Science

Science

This week in Manchester, UK, scientists will be deliberating whether to restrict research that could eventually enable 'mirror life' - synthetic cells built from molecules that are mirror images of those found in the natural world. Over the past year, many scientists have voiced concerns over experiments that might lead to the creation of such cells, suggesting that they would pose an enormous risk to human health and the environment.

The feat, accomplished by physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder, and published in Nature Materials on 4 September, involved liquid crystals - bar-shaped molecules with properties between those of a liquid and those of a solid. Simply by shining a light on the liquid crystals, the team created ripples of twisting molecules through them. The ripples kept moving for hours, undulating with a distinct beat, even when the researchers changed the conditions.

According to the program's stated goals, DARPA is looking to "engineer red blood cells to contain novel biological features that can safely and reliably modify human physiology." In the short term, DARPA wants these bio-engineered red blood cells to improve human performance (think faster recovery times, more resistance to lactic acid buildup that causes muscle soreness, improved cardiovascular fitness, and the like) and "enhanced hemostasis," i.e., better blood clotting.

In the classic rubber hand illusion, illusion, a participant is tricked into experiencing a fake arm on the table in front of them as their own: their brain feels the tickle of a feather or other stimuli they see applied to the fake arm. (The real arm is behind a partition.) Until now, only some mammals, such as humans and mice, were known to be susceptible to this illusion.

The reports began with a man identifying himself as Kin, who says he discovered a small, silver-colored space rock in a fiery crater in Panama's Pedregal district on August 29. Since then, Kin has shared a series of videos on TikTok showing what he described as the meteorite burning leaves on contact and a fungus-like organism sprouting from its surface.

The twin robotic spacecraft launched in 1977, the same year as the Apple II, the TRS-80 and the Commodore Pet, making the spacecraft the patron saints of the modern computer age. By the time Voyager's primary mission ended with Voyager 2's 1989 Neptune encounter, earthlings had the 80486, the Gameboy and the Apple Macintosh Portable. As Voyager 2 was nearly three billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers) away at that point, however, hardware upgrades were ruled out by the cost of delivery.

A vaccine has been approved to help protect koalas against chlamydia, a measure researchers are hailing as a world-first in fighting the disease that is a leading cause of death for the beloved marsupials.

'Brown eyes contain a high concentration of melanin, which absorbs light and creates their darker appearance,' she wrote on The Conversation. 'Blue eyes contain very little melanin. 'In blue eyes, the shorter wavelengths of light - such as blue - are scattered more effectively than longer wavelengths like red or yellow. 'Due to the low concentration of melanin, less light is absorbed, allowing the scattered blue light to dominate what we perceive. This blue hue results not from pigment but from the way light interacts with the eye's structure.'

For the last 4.5 billion years our planet has had a reliable celestial companion - the moon. Its orbit around the Earth has a profound effect on life here, from influencing the tides to stabilising our seasons. But astronomers have now discovered another sidekick that may have been following our planet around for some time. Experts at the Pan-STARRS observatory in Hawaii have spotted a quasi-moon, called '2025 PN7', that has been tagging along after Earth since the 1960s.

Back then, volcanoes were in the zeitgeist. Two years prior, the Mount Saint Helens volcano in the United States spectacularly blew half of its flank away. It would go down as one of the most iconic and studied eruptions in history, and an inflection point for modern volcanology. The fact that the blast was sideways was unexpected and killed 57 people, but the eruption itself was anticipated through monitoring, and authorities evacuated more than 2,000 people in advance.

In his 1963 scifi story "The Invincible," the Polish writer Stanisław Lem imagined an artificial species of free-floating nanobots which roamed the atmosphere of a far-off planet. Like tiny bugs, the microscopic beings were powerless alone, but together they could form cooperative swarms to gather energy, reproduce, and ultimately defend their territory from predators with deadly force. Unlike the story's human protagonists, the "black cloud" of bots was incapable of reasoning beyond the simple logic of animal instincts.

About 10.6 percent of people are left-handed ( Papadatou-Pastou and co-workers, 2020). It has been known for a long time that left-handedness runs in families. Two left-handed parents have a higher chance of having a left-handed child than two right-handed parents. Therefore, genes likely play a role in determining whether someone is born left-handed or right-handed. For a long time, scientists believed that there was just one handedness gene, but recent research has proven that this idea is wrong.

When you learned about the history of human evolution in school, there's a good chance you were shown one all-too-familiar image. That picture probably showed a conga line of human-like creatures, from a primitive ape at one end to a modern man proudly strolling into the future at the other. For many people, this iconic image captures evolution's slow but inevitable march from the simple to the complex.

