Science

Science

Sixth-graders at Columbia Middle School were given a portal into space exploration Oct. 3 by Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute, the Mars Institute and NASA Ames Research Center. Lee spoke to students about his Mars research and what it would take to travel to the red planet, including how the science and math they're learning could be applied. The school visit was made possible through a grant awarded by the Ames Contractor Council.

Melanie Kaplan: I'm a long-time journalist and a pretty curious person, so when I found myself living with Hammy-a really special creature who'd lived in a lab for several years-I felt I had no choice but to tell his story. I realized much of what I felt with Hammy- bonding with a pet, wanting to understand the background of someone I'd fallen in love with, questioning things that seemed unfair-was universal, so I thought people would relate to what I'd experienced.

Unlike traditional computers that process information in a linear, step-by-step fashion, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent multiple states simultaneously. This leads to breakthroughs in areas such as drug discovery, financial modeling, and cybersecurity by overcoming computational barriers that have limited progress for decades. Quantum computing is transitioning from theoretical research to a transformative force for industries worldwide, much like AI and cloud computing before it.

The Jet Age began in the wake of World War 2, when technology made a massive leap and more fighter aircraft began incorporating jet engines to their design. Aerial combat evolved in kind. While there were less dog fights and engagements overall, the military doctrine of air superiority reigned supreme. Better tech and design gave way to many of the iconic fighter aircraft we know today. Here, 24/7 Wall St. is taking a look at some of the most lethal aircraft of the Jet Age.

It's no secret that the Universe and the objects present within it, as we see them all today, have changed over time as the Universe has grown up over the past 13.8 billion years. Galaxies are larger, more massive, more evolved, and are richer in stars but fewer in number than they were back in the early stages of cosmic history.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature, the more than 1,200-mile crater appears to have been the result of a glancing, southward blow - and not a head-on asteroid impact, as previously thought. The findings could help explain why the Moon's far side is riddled with large craters, while the more explored near side is relatively smooth. And they could also have "important implications for the upcoming human exploration of the lunar south pole" by NASA's Artemis program, the researchers wrote.

Two weeks later 133 cardinal electors shuttered themselves inside Vatican City's Sistine Chapel to select the next pope. Outside the Vatican, prognosticators of all stripes scrambled to predict what name would be announced from the basilica balcony. Among the expert pundits, crowdsourced prediction markets, bookies, fantasy sportslike platforms and cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, almost nobody expected Robert Prevost. Where every known method of divination seemed to fail,

"It's crazy, because when you're standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don't realize how big it is,"

Northwestern Medicine investigators have uncovered new insights into the synaptic connections of subgroups of interneurons, findings that may improve the understanding of fear responses and could inform new targeted therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a recent study published in Cell Reports. Sachin Patel, MD, PhD, the chair and the Lizzie Gilman Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was senior author of the study.

A skeleton discovered on Dorset's Jurassic coast has been identified as a new species of prehistoric marine reptile that once ruled the oceans. The dolphin-sized ichthyosaur, called Xiphodracon goldencapensis or the Sword Dragon of Dorset, is the only known example of its kind in existence. Thousands of ichthyosaur fossils have been found along the Jurassic Coast, but scientists say this particular fossil helps to fill an evolutionary gap.

Combining the elegance of gold jewelry with the meticulous craftsmanship of intricate timepieces, a unique style of ring emerged from a fashion for the cosmos during the 16th and 17th centuries. Known as armillary rings, these deceptively simple gold creations can be worn on the finger like any other band, but when removed, they open up into a sphere made of several interconnecting circular bands operated by delicate hinges.

Recordings of chewing sounds combined with altitude data bear evidence of a gruesome night-time feast.

Astronomers say NASA's James Webb Space Telescope may have spotted the universe's first "dark stars," primordial bodies of hydrogen and helium that bear almost no resemblance to the nuclear fusion-powered stars we've come to know.

molecular gas clouds that are contracting and fragmenting, leading to protostars and young stellar objects, becoming full-fledged stars with protoplanetary disks around them, conventional stars burning through their fuel with their own fully-formed planetary systems, stars evolving into subgiants, giants, and even supergiants, stars dying in planetary nebulae, supernovae, and other life-ending events, and stellar remnants of now-extinct stars like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes.

"It's kind of my professional dream to do this by the time I'm really too old to retire. I should retire now, but I'm not doing that,"

Imagine a future where the walls and floors of your home do more than just support your furniture. They actually store and supply electricity as well. This vision is coming closer to reality thanks to innovative research from scientists at MIT. Their latest breakthrough centers around a new type of carbon-infused concrete that can conduct electrons, effectively turning ordinary building materials into large-scale batteries.

There's a theory in complexity theory that whenever you find a complex system working in nature, it's usually the output of a very simple system or thing that was iterated over and over. We're seeing this lately in AI research-you're just taking very simple algorithms and dumping more and more data into them. They keep getting smarter. What doesn't work as well is the reverse.

