The Peregrine Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), led by Principal Investigator Dr. Barbara Cohen at NASA Goddard, was built and tested in collaboration with the European Space Agency, The Open University and RAL Space in the United Kingdom, and delivered to NASA Goddard in late June. The instrument will explore how water molecules, possibly created on the surface by the solar wind, are released and move around the Moon as the lunar surface heats up during the sunny part of the lunar day....

Don’t let the titanium metal walls or the sapphire windows fool you. It’s what’s on the inside of this small, curious device that could someday kick off a new era of navigation. For over a year, the avocado-sized vacuum chamber has contained a cloud of atoms at the right conditions for precise navigational measurements. It is the first device that is small, energy-efficient and reliable enough to potentially move quantum sensors — sensors that use quantum mechanics to outperform conventional technologies — from the lab into commercial use, said Sandia scientist Peter Schwindt....

Previewing our Artemis I mission to the Moon … A new image from our James Webb Space Telescope … And an anniversary for one of our explorers on Mars … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! NASA Previews Artemis I Moon Mission We previewed our uncrewed Artemis I mission to the Moon during a pair of briefings. On August 3, agency officials at our NASA Headquarters and at other NASA centers provided a “big picture overview” of the mission....

The Webb Space Telescope’s new look at the cosmos … Technology used to fine-tune Webb improves the vision of millions on Earth …. And a new climate study heads to the space station … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA! The Webb Space Telescope’s New Look at the Cosmos “It’s a new window into the history of our universe.”—POTUS On July 11, President Joe Biden released the first full-color image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope during a public event at the White House in Washington....

The ability of cognitive control allows humans to override the brain’s impulses, like focusing on one person in the crowd and ignoring distractions. It also plays a role in making moral decisions. But does cognitive control override a moral impulse to be honest, or to be dishonest? It depends on a person’s moral default, according to new research published in JNeurosci. Speer et al. used EEG to find the activity pattern of cognitive control and compare it to the brain activity of participants during a cheating task....

The Next Full Moon is the Strawberry Moon, Mead Moon, Honey Moon, Vat Purnima, Poson Poya, and the LRO Moon. The next full Moon will be on Friday afternoon, June 5, appearing opposite the Sun (in Earth-based longitude) at 3:12 PM EDT. The Moon will appear full for about 3 days around this time, from early Thursday morning into early Sunday morning. The Moon will be close enough to opposite the Sun that it will pass through part of the partial shadow of the Earth, called a partial penumbral eclipse of the Moon....

To find a power source for buoys, look no further than the ocean itself. During the AIP Publishing Horizons — Energy Storage and Conversion virtual conference, which will be held August 4-6, 2021, Cátia Rodrigues, from the University of Porto, will discuss the prospects of using power generators in the ocean to address the energy concerns of marine exploration. The presentation, “Performance of triboelectric nanogenerators based on rolling spheres motion under realistic water waves conditions,” will be available during the three-day conference....

A daunting quantum problem that until now required 100,000 equations has been compressed into a bite-size task of as few as four equations by physicists using artificial intelligence. All of this was accomplished without sacrificing accuracy. The work could revolutionize how scientists investigate systems containing many interacting electrons. Furthermore, if scalable to other problems, the approach could potentially aid in the design of materials with extremely valuable properties such as superconductivity or utility for clean energy generation....

In an unexpected discovery, Georgetown University Medical Center researchers have identified what appears to be a significant vascular defect in patients with moderately severe Parkinson’s disease. The finding could help explain an earlier outcome of the same study, in which the drug nilotinib was able to halt motor and non-motor (cognition and quality of life) decline in the long term. The researchers say their finding, detailed in a study published today (November 12, 2021) in Neurology Genetics, suggests that blood vessel walls called the blood brain barrier, which normally act as a crucial filter to protect the brain against toxins as well as allow passage of nutrients to nourish it, doesn’t work correctly in some Parkinson’s patients: it prohibits toxins from leaving the brain and inhibits nutrients such as glucose from entering....

