Heavens

One day, humankind may step foot on another habitable planet. That planet may look very different from Earth, but one thing will feel familiar -- the rain.

In a recent paper, Harvard researchers found that raindrops are remarkably similar across different planetary environments, even planets as drastically different as Earth and Jupiter. Understanding the behavior of raindrops on other planets is key to not only revealing the ancient climate on planets like Mars but identifying potentially habitable planets outside our solar system.

"The lifecycle of clouds is really important when we think about planet habitability," said Kaitlyn Loftus, a graduate student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the paper. "But clouds and precipitation are really complicated and too complex to model completely. We're looking for simpler ways to understand how clouds evolve, and a first step is whether cloud droplets evaporate in the atmosphere or make it to the surface as rain."

"The humble raindrop is a vital component of the precipitation cycle for all planets," said Robin Wordsworth, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and senior author of the paper. "If we understand how individual raindrops behave, we can better represent rainfall in complex climate models."

An essential aspect of raindrop behavior, at least to climate modelers, is whether or not the raindrop makes it to the surface of the planet because water in the atmosphere plays a big role in planetary climate. To that end, size matters. Too big and the drop will break apart due to insufficient surface tension, regardless of whether it's water, methane or superheated, liquid iron as on an exoplanet called WASP-76b. Too small and the drop will evaporate before hitting the surface.

Loftus and Wordsworth identified a Goldilocks zone for raindrop size using just three properties: drop shape, falling speed, and evaporation speed.

Drop shapes are the same across different rain materials and primarily depend on how heavy the drop is. While many of us may picture a traditional tear-shaped droplet, raindrops are actually spherical when small, becoming squashed as they grow larger until they transition into a shape like the top of a hamburger bun. Falling speed depends on this shape as well as gravity and the thickness of the surrounding air.

Evaporation speed is more complicated, influenced by atmospheric composition, pressure, temperature, relative humidity and more.

By taking all of these properties into account, Loftus and Wordsworth found that across a wide range of planetary conditions, the math of raindrop falling means only a very small fraction of the possible drop sizes in a cloud can reach the surface.

"We can use this behavior to guide us as we model cloud cycles on exoplanets," said Loftus.

"The insights we gain from thinking about raindrops and clouds in diverse environments are key to understanding exoplanet habitability," said Wordsworth. "In the long term, they can also help us gain a deeper understanding of the climate of Earth itself."

Multilingual people have trained their brains to learn languages, making it easier to acquire more new languages after mastering a second or third. In addition to demystifying the seemingly herculean genius of multilinguals, researchers say these results provide some of the first neuroscientific evidence that language skills are additive, a theory known as the cumulative?enhancement model of language acquisition.

"The traditional idea is, if you understand bilinguals, you can use those same details to understand multilinguals. We rigorously checked that possibility with this research and saw multilinguals' language acquisition skills are not equivalent, but superior to those of bilinguals," said Professor Kuniyoshi L. Sakai from the University of Tokyo, an expert in the neuroscience of language and last author of the research study recently published in Scientific Reports. This joint research project includes collaboration with Professor Suzanne Flynn from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a specialist in linguistics and multilanguage acquisition, who first proposed the cumulative?enhancement model.

Neuroscientists measured brain activity while 21 bilingual and 28 multilingual adult volunteers tried to identify words and sentences in Kazakh, a language brand new to them.

All participants were native speakers of Japanese whose second language was English. Most of the multilingual participants had learned Spanish as a third language, but others had learned Chinese, Korean, Russian or German. Some knew up to five languages.

Fluency in multiple languages requires command of different sounds, vocabularies, sentence structures and grammar rules. Sentences in English and Spanish are usually structured with the noun or verb at the start of a phrase, but Japanese and Kazakh consistently place nouns or verbs at the end of a phrase. English, Spanish and Kazakh grammars require subject-verb agreement (she walks, they walk), but Japanese grammar does not.

