors for infection, was recently diagnosed with leishmaniosis in Hertfordshire.

Blood pressure and stroke risk increase steadily with sedentary lifestyle, obesity and of course the biggest risk is age. Many want to optimize their time living to prevent debilitating injuries and epidemiologists are happy to find a statistical correlation for everything; that is why some embrace supplements, some embrace organic food, and some embrace alcohol use.