Findings from a new University of Kentucky College of Medicine and College of Health Sciences study add to growing evidence that resistance exercise has unique benefits for fat loss. The Department of Physiology and Center for Muscle Biology study published in the FASEB Journal found that resistance-like exercise regulates fat cell metabolism at a molecular level. The study results in mice and humans show that in response to mechanical loading, muscle cells release particles called extracellular vesicles that give fat cells instructions to enter fat-burning mode....

The intense gravity of a black hole curves spacetime, acting as a magnifying glass and causing the black hole shadow to appear larger. By measuring this visual distortion, the research team found that the size of the black hole shadow corroborates the predictions of general relativity. A test of gravity at the edge of a supermassive black hole represents a first for physics and offers further proof that Einstein’s theory remains intact even under the most extreme conditions....

Exploitation of wildlife by humans through hunting, trade, habitat degradation, and urbanization facilitates close contact between wildlife and humans, which increases the risk of virus spillover, found a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Many of these same activities also drive wildlife population declines and the risk of extinction. The study provides new evidence for assessing spillover risk in animal species and highlights how the processes that create wildlife population declines also enable the transmission of animal viruses to humans....

A version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, has been successfully modified to glow brightly in cells and animal tissues, providing a real-time way to track the spread and intensity of viral infection as it happens in animal models, researchers at Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) report in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “Now we can track where the virus goes in animal models for COVID-19,” said virologist Luis Martinez-Sobrido, Ph....

When viruses, parasites, and other pathogens spread, humans and other animals tend to hunker down with immediate family and peer groups to avoid outsiders as much as possible. But could these instincts, developed to protect us from illnesses, generalize into avoidance of healthy individuals who simply look, speak, or live differently? Jessica Stephenson, an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, coauthored a paper exploring the answer, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B....

Researchers have found that Tob, a well-known gene, plays a significant role in reducing depression, fear, and anxiety.This conclusion was reached after several different experiments involving mice in both cell biology and neuroscience.They also discovered that the Tob gene within the hippocampus was important for reducing fear and depression, but not anxiety. That seemed to be controlled by another part of the brain.Furthermore, the experimental mice without the Tob gene didn’t seem to learn that a place wasn’t so bad—they continued to show increased levels of fear observed as freezing, even after several days....

“Area 32” balances activity from cognitive and emotional brain areas in primates. Navigating through life requires balancing emotion and reason, a feat accomplished by the brain region “area 32” of the anterior cingulate cortex. The area maintains emotional equilibrium by relaying information between cognitive and emotional brain regions, according to new research in monkeys published in JNeurosci. Emotional balance goes haywire in mood disorders like depression, leading to unchecked negative emotions and an inability to break out of rumination....

Sahelanthropus tchadensis is considered the earliest representative species of humans, dating back 7 million years. Its description goes back to 2001 when the Franco-Chadian Paleoanthropological Mission (MPFT) uncovered the bones of three people at Toros-Menalla in the Djurab Desert (Chad), including a particularly well-preserved cranium. This cranium, particularly the orientation and anterior location of the occipital foramen where the spinal column is inserted, reveals a form of locomotion on two legs, implying that it was capable of bipedalism....

Investigating extremely detailed images of Mars produced by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera – the largest-ever carried on a deep space mission – researchers from Western have discovered further evidence linking subsurface volatiles, such as water or ice, to previously recognized (but thought to be rare) pits, which commonly arise on the floors of Martian impact craters. Livio Tornabene, an adjunct research professor in Western’s Department of Earth Sciences and an investigator at the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), said deciphering the origin of these pits assists planetary geologists like he and Gordon Osinski, CPSX acting director, in understanding how impact craters affect the hydrological and climatic history of Mars....

A mathematical equation can assess how you feel about experiences using your mood and brain activity. People can struggle to accurately assess how they feel about something, especially something they feel social pressure to enjoy, like waking up early for a yoga class. How they really feel can be gleaned from their mood and their brain activity in reward regions, according to new research published in JNeurosci. Chew, Blain et al....

A protostar, a baby star still in the process of forming, is fed by a surrounding disk of gas falling toward the center. The details of the process, such as why stars form with a wide range of masses, are still unclear. Low-mass stars are being formed in the vicinity of the Solar System, allowing astronomers to see the process up close. On the other hand, massive protostars are rare, and even the nearest ones are located quite far away from us....