Instead of grammar drills or conversation skills in a classroom, researchers simulated a more natural language learning environment where volunteers had to figure out the fundamentals of a new language purely by listening. Volunteers listened to recordings of individual Kazakh words or short sentences including those words while watching a screen with plus or minus symbols to signal if the sentence was grammatically correct or not. Volunteers were given a series of four increasingly difficult listening tests while researchers measured their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

In the simplest test, volunteers had to determine if they were hearing a word from the earlier learning session or if it was a grammatically different version of the same word; for example: run/ran or take/takes. In the next test levels, volunteers listened to example sentences and were asked if the sentences were grammatically correct and to decipher sentence structures by identifying noun-verb pairs. For example, "We understood that John thought," is translated in Kazakh as "Biz John oyladï dep tu?sindik." The sentence would be grammatically incorrect if volunteers heard tu?sindi instead of tu?sindik. The correct noun-verb pairs are we understood (Biz tu?sindik) and John thought (John oyladï).

Volunteers could retake the learning session and repeat the test an unlimited number of times until they passed and progressed to the next level of difficulty.

Multilingual participants who were more fluent in their second and third languages were able to pass the Kazakh tests with fewer repeated learning sessions than their less-fluent multilingual peers. More-fluent multilinguals also became faster at choosing an answer as they progressed from the third to fourth test level, a sign of increased confidence and that knowledge acquired during easier tests was successfully transferred to higher levels.

"For multilinguals, in Kazakh, the pattern of brain activation is similar to that for bilinguals, but the activation is much more sensitive, and much faster," said Sakai.

The pattern of brain activation in bilingual and multilingual volunteers fits current understanding of how the brain understands language, specifically that portions of the left frontal lobe become more active when understanding both the content and meaning of a sentence. When learning a second language, it is normal for the corresponding areas on the right side of the brain to become active and assist in efforts to understand.

Multilingual volunteers had no detectable right-side activation during the initial, simple Kazakh grammar test level, but brain scans showed strong activity in those assisting areas of bilingual volunteers' brains.

Researchers also detected differences in the basal ganglia, often considered a more fundamental area of the brain. Bilingual volunteers' basal ganglia had low levels of activation that spiked as they progressed through the test and then returned to a low level at the start of the next test. Multilingual volunteers began the first test level with similarly low basal ganglia activity that spiked and then remained high throughout the subsequent test levels.

The UTokyo-MIT research team says this activation pattern in the basal ganglia shows that multilingual people can make generalizations and build on prior knowledge, rather than approach each new grammar rule as a separate idea to understand from scratch.

Prior studies by Sakai and others have found a three-part timeline of changes in brain activation while learning a new language: an initial increase, a high plateau and a decline to the same low level of activation required to understand the native language.

These new results confirm that pattern in multilinguals and support the possibility that prior experience progressing through those stages of language learning makes it easier to do again, supporting the cumulative-enhancement model of language acquisition.

"This is a neuroscientific explanation of why learning another new language is easier than acquiring a second. Bilinguals only have two points of reference. Multilinguals can use their knowledge of three or more languages in their brains to learn another new one," said Sakai.

Sakai and his colleagues are continuing to expand their study of the multilingual brain with their collaborators at MIT.

Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system.
 

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has two sets of rings around its equator. The planet, which has four times the diameter of Earth, rotates on its side, making it different from all other planets in the solar system. Since Voyager 2 was the only spacecraft to ever fly by Uranus, astronomers currently rely on telescopes much closer to Earth, like Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope, to learn about this distant and cold planet that is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.
 

In the new study, researchers used Chandra observations taken in Uranus in 2002 and then again in 2017. They saw a clear detection of X-rays from the first observation, just analyzed recently, and a possible flare of X-rays in those obtained fifteen years later. The main graphic shows a Chandra X-ray image of Uranus from 2002 (in pink) superimposed on an optical image from the Keck-I Telescope obtained in a separate study in 2004. The latter shows the planet at approximately the same orientation as it was during the 2002 Chandra observations.
 

What could cause Uranus to emit X-rays? The answer: mainly the Sun. Astronomers have observed that both Jupiter and Saturn scatter X-ray light given off by the Sun, similar to how Earth's atmosphere scatters the Sun's light. While the authors of the new Uranus study initially expected that most of the X-rays detected would also be from scattering, there are tantalizing hints that at least one other source of X-rays is present. If further observations confirm this, it could have intriguing implications for understanding Uranus.
 

