Behind locked doors, in a lab built like a bomb shelter, Perry Gerakines makes something ordinary yet truly alien: ice. This isn’t the ice of snowflakes or ice cubes. No, this ice needs such intense cold and low pressure to form that the right conditions rarely, if ever, occur naturally on Earth. And when Gerakines makes the ice, he must keep the layer so microscopically thin it is dwarfed by a grain of pollen....
The results indicate that hit-and-run collisions occur across a wider range of impact angles than previously thought. The team provides an algorithm for incorporating their model into N-body planet formation simulations. The study, “Gravity-dominated Collisions: A Model for the Largest Remnant Masses with Treatment for “Hit and Run” and Density Stratification,” was published in The Astrophysical Journal. The work was supported by the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS). NExSS is a NASA research coordination network supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program....
In the United States, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death, affecting more than 6 million Americans. Worse is that its incidence is expected to increase in the coming decades. It is known that in its most common form, the disease is not genetically based. It is poorly understood, which makes treatment difficult. However, progress is being made. Earlier this year, Tufts researchers showed that the common herpes virus could induce plaques in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease using a 3D model of living human brain cells....
New research indicates that female mice show more stable exploratory behavior than male mice, despite hormone cyclesThe results challenge a long-held assumption that hormones have a broad effect on behavior in female mice, making them less suitable for researchThe findings make a strong scientific case for increasing the inclusion of female mice in neuroscience and other experiments Mice have long been a central part of neuroscience research, providing a flexible model that scientists can control and study to learn more about the intricate inner workings of the brain....
Mountain lions, or pumas, stay close to their prey, “so it must have been hiding in a nearby gorge all day,” says Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at UCSC. The persistent puma was already well-known by Wilmers, who had radio-collared and tagged him as part of a long-term study of California mountain lions. But now the animal, dubbed 36m, is becoming even more famous: he’s the first puma to have his complete genome deciphered by scientists....
A rare form of hereditary autism has been discovered and scientists think that it may be treatable with protein supplements since it is linked to an amino-acid deficiency. The genome sequencing of six children with autism revealed mutations in a gene that stops several amino acids from being depleted. Mice lacking this gene developed neurological problems, related to autism spectrum disorder, which can be reversed by dietary changes. The scientists published their findings in the journal Science....
The results help reveal the process by which terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) are generated from thunderstorms, which has been debated. While many are familiar with the brilliantly electric bolts of lightning that crack the sky below thunderstorm clouds, other types of luminous phenomena are known to occur above storm clouds high in Earth’s upper atmosphere, too. Elves, one type of this phenomenon, are expanding waves of ultraviolet and optical emission in the ionosphere above the thunderstorm....
Before its brief mission ended unexpectedly in March 2016, Japan’s Hitomi X-ray observatory captured exceptional information about the motions of hot gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster. Now, thanks to unprecedented detail provided by an instrument developed jointly by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), astronomers have been able to analyze more deeply the chemical make-up of this gas, providing new insights into the stellar explosions that formed most of these elements and cast them into space....
One hospital reports significant increase in medical admissions among adolescents with existing or newly developed eating disorders during pandemic. The number of adolescents admitted to the hospital for severe illness from eating disorders has increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, new research suggests. At one center, the number of hospital admissions among adolescents with eating disorders more than doubled during the first 12 months of the pandemic, according to the study that appears in a pre-publication of Pediatrics....
How fast is the universe expanding? Galaxies provide one answer. Determining how rapidly the universe is expanding is key to understanding our cosmic fate, but with more precise data has come a conundrum: Estimates based on measurements within our local universe don’t agree with extrapolations from the era shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. A new estimate of the local expansion rate — the Hubble constant, or H0 (H-naught) — reinforces that discrepancy....
The research, undertaken at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP) in Geelong, found that SARS-CoV-2: survived longer at lower temperatures tended to survive longer on non-porous or smooth surfaces such as glass, stainless steel and vinyl, compared to porous complex surfaces such as cotton survived longer on paper banknotes than plastic banknotes. Results from the study “The effect of temperature on persistence of SARS-CoV-2 on common surfaces” was published in Virology Journal....
NGC 2903 is located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (the Lion) and was studied as part of a Hubble survey of the central regions of roughly 145 nearby disk galaxies. This study aimed to help astronomers better understand the relationship between the black holes that lurk at the cores of galaxies like these, and the rugby-ball-shaped bulge of stars, gas, and dust at the galaxy’s center — such as that seen in this image....
It turns out that we see this galaxy, named NGC 3432, orientated directly edge-on to us from our vantage point here on Earth. The galaxy’s spiral arms and bright core are hidden, and we instead see the thin strip of its very outer reaches. Dark bands of cosmic dust, patches of varying brightness, and pink regions of star formation help with making out the true shape of NGC 3432 — but it’s still somewhat of a challenge!...
Also remarkably, in both the hand and the foot, of the 30 muscles formed at about 7 weeks of gestation one third will become fused or completely absent by about 13 weeks of gestation. This dramatic decrease parallels what happened in evolution and deconstructs the myth that in both our evolution and prenatal development we tend to become more complex, with more anatomical structures such as muscles being continuously formed by the splitting of earlier muscles....
Binary systems—containing two stars orbiting around each other—are one of the most common type of gravitationally-bound collections of stars, yet their evolution is complex. Astronomers are trying to piece together the puzzle of different stellar observations to reveal the bigger picture. Using their understanding of binary evolution, scientists can simulate populations of stellar binaries with the stellar population synthesis code COMPAS—mostly developed by researchers from the ARC Centre of Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav)....
Understanding the region of interstellar space through which the solar system travels is no easy task. Interstellar space begins beyond the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets. Voyager 1 has crossed into this space, but it’s difficult to gain a complete global picture from measurements in only one direction. Spacecraft data in the past five years from near Earth and cosmic ray observations have painted a better picture of the magnetic system that surrounds us, while at the same time raising new questions....
The Necklace Nebula (PN G054.2-03.4) is a planetary nebula situated in the northern constellation Sagitta, and is located about 15,000 light-years away. It was first discovered by the Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric H-alpha Survey (IPHAS) in 2005. The mission is ground-based and focused on the North Galactic Plane. These composite images were taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. The object surrounds the glowing remains of a Sol-like star and consists of a bright ring measuring 2....
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team released the first mosaic (acquired September 17) of the site on September 26 and many people have downloaded the mosaic to search for signs of Vikram. Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris. After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images. When the images for the first mosaic were acquired the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable....
By the time most of us realize we’ve been out in the sun too long, it’s too late. It can take up to 24 hours after exposure before you realize you have a sunburn. Now, a Michigan Technological University Senior Design team has devised a sensor that tells you when it’s time to seek shelter, long before your skin gets red and tender. The biomedical engineering seniors developed a skin patch imprinted with a graphic—in this case, a happy face design....
A new study describes how spheres can be transformed into twisted spindles thanks to insights from 16th-century navigational tools. Researchers show how polymers can contract into spiral structures, known as loxodromes, that have complex patterning ten times smaller than the width of a human hair. Published today (October 10, 2019) in Physical Review Letters, the research was conducted by University of Pennsylvania graduate student Helen Ansell, postdoc Daeseok Kim, and professors Randall Kamien and Eleni Katifori in the School of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with Teresa Lopez-Leon of the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI)....
