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A NASA team has found that organic salts are likely present on Mars. Like shards of ancient pottery, these salts are the chemical remnants of organic compounds, such as those previously detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Organic compounds and salts on Mars could have formed by geologic processes or be remnants of ancient microbial life. Besides adding more evidence to the idea that there once was organic matter on Mars, directly detecting organic salts would also support modern-day Martian habitability, given that on Earth, some organisms can use organic salts, such as oxalates and acetates, for energy....

The area shown in the time-lapse sequence above includes the Sakha Republic, one of the most active fire regions in Siberia this summer. The images show smoke plumes billowing from July 30 to August 6, 2020, as observed by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Strong winds occasionally carried the plumes as far as Alaska in late July....

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA’s Deep Space Network on Wednesday, October 31, and Thursday, November 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennas trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge....

The X-57 project is NASA’s first all-experimental electric aircraft, and an early part of the agency’s work to develop sustainable aviation solutions. Instead of petroleum-based aviation fuel, it will use commercial, rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries for the energy its motors need for flight. The goal is to make flying cleaner, quieter, and more sustainable. To reach this point, the X-57 project team repeatedly tested the batteries to ensure they can safely power the aircraft for an entire flight....

The NASA mission will identify planets with large orbits, similar to our solar system’s far-flung giants, Uranus and Neptune. NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will search for planets outside our solar system toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy, where most stars are. Studying the properties of exoplanet worlds will help us understand what planetary systems throughout the galaxy are like and how planets form and evolve....

New research finds that the western United States reduced its production of ozone-forming pollutants by a whopping 21 percent between 2005 and 2010, but ozone in the atmosphere above the region did not drop as expected in response. The reason: a combination of naturally occurring atmospheric processes and pollutants crossing the Pacific Ocean from China. Scientists from the Netherlands and from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, looked at ozone in the mid-troposphere, about 10,000 to 30,000 feet (3 to 9 kilometers) above ground level....

Far from the simplicity of life sometimes portrayed in anthropology books, these early Indigenous people were highly skilled engineers capable of building massive earthen structures in a matter of months — possibly even weeks — that withstood the test of time, the findings show. “We as a research community — and population as a whole — have undervalued native people and their ability to do this work and to do it quickly in the ways they did,” said Tristram R....

Four different papers describing their findings were recently published in the journal Nature. Humans are one of the 99.8% of species of extant vertebrates that are gnathostomes, or jawed vertebrates. The basic body plan and several key organs of humans can be traced back to the origin of gnathostomes. One of the most significant developments in the evolution of vertebrates is the emergence of jaws. The Chongqing fish fossil depository is the world’s only early Silurian Lagerstätte which preserves complete, head-to-tail jawed fishes, providing a peerless chance to peek into the proliferating “dawn of fishes....

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a new form of ant society spread across species. They found that after the new form of society evolved in one species, a “social supergene” carrying the instruction-set for the new social form spread into other species. This spread occurred through hybridization, i.e., breeding between ants of different species. This unlikely event provides an alternate way of life, making the ants more successful than if they only had the original social form....

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Massachusetts General (MGH) and Boston Children’s hospitals (BCH) for the first time have used a relatively new gene-editing technique to create what could prove to be an effective technique for blocking HIV from invading and destroying patients’ immune systems. This is the first published report of a group using CRISPR Cas technology ― it stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-activated cells ― to efficiently and precisely edit clinically relevant genes out of cells collected directly from people, in this case human blood-forming stem cells and T-cells....

Researchers the world over have long believed that 70 percent of the universe is composed of dark energy, a substance that makes it possible for the universe to expand at an ever-increasing rate. But in a new study, University of Copenhagen researchers tested a model which suggests that the universe’s expansion is due to a dark substance with a kind of magnetic force. Should the model stand, it means that dark energy simply doesn’t exist, according to the UCPH professor behind the study....

Yale University researchers and colleagues in Hong Kong and China have developed an approach for rapidly tracking population flows that could help policymakers worldwide more effectively assess risk of disease spread and allocate limited resources as they combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The approach, described in a study published early online on April 29 in the journal Nature, differs from existing epidemiological models by exploiting real-time data about population flows, such as phone use data and other “big data” sources that can accurately quantify the movement of people....

“When ideals and policies matter less than dominating foes, government becomes dysfunctional,” researchers say. The study, titled “Political sectarianism in America,” was published on October 3, 2020, by the journal Science. The authors provide a broad survey of current scientific literature to interpret the current state of politics. The paper introduces the construct of “political sectarianism” to describe the phenomenon. Political sectarianism has the hallmarks of religious fervor, such as sin, public shaming and apostasy....

Previous research focused on one group of antibodies that target the most obvious part of the coronavirus’s spike protein, called the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Because the RBD is the part of the spike that attaches directly to human cells and enables the virus to infect them, it was rightly assumed to be a primary target of the immune system. But, testing blood plasma samples from four people who recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infections, the researchers found that most of the antibodies circulating in the blood — on average, about 84% — target areas of the viral spike protein outside the RBD — and, apparently, for good reason....

This breakthrough is important because plastic waste is a massive problem both globally and in the United States. In fact, only about 5% of used plastic is recycled in the U.S., according to NREL. Packaging materials, containers, and other discarded items are filling up landfills and littering the environment at an incredibly rapid pace. According to NREL, scientists estimate that by 2050 the ocean will have more plastic by weight than fish....

“We live in the molecular world where most things around us are made of molecules: air, foods, drinks, clothes, cells, and more. Studying molecules with our new technique could be used in medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, or other fields,” said Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi from the University of Tokyo Institute for Photon Science and Technology. The new technique combines two current technologies into a unique system called complementary vibrational spectroscopy. All molecules have very small, distinctive vibrations caused by the movement of the atoms’ nuclei....

A great deal of ongoing research is currently devoted to discovering and exploiting quantum effects in the motion of macroscopic objects made of solids and gases. This new experiment opens a potentially rich area of further study into the way quantum principles work on liquid bodies. The findings come from the Yale lab of physics and applied physics professor Jack Harris, along with colleagues at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory in France....

The discovery enables researchers to set up an early warning system for imminent jumps of artificial atoms containing quantum information. A study announcing the discovery appears in the June 3 online edition of the journal Nature. Schrödinger’s cat is a well-known paradox used to illustrate the concept of superposition — the ability for two opposite states to exist simultaneously — and unpredictability in quantum physics. The idea is that a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be triggered if an atom of the radioactive substance decays....

For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a planet’s surface, also exists on Mars. “Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth,” said An Yin, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences and the sole author of the new research....

Bald eagle populations have slowly recovered from near devastation after the government banned DDT in 1972, but another ongoing issue has weakened that rebound – lead poisoning from gunshot ammunition. A new study, published in the Journal of Wildlife Management, finds that despite increasing numbers of bald eagles, poisoning from eating dead carcasses or parts contaminated by lead shot has reduced population growth by 4% to 6% annually in the Northeast....