One possibility is that the rings of Uranus are producing X-rays themselves, which is the case for Saturn's rings. Uranus is surrounded by charged particles such as electrons and protons in its nearby space environment. If these energetic particles collide with the rings, they could cause the rings to glow in X-rays. Another possibility is that at least some of the X-rays come from auroras on Uranus, a phenomenon that has previously been observed on this planet at other wavelengths.  
 

On Earth, we can see colorful light shows in the sky called auroras, which happen when high-energy particles interact with the atmosphere. X-rays are emitted in Earth's auroras, produced by energetic electrons after they travel down the planet's magnetic field lines to its poles and are slowed down by the atmosphere. Jupiter has auroras, too. The X-rays from auroras on Jupiter come from two sources: electrons traveling down magnetic field lines, as on Earth, and positively charged atoms and molecules raining down at Jupiter's polar regions. However, scientists are less certain about what causes auroras on Uranus. Chandra's observations may help figure out this mystery.
  

Uranus is an especially interesting target for X-ray observations because of the unusual orientations of its spin axis and its magnetic field. While the rotation and magnetic field axes of the other planets of the solar system are almost perpendicular to the plane of their orbit, the rotation axis of Uranus is nearly parallel to its path around the Sun. Furthermore, while Uranus is tilted on its side, its magnetic field is tilted by a different amount, and offset from the planet's center. This may cause its auroras to be unusually complex and variable. Determining the sources of the X-rays from Uranus could help astronomers better understand how more exotic objects in space, such as growing black holes and neutron stars, emit X-rays.
 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University have discovered a previously unknown type of ancient crater lake on Mars that could reveal clues about the planet's early climate.

In a study published in Planetary Science Journal, a research team led by Brown Ph.D. student Ben Boatwright describes an as-yet unnamed crater with some puzzling characteristics. The crater's floor has unmistakable geologic evidence of ancient stream beds and ponds, yet there's no evidence of inlet channels where water could have entered the crater from outside, and no evidence of groundwater activity where it could have bubbled up from below.

So where did the water come from?

The researchers conclude that the system was likely fed by runoff from a long-lost Martian glacier. Water flowed into the crater atop the glacier, which meant it didn't leave behind a valley as it would have had it flowed directly on the ground. The water eventually emptied into the low-lying crater floor, where it left its geological mark on the bare Martian soil.

The type of lake described in this study differs starkly from other Martian crater lakes, like those at Gale and Jezero craters where NASA rovers are currently exploring.

"This is a previously unrecognized type of hydrological system on Mars," Boatwright said. "In lake systems characterized so far, we see evidence of drainage coming from outside the crater, breaching the crater wall and in some cases flowing out the other side. But that's not what is happening here. Everything is happening inside the crater, and that's very different than what's been characterized before."

Importantly, Boatwright says, the crater provides key clues about the early climate of Mars. There's little doubt that the Martian climate was once warmer and wetter than the frozen desert the planet is today. What's less clear, however, is whether Mars had an Earthlike climate with continually flowing water for millennia, or whether it was mostly cold and icy with fleeting periods of warmth and melting. Climate simulations for early Mars suggest temperatures rarely peaking above freezing, but geological evidence for cold and icy conditions has been sparse, Boatwright says. This new evidence of ancient glaciation could change that.

"The cold and icy scenario has been largely theoretical -- something that arises from climate models," Boatwright said. "But the evidence for glaciation we see here helps to bridge the gap between theory and observation. I think that's really the big takeaway here."

Boatwright was able to map out the details of the crater's lake system using high-resolution images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The images revealed a telltale signature of ancient streambeds -- features called inverted fluvial channels. When water flows across a rocky surface, it can leave behind course-grained sediment inside the valley it erodes. When these sediments interact with water, they can form minerals that are harder than the surrounding rock. As further erosion over millions of years whittles the surrounding rock away, the mineralized channels are left behind as raised ridges spidering across the landscape. These features, along with sediment deposits and shoreline features, clearly show where water flowed and ponded on the crater floor.

ut without any sign of an inlet channel where water entered the crater, "the question becomes 'how did these get here?"' Boatwright said.

