Many mammals have a sweet tooth, but birds lost their sweet receptor during evolution. Although hummingbirds and songbirds independently repurposed their savory receptor to sense sugars, how other birds taste sweet is unclear. Now, an international team lead by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence (in foundation) shows that woodpeckers also regained …
Inhibition of ETS-4 improves C. elegans survival in the cold Our initial studies of C. elegans “hibernation” identified the RNase REGE-1 as a factor promoting cold survival17. Studying REGE-1 in a different physiological context, the regulation of body fat, we showed that a key target of REGE-1 encodes a conserved transcription factor, ETS-417. Thus, we …
Last weekend the whole world saw the last supermoon of 2022. The Sturgeon supermoon lit up skies across the world and featured in some amazing images. Meanwhile, the Perseid meteor shower was somewhat overshadowed by the full Moon, but still produced some great sights. NASA continues to prepare for Artemis, which the launch of the …
Tiny fragments of rock brought back from an asteroid in near-Earth solar orbit are so old, they predate the Solar System. A new analysis of samples of asteroid Ryugu has revealed the presence of mineral grains forged in the outflows or explosions of old stars before our own Sun formed. As identified by previous research, …
Asteroid Ryugu Reveals Ancient Grains of Stardust Older Than The Solar System Read More »
On August 20 1977, 45 years ago, an extraordinary spacecraft left this planet on a journey like no other. Voyager 2 was going to show us, for the first time, what the outer solar system planets looked like close-up. It was like sending a fly to New York City and asking it to report back. …
image: Nestled in the center of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest star yet discovered. With the help of the Zorro imager and the power of the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have produced the sharpest image ever of this star. This new image challenges our understanding of the …
Sharpest image ever of universe’s most massive known star Read More »
Scientists, futurists, and fans of science fiction alike have all dreamed that someday, humans would set foot on Mars. With the dozens of robotic orbiters, landers, rovers, and aerial vehicles we have sent there since the turn of the century (and the crewed missions that will follow in the next decade), the prospect that humans …
Cyanobacteria Will be our Best Partner for Living on Mars Read More »
Title: Eccentric debris belts reveal the dynamical history of the companion exoplanet Authors: Laetitia Rodet, and Dong Lai First author’s institution: Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA Status: Published on ArXiV, 11 August 2022, Submitted to MNRAS In addition to the eight planets in our …
Understanding the surprising narrowness of eccentric debris belts Read More »
Flexible electronics have enabled the design of sensors, actuators, microfluidics and electronics on flexible, conformal and/or stretchable sublayers for wearable, implantable or ingestible applications. However, these devices have very different mechanical and biological properties when compared to human tissue and thus cannot be integrated with the human body. A team of researchers atTexas A&M University …
Nadir Crater Heriot-Watt University Scientists have found evidence of an asteroid impact crater beneath the north Atlantic ocean. The 8.5km-wide crater is buried 300-400m below the seabed 400km off the coast of Guinea, west Africa. The team believes the crater was caused by a 400m-wide asteroid colliding with Earth around 66 million years ago – …