When an unfamiliar pink fish appeared more than 10,000 feet down in the outer reaches of Monterey Canyon in 2019, scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute were able to document the moment via their remotely operated vehicle, but they weren't sure what to make of it. But after years of meticulous research, teams of scientists, including MBARI senior scientist Steven Haddock, who led that 2019 expedition, have confirmed what that footage suggested: The deep-sea creature was a never-before-seen species.

The findings shed light on how rats have adapted to city lifeand how chatty they are. There's this kind of secret language that rats are communicating in with each other that we don't hear, says Emily Mackevicius, a neuroscientist and a co-author of the study. They're very social, adds Ralph Peterson, another study co-author. They're rugged, and they're New Yorkers themselves: persistent and resilient and able to thrive in a very extreme environment.

"This event is unlike any other seen in 50-years of GRB observations,"

In a corner of the sprawling grounds of Niamey's only museum a unique, open-air style arrangement in Niger's capital that doubles as a zoo imposing fossil replicas of long-extinct animals stand in a corrugated iron stall. On a recent late Friday afternoon, the Boubou Hama National Museum was busy with scores of excited children. They shrilled, delighted by the rubbery grunts of the hippos near the replicas, and the faint roars of the lions further up.

Crime scenes can change quickly. Chairs, tables, carswhatever was in the spacemay be moved, or people may lose track of them. And future discoveries about the crime may be difficult to connect to the scene. One of the best ways to immediately preserve a crime scene is with three-dimensional laser scans, which use light to map every object present. Today this technique is routinely used at major crime scenes. And experts say it's likely to be important in the investigation of Kirk's death.

In 1857, the S.S. Central America (also known as the Ship of Gold) sank off the coast of South Carolina after sailing into a hurricane in one of the worst maritime disasters in American history; 425 people were killed and thousands of pounds of gold sank with the ship to the bottom of the ocean. In 1940, the Lascaux cave paintings, estimated to be 17,000 years old, were discovered in southwestern France.

Recent headlines warning of concerns such as heart risks or danger to teenagers have put a new spotlight on a diet trend that has long been the popular epitome of a healthy lifestyle: intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting's image has been deeply tarnishedand quite rightly so, says Stefan Kabisch, a physician at the endocrinology and metabolic medicine department at ChariteUniversity Medicine Berlin. The hype was never really backed up by good data in humans.

The unusual DNA of a particular type of spider is fascinating scientists, as they think it may hold the key to diverse evolution across the world we live in. Australia's peacock spider, known for its dance moves and vibrant colours, has evolved into 100 different species while most animals only have five or ten. Scientists are trying to uncover the puzzling reason why there are so many variations in its species by closely studying the arachnid's dark DNA' - an enigma in its genetic material.

"Plant-Based" showcases a variety of documents and artifacts from different cultures and periods, drawn from the library's Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC), including handmade paper from the Ming Dynasty; woodblocks by Cornellian artist Elfriede Abbe '40; ancient papyrus fragments from Egypt; contemporary artists' books; and herbals from around the world. Plant specimens are also on loan from the Cornell University Insect Collection and the L.H. Bailey Hortorium Herbarium .

Multitasking is the biggest con the modern world has ever sold us, right up there with fad diets that promise you can eat nothing but cheddar cheese and still lose ten pounds. Dr. Steve Robbins, the 2024 keynote speaker at the American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, reminded us that people are not wired to process multiple high-level tasks simultaneously.

It's not so much what Hank Green said, but what the Hank Green-hosted SciShow on YouTube put forward. The video is framed as physicists using science to explain the art of knitting, which until now has been innovated simply "through trial and error," and that "how it all works was mostly a mystery." Recently, scientists used a computer model to determine how certain knit stitches will behave, thus being able to predictively pattern knit fabrics for the first time.

The biomedical animator Drew Barry is known for his dazzling visualisations of biological processes that unfold on microscopic scales. As enlightening as it is arresting, his imagery straddles the line between science and art, as seen in his work as the in-house animator for the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and in his music video collaboration with Björk.

Between 2000 and 2021, the top five most mentioned keyword-topics in personality psychology research were "B5 Constructs," " Emotion," "Internalizing," "Health/Well-being," and " Dark Tetrad." Psychologists, it seems, are no longer just mapping out the traits that help us thrive, but also probing the darker impulses that can unravel relationships, communities, and even societies. You may be familiar with the " Dark Triad," a cluster of three socially aversive traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand why NASA implemented this policy: In July, dual Chinese/American citizen Chenguang Gong admitted to a lengthy industrial espionage campaign that saw him download information on sensors used by aircraft to confuse infrared-seeking missiles, plus data on radiation-hardened cameras that the US placed in orbit to give an early warning of incoming rockets and hypersonic vehicles. China has also recruited spies at the US Navy.