To figure it out, Boatwright worked with Jim Head, his advisor and a research professor at Brown. They ruled out groundwater activity, as the crater lacked telltale sapping channels that form in groundwater systems. These channels usually appear as short, stubby channels that lack tributaries -- completely opposite from the dense, branching networks of inverted channels observed in the crater. A careful examination of the crater wall also revealed a distinct set of ridges that face upward toward the crater wall. The features are consistent with ridges formed where a glacier terminates and deposits mounds of rocky debris. Taken together, the evidence points to a glacier-fed system, the researchers concluded.

Subsequent research has shown that this crater isn't the only one of its kind. At this month's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, Boatwright presented research revealing more than 40 additional craters that appear to have related features.

Head says that these new findings could be critical in understanding the climate of early Mars.

"We have these models telling us that early Mars would have been cold and icy, and now we have some really compelling geological evidence to go with it," Head said. "Not only that, but this crater provides the criteria we need to start looking for even more evidence to test this hypothesis, which is really exciting."

The high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's mantle forge carbon-rich minerals known as carbonates into diamond. But less is known about the fate of carbonates that travel even deeper underground -- depths from which no sample has ever been recovered.

Now, Michigan State University's Susannah Dorfman and her team are unearthing an answer with lab tools that mimic these extreme conditions.

"What we were interested in is, when is carbon not diamond?" added Dorfman.
In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, scientists in Dorfman's Experimental Mineralogy Lab at MSU redefined the conditions under which carbonates can exist in the earth's lower mantle, expanding our understanding of the deep carbon cycle and the Earth's evolution.

"The circulation of carbon and minerals from the surface of the earth through subduction to the base of the earth's mantle has been happening for billions of years," said Dorfman, assistant professor in the?Department of Earth and Environmental Science?, or EES, in the?College of Natural Science?and co-author of the paper. "Our lab asks, 'How can we use experiments to predict what it looks like and to follow it chemically?'"

During subduction, surface carbonates -- think limestone and coral skeletons -- hitch a ride on cold slabs of rock diving under the Earth's crust through tectonic motion fueled by the mantle's heat. Some carbonates melt and are spewed back into the atmosphere by volcanoes. Some travel further down and are pressed into diamonds.

But some carbonates make it even deeper, toward the boundary between the planet's mantle and core almost 1,800 miles below the surface. Dorfman's team was interested in learning their fate.
The team's previous research showed that some carbonates could indeed escape being melted or turned into diamonds in a hot, oxygen-poor environment like the core-mantle boundary, but no one knew what form they would take in a real rock until now.

In the study, Dorfman and co-author?Mingda Lv, a fifth year EES doctoral student, conducted highly complex experiments to synthesize mantle rock and illuminate the fate of those deeply subducted carbonates for the first time.

"For this project, we wanted to know how carbonate would coexist with the majority of mantle silicates when subducted to the lower mantle," Lv said. "We designed the experiments to extend the pressure and temperature conditions on these minerals to high regimes, simulating conditions at the core-mantle boundary of the earth."

Their experiments required a device made of material with the highest-pressure tolerance of any substance on Earth -- diamonds.

"The diamond anvil cell, even though it is something you can hold in your hand, gives us the very highest pressures in any lab without using explosions," Dorfman said. "All of what we know about what goes on in the center of planets is dependent on this device."

Dorfman and Lv successfully assembled thin carbonate and silicate discs like a sandwich between the two diamonds of the diamond anvil cell. Then, they squeezed the discs together like a mineral panini and used powerful lasers to heat them to soaring temperatures of up to 4,500 F.

The result was something no one thought possible, a synthesized form of highly pressurized calcium carbonate rock that could exist in lower mantle conditions.

"Before this study, the idea was that you should never have calcium carbonate in the deep earth, but only in a shallow environment where it hasn't gotten down to great depths," Dorfman said. "Our experiments show that toward the base of the mantle, the chemical reaction changes direction and swaps minerals like partners in square dancing -- the magnesium and calcium swap their carbonate and silicate partners producing calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate."

The size of their newly synthesized rock was only the width of a human hair, and the individual crystals comprising the rock were up to 1,000 times smaller. To read between the diamonds, Dorfman and Lv needed the sharpest knife and brightest light they could find.

They used the extremely powerful particle accelerator technology at Argonne National Lab in Illinois to focus X-ray light to a tiny point and illuminate what they had created. Then, with the help of collaborators at the Institute of Earth Physics of Paris and the University of Michigan's Center for Materials Characterization, they used ion beams to slice the new rock into cross sections.