When a total solar eclipse plunged North America into darkness on the afternoon of April 8, 2024, the songbirds in Bloomington, Ind., suddenly fell silent. In the middle of the forest, the only sounds biologist Kimberly Rosvall could hear were the croaks of nocturnal frogs and the distant howl of a coyote. But when sunlight returned after four minutes of night, the songs did, too, as hundreds of birds greeted the morning in unison with a cheerful dawn chorus.

Mark Norell, whose discoveries helped to demonstrate that birds are living dinosaurs, has died aged 68. As a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Norell combined fieldwork, cutting-edge analysis and a gift for collaboration, transforming how scientists and the public see dinosaurs. Norell and his colleagues showed that birds belong to the group of carnivorous dinosaurs known as theropods, which also include Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus.

Bats are generally viewed as harmless, if spooky, creatures of the night. But scientists have revealed a more savage side, after witnessing a greater noctule bat Europe's largest bat species hunting, killing and devouring a robin mid-flight. The grisly recording reveals the bat as a formidable predator, climbing to 1.2km (4,000ft) before embarking on a breakneck-speed dive in pursuit of its prey.

Birds dazzle us with an extraordinary variety of colors and songs, signals that play a major role in how they communicate, attract mates, and evolve. Yet even after decades of research, many mysteries remain. Why do some males adopt drab plumage that makes them look more like females, despite the advantage of brighter colors in courtship? How do songs and plumage patterns influence not only the formation of new species, but also unexpected connections between them?

Through our ambitious new Ages of Invention: The Serum Institute Gallery we will create the most significant display of objects from the history of science anywhere in the world. Visitors will be able to journey through 250 years of innovation and explore the scientific ideas shaping our lives today. Thanks to Mr Poonawalla's generous support, the architectural expertise of Lawson Ward Studio and the remarkable stories of scientific achievements featured in the new gallery, we will ignite the curiosity of the future scientists and innovators needed to meet the challenges facing the world.

Cryogenic transmission electron microscopy - TEM - has long played a vital role in many branches of science, from biology to physics, because the very low temperatures allow close examination of samples of everything from inorganic crystals to complex biomolecules at the atomic scale. Typically, the cryogen, or cooling agent, is liquid nitrogen, which boils at 321 below zero Fahrenheit (or 77 Kelvin) - impressive, but not cold enough to see those strange quantum wriggles.

Mice were group-housed on a 12 h light:12 h dark cycle with ad libitum access to food (Purina Rodent Chow, 5001) and water unless otherwise noted. Temperature (21.5-22.3 °C) and humidity (50 ± 15%) were controlled. Group-housed adult male and female mice (at least eight weeks old) were used for experiments. Npy1r-cre (Jackson Laboratory 030544, B6.Cg-Npy1rtm1.1(cre/GFP)Rpa/J (ref. ), Npy-Flp (Jackson Laboratory 030211, B6.Cg-Npytm1.1(flpo)Hze/J), Pdyn-IRES-cre (Jackson Laboratory 027958, B6;129S- Pdyntm1.1(cre)Mjkr/LowlJ),

Lauren Williams is a theoretical mathematician and recently she felt stuck in her research, a recurring frustration for a scholar who wrestles with difficult conceptual problems. Then, as Williams worked quietly in her home office, she was jolted by an unexpected revelation: The MacArthur Foundation phoned to inform Williams that she had won a celebrated "genius grant" - a "no-strings-attached" fellowship that provides recipients $800,000 over five years.

Receiving the NIH Director's New Innovator Award is a tremendous privilege, and I view it as an opportunity to serve the American public who make this research possible through their investment in science. It is not just recognition of our lab's work, but also a commitment to pursuing bold, high-risk ideas that can truly change the lives of children, halting brain damage that would otherwise result in a lifetime of disability,

"It's a huge achievement," says Rayan Chikhi, a biocomputing researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. "They set a new standard" for analysing raw biological data - including DNA, RNA and protein sequences - from databases that can contain millions of billions of DNA letters, amounting to 'petabases' of information, more entries than all the webpages in Google's vast index.

All human cells accumulate mutations throughout life. In proliferating tissues, acquired driver mutations that confer a selective advantage can promote the expansion of individual clones in competing stem and progenitor cell populations. Although patterns of selection and clonal expansion have been extensively studied in cancers, recent research has also highlighted their occurrence in normal tissues during ageing6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14. Spermatogonial stem cells of the testis occupy a distinct niche relative to other studied normal tissues.

Amir Sepehri, assistant professor of marketing at ESSEC Business School, Dr. Rod Duclos (Western University), and Nasir Haghighi (University of Washington at Tacoma) found that it comes down to the amount of information contained in a talk. When a talk is chock-full of content, broaching several topics, we tend to get information overload, leading us to disengage from the video. So, how can communicators make sure their message gets heard and their audience connects with the video?

Scientists at MIT develop Electron-Conducting Carbon Concrete, a kind of cement that can store and release electricity like batteries. Aimed for buildings, sidewalks, and other infrastructure, the energy-releasing material is made from four main ingredients: cement, water, ultra-fine carbon black, and electrolytes. The main stars are the carbon black and the electrolytes. For the former, its very small particles can form a conductive nanonetwork inside the concrete, allowing electricity to move through the material.