The red planet’s future rings Mars will most likely develop rings similar to Saturn’s, when its largest moon, Phobos, gets close enough to break apart, according to a recently published study in Nature Geoscience. Mars would be the only inner planet with rings if this took place. Scientists predict it will happen in about 20 – 40 million … Read more
Late in 2013, a novel variant of the Ebola virus emerged in Western Africa to start what would become the largest human epidemic on record. In a study published December 9th in Cell Host & Microbe, researchers used genome sequencing to trace the introduction and spread of the virus in Liberia–the second worst-affected country. The … Read more
President Obama signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262) into law Wednesday. This law recognizes the right of U.S. citizens to own asteroid resources they obtain and encourages the commercial exploration and utilization of resources from asteroids. “This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history,” commented Eric Anderson, co-founder and … Read more
Don’t have room for dessert? The bacteria in your gut may be telling you something. Twenty minutes after a meal, gut microbes produce proteins that can suppress food intake in animals, reports a study published November 24 in Cell Metabolism. The researchers also show how these proteins injected into mice and rats act on the … Read more
The International Space Station orbits the Earth at 28,000 km/h, fast enough to make it from our planet to the moon and back in a day. The 1 million pound craft carries its six passengers around the circumference of the Earth every 90 minutes at that speed. And now, thanks to Open Notify‘s API and … Read more
First-of-its-kind NASA mission will also demonstrate ability to deflect asteroids NASA has detailed ARM: its mission to send a robotic spacecraft to an asteroid, pluck a boulder off of the surface, and put the rock into orbit around the moon. It will also use an Enhanced Gravity Tractor to redirect the course of the asteroid. The Asteroid … Read more
The primary way that researchers know anything about the distribution of species in the natural world is via the specimen collections housed in museums all around the world. As a result, tremendous effort is being put into uploading data on those collections into free and accessible databases. But researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal … Read more
A new network has been established by UK scientists to advance and promote research into cryobiology – the effects of extremely low temperature on living organisms and cells. The UK Cryonics and Cryopreservation Research Network is being coordinated by Dr Joao Pedro de Magalhaes, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Integrative … Read more
NASA Satellite imagery of a barren and treeless steppe in northern Kazakhstan has revealed enormous earthworks that can only be seen from the air. Some of the formations date back 8000 years and are thought to have been built by the neolithic groups of the area. Known as the Steppe Geoglyphs, these formations are as … Read more
University of London study analyzes the upward spirals generated by positive experience, mood, and decision making, compared with the contrary downward ones It’s long been known that mood biases our judgments and perceptions, but this effect has usually been regarded as irrational or disadvantageous. A new theory published Tuesday in Trends in Cognitive Sciences argues that mood draws on … Read more
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A Duke University team has created fibers that cause liquid to jump off their surface as it accumulates, leading to new possibilities in water purification, atmospheric moisture harvesting, and various drop collecting industrial material applications. “Self-removal is essentially inevitable as long as the surface is reasonably hydrophobic,” said Chuan-Hua Chen of Duke University in Durham, North … Read more