Finally, using the state-of-the-art electron microscopy techniques at MSU's?Center for Advanced Microscopy, they successfully characterized the elemental distribution of their recovered samples.

"Without these labs, we would never have been able to directly observe what is going on in our experiments," Lv said. "Our collaboration with these facilities is a highlight of the study."

"We know that a vast majority of the earth's carbon isn't up in the atmosphere, it's in the interior, but our guess as to how much and where depend mostly on measurements of chemical reactions," Dorfman added. "Mingda Lv's work shows that calcium carbonate can be stable in mantle conditions and provides a new mechanism to take into account when we make models of the carbon cycle inside the earth."

WASHINGTON-- The stormy, centuries-old maelstrom of Jupiter's Great Red Spot was shaken but not destroyed by a series of anticyclones that crashed into it over the past few years.

The smaller storms cause chunks of red clouds to flake off, shrinking the larger storm in the process. But the new study found that these disruptions are "superficial." They are visible to us, but they are only skin deep on the Red Spot, not affecting its full depth.

The new study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, AGU's journal for research on the formation and evolution of the planets, moons and objects of our solar system and beyond.

"The intense vorticity of the [Great Red Spot], together with its larger size and depth compared to the interacting vortices, guarantees its long lifetime," said Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a professor of applied physics at the Basque Country University in Bilbao, Spain, and lead author of the new paper. As the larger storm absorbs these smaller storms, it "gains energy at the expense of their rotation energy."

The Red Spot has been shrinking for at least the past 150 years, dropping from a length of about 40,000 kilometers (24,850 miles) in 1879 to about 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles) today, and researchers still aren't sure about the causes of the decrease, or indeed how the spot was formed in the first place. The new findings show the small anticyclones may be helping to maintain the Great Red Spot.

Timothy Dowling, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Louisville who is a planetary atmospheric dynamics expert not involved in the new study, said that "it's an exciting time for the Red Spot."

Stormy collisions

Before 2019, the larger storm was only hit by a couple of anticyclones a year while more recently it was hit by as many as two dozen a year. "It's really getting buffeted. It was causing a lot of alarm," Dowling said.

Sánchez-Lavega and his colleagues were curious to see whether these relatively smaller storms had disturbed their big brother's spin.

The iconic feature of the gas giant sits near its equator, dwarfing earthly concepts of a big bad storm for at least 150 years since its first confirmed observation, though observations in 1665 may have been from the same storm. The Great Red Spot is about twice the diameter of Earth and blows at speeds of up to 540 kilometers (335 miles) per hour along its periphery.

"The [Great Red Spot] is the archetype among the vortices in planetary atmospheres," said Sánchez-Lavega, adding that the storm is one of his "favorite features in planetary atmospheres."

Cyclones like hurricanes or typhoons usually spin around a center with low atmospheric pressure, rotating counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, whether on Jupiter or Earth. Anticyclones spin the opposite way as cyclones, around a center with high atmospheric pressure. The Great Red Spot is itself an anticyclone, though it is six to seven times as big as the smaller anticyclones that have been colliding with it. But even these smaller storms on Jupiter are about half the size of the Earth, and about 10 times the size of the largest terrestrial hurricanes.

Sánchez-Lavega and his colleagues looked at satellite images of the Great Red Spot for the past three years taken from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter and other photos taken by a network of amateur astronomers with telescopes.

Devourer of storms

The team found the smaller anticyclones pass through the high-speed peripheral ring of the Great Red Spot before circling around the red oval. The smaller storms create some chaos in an already dynamic situation, temporarily changing the Red Spot's 90-day oscillation in longitude, and "tearing the red clouds from the main oval and forming streamers," Sánchez-Lavega said.

"This group has done an extremely careful, very thorough job," Dowling said, adding that the flaking of red material we see is akin to a crème brûlée effect, with a swirl apparent for a few kilometers on the surface that doesn't have much impact on the 200-kilometer (125-mile) depth of the Great Red Spot.

The researchers still don't know what has caused the Red Spot to shrink over the decades. But these anticyclones may be maintaining the giant storm for now.

"The ingestion of [anticyclones] is not necessarily destructive; it can increase the GRS rotation speed, and perhaps over a longer period, maintain it in a steady state," Sánchez-Lavega said.

What would a volcano - and its lava flows - look like on a planetary body made primarily of metal? A pilot study from North Carolina State University offers insights into ferrovolcanism that could help scientists interpret landscape features on other worlds.

Volcanoes form when magma, which consists of the partially molten solids beneath a planet's surface, erupts. On Earth, that magma is mostly molten rock, composed largely of silica. But not every planetary body is made of rock - some can be primarily icy or even metallic.

"Cryovolcanism is volcanic activity on icy worlds, and we've seen it happen on Saturn's moon Enceladus," says Arianna Soldati, assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. "But ferrovolcanism, volcanic activity on metallic worlds, hasn't been observed yet."

Enter 16 Psyche, a 140-mile diameter asteroid situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Its surface, according to infrared and radar observations, is mainly iron and nickel. 16 Psyche is the subject of an upcoming NASA mission, and the asteroid inspired Soldati to think about what volcanic activity might look like on a metallic world.

"When we look at images of worlds unlike ours, we still use what happens on Earth - like evidence of volcanic eruptions - to interpret them," Soldati says. "However, we don't have widespread metallic volcanism on Earth, so we must imagine what those volcanic processes might look like on other worlds so that we can interpret images correctly."

Soldati defines two possible types of ferrovolcanism: Type 1, or pure ferrovolcanism, occurring on entirely metallic bodies; and Type 2, spurious ferrovolcanism, occurring on hybrid rocky-metallic bodies.

In a pilot study, Soldati and colleagues from the Syracuse Lava Project produced Type 2 ferrovolcanism, in which metal separates from rock as the magma forms.

"The Lava Project's furnace is configured for melting rock, so we were working with the metals (mainly iron) that naturally occur within them," Soldati says. "When you melt rock under the extreme conditions of the furnace, some of the iron will separate out and sink to the bottom since it's heavier. By completely emptying the furnace, we were able to see how that metal magma behaved compared to the rock one."

The metallic lava flows travelled 10 times faster and spread more thinly than the rock flows, breaking into a myriad of braided channels. The metal also traveled largely beneath the rock flow, emerging from the leading edge of the rocky lava.

The smooth, thin, braided, widely spread layers of metallic lava would leave a very different impression on a planet's surface than the often thick, rough, rocky flows we find on Earth, according to Soldati.

"Although this is a pilot project, there are still some things we can say," Soldati says. "If there were volcanoes on 16 Psyche - or on another metallic body - they definitely wouldn't look like the steep-sided Mt. Fuji, an iconic terrestrial volcano. Instead, they would probably have gentle slopes and broad cones. That's how an iron volcano would be built - thin flows that expand over longer distances."

Brazilian researchers have published a systematic review of the scientific literature showing that some warm-up strategies such as dynamic stretching can effectively prepare soccer players to maintain kicking accuracy, whereas intense physical exercises have a negative effect on the velocity of the ball when kicked, and consumption of carbohydrate beverages during a match can enable players to maintain adequate kicking performance in the concluding moments of prolonged physical exercise such as a sudden-death playoff.

The review, published in the journal Sports Medicine in December 2020, analyzed 52 studies, ten of which examined the acute effects of warm-up exercises while 34 verified the overall impact of physical training and 21 explored recovery-related strategies.

Proficient kicking is essential in soccer, especially to score goals. The top three clubs in round 30 of the 2020 Brazilian Championship, for example, had taken 162, 132 and 169 shots at goal respectively in the matches played so far, scoring 50, 48 and 51 goals.

Individual player traits such as maturity, skill level and gender may influence performance, but training, and recovery interventions also help obtain better results. 

The literature review was part of the doctoral research conducted by Luiz Henrique Palucci Vieira with support from FAPESP at the Human Movement Research Laboratory (MOVI-LAB) of São Paulo State University’s School of Sciences (FC-UNESP) in Bauru.

Vieira’s PhD thesis advisors are Fabio Augusto Barbieri, who heads MOVI-LAB, and Paulo Santiago, who also took part in the review. Vieira is doing his research at the University of São Paulo’s Ribeirão Preto School of Physical Education and Sports (EEFERP-USP) with support from FAPESP via projects 2019/22262-3 and 2019/17729-0. 

According to Vieira and his co-authors in the review, kick velocity is negatively affected by intense physical exercise protocols, such as intermittent endurance sprinting or graded efforts to exhaustion, while passive resting in the half-time break does not affect kick velocity. Kicking accuracy and ball velocity can be enhanced by warm-up routines that include dynamic stretching, while consumption of carbohydrate beverages can help maintain ball velocity following prolonged exercise. 

The authors conclude that the review can help inform future research and practical interventions in an attempt to measure and optimize soccer kicking performance, although more studies are needed, especially involving young players. 

The next steps in Vieira’s project will include experiments designed to assess the effects of preparation and recovery techniques on players’ kicking performance. Initially, the researchers are analyzing the impact of individual characteristics such as sleep quality and brain (especially cortical) activity during execution of mid-distance kicks. 

“This is innovative research from the standpoint of applicability, aiming at different kinds of information, methods, and knowledge in neuromechanics to try to improve the performance of soccer players,” Barbieri told Agência FAPESP. “An example is the monitoring of brain activity during kick preparation and execution. Few studies have done this anywhere in the world.”

The second part of the project will include testing of post-activation potentiation (PAP) and cold water immersion, both widely used by soccer trainers, to find out how they affect movement mechanics and performance in young players. 

Kicking by under-17s in a club in the interior of the state of São Paulo was filmed using slow-motion cameras in 2019 and 2020 to analyze leg movements, ball velocity, and kicking accuracy. “This year we’ll continue the research to look for factors that influence kicking, complete our analysis of the data collected, and publish a paper,” Vieira said.

Academics have little access to professional soccer clubs in Brazil for research and science partnerships, he noted. More openness and collaboration are needed if there are to be advances in science and in player performance since scientific journals in the field tend to publish only papers with practical applications.

Methodology

To arrive at the study universe used in the review, the researchers conducted a systematic search for certain keywords and descriptors in papers indexed until July 2020 by PubMed, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, and ProQuest. The search resulted in 10,780 studies. After removing duplicates and studies not directly relevant to sports performance, they were left with 52 studies considered suitable for systematic review. A total of 947 players were evaluated in these studies, all of them male. According to Vieira, very little scientific research is done on female athletes. “This is also one of the priorities we advocate,” he said. 

ITHACA, N.Y. - Using light from the Big Bang, an international team led by Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has begun to unveil the material which fuels galaxy formation.

"There is uncertainty on the formation of stars within galaxies that theoretical models are unable to predict," said lead author Stefania Amodeo, a Cornell postdoctoral researcher in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, who now conducts research at the Observatory of Strasbourg, France. "With this work, we are providing tests for galaxy formation models to comprehend galaxy and star formation."

The research, "Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Modeling the Gas Thermodynamics in BOSS CMASS galaxies from Kinematic and Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Measurements," appears in the March 15 edition of Physical Review D.

Proto galaxies are always full of gas and when they cool, the galaxies start to form, said senior author Nick Battaglia, assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell. "If we were to just do a back-of-the-envelope calculation, gas should turn into stars," he said. "But it doesn't."

Galaxies are inefficient when they manufacture stars, Battaglia said. "About 10% of the gas - at most - in any given galaxy gets turned into stars," he explained, "and we want to know why."

The scientists can now check their longtime theoretical work and simulations, by looking at microwave observations with data and applying a 1970s-era mathematical equation. They've looked at data from Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) - which observes the Big Bang's static-filled cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation - and search for the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects. That combination of data enables the scientists to map out the material around that indicate the formation of galaxies in various stages.

"How do galaxies form and evolve in our universe?" Battaglia said. "Given the nature of astronomy, we can't sit and watch a galaxy evolve. We use various telescopic snapshots of galaxies - and each has its own evolution - and we try and stitch that information together. From there, we can extrapolate Milky Way formation."

Effectively, the scientists are using the cosmic microwave background - remnants of the Big Bang - as a backlit screen that is 14 billion years old to find this material around galaxies.

"It's like a watermark on a bank note," said co-author Emmanuel Schaan, the Chamberlain postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "If you put it in front of a backlight then the watermark appears as a shadow. For us, the backlight is the cosmic microwave background. It serves to illuminate the gas from behind, so we can see the shadow as the CMB light travels through that gas."

Together with Simone Ferraro, divisional fellow at Lawrence Berkeley, Schaan led the measurement part of the project.

"We're making these measurements of this galactic material at distances from galaxy centers never before done," Battaglia said. "These new observations are pushing the field."

HOUSTON ? A high rate of genetic mutations within a tumor, known as high tumor mutation burden (TMB), was only useful for predicting clinical responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in a subset of cancer types, according to a new study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The findings, published today in Annals of Oncology, suggest that TMB status may not be reliably used as a universal biomarker for predicting immunotherapy response. While TMB status was capable of successfully predicting response to checkpoint blockade in certain cancers, such as melanoma, lung and bladder cancer, there was no association with improved outcomes in others, including breast, prostate and brain cancers.

"This study represents the most comprehensive analysis to date of TMB as a biomarker for response to immune checkpoint blockade," said lead author Daniel J. McGrail, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in Systems Biology. "Our results do not support applying high TMB status as a universal biomarker for immunotherapy response, suggesting that additional tumor type-specific studies are needed to clarify how best to apply TMB status in cancer types where it does not appear to be associated with outcomes."

Gene mutations within a tumor lead to the production of mutant proteins, or neoantigens, which can be recognized as abnormal by the immune system. It follows that a high TMB would render tumors more immunogenic, which is why TMB status has become a leading candidate biomarker for predicting immunotherapy response, McGrail explained.

In June 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the anti-PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab for treating patients with advanced and refractory cancers with a high TMB, as indicated by a defined threshold level of mutations. The approval was based on results from the Phase II KEYNOTE-158 study, which found improved overall responses in patients with a high TMB. However, the trial did not include several cancer types, such as breast, prostate and brain cancers, which have not typically responded to immune checkpoint blockade therapy.

"The FDA approval of pembrolizumab for patients with high TMB certainly provides an important option for many patients," said senior author Shiaw-Yih Lin, Ph.D., professor of Systems Biology. "However, we felt that it was important to look more closely at TMB status in a broader group of cancer types and establish approaches to harmonize TMB across various assays to enable clinicians to best utilize the recent FDA approval."

The researchers analyzed over 10,000 tumors across 31 cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to study the relationship between TMB status and tumor immunogenicity, measured by the infiltration of immune cells (CD8+ T cells) into the tumor. They identified two classes of tumors - those with and without a strong correlation between TMB status and T cell infiltration.

The authors predicted that TMB status would not be able to predict immunotherapy response equally in these two groups. They evaluated this using previously published studies and MD Anderson patient cohorts.

For cancers with a strong correlation between TMB status and T cell infiltration, patients with a high TMB had improved clinical outcomes. Across all cancer types in this category, patients with a high TMB had a 39.8% overall response rate to checkpoint inhibitors, which was significantly higher than those with a low TMB.

In contrast, TMB status was not predictive of outcome in the second class of tumors. Within this category, patients with a high TMB had a 15.3% overall response rate, which was actually lower than the response rate for patients with low TMB.

"While TMB status does show value in predicting response to immune checkpoint blockade in several cancer types, this was not generalizable across all cancers," McGrail said. "For those cancer types where a high TMB does not appear to increase immunogenicity, additional prospective studies are needed to determine if TMB status can be an effective clinical biomarker and at what threshold."

Additionally, the researchers found that evaluating TMB status by sequencing a targeted panel of cancer-related genes may overestimate TMB when compared to whole exome sequencing, which offers an unbiased approach. While whole exome sequencing is not feasible in a clinical setting, the threshold for defining high TMB status may need to be evaluated in a cancer type-specific manner, McGrail explained.

The authors note that this study is limited by retrospective analyses across various DNA sequencing approaches, as well as variations in the immune checkpoint inhibitors and clinical outcomes reported across the different cohorts included.

BOs describe the periodic movement of electrons in solids to which an external static electric field is applied. However, it is challenging to measure the BOs directly in natural solids since the relaxation time of electrons is usually much shorter than the oscillation period. To date, analogies of electron BOs have been extended to the synthetic dimensions of time, frequency and angular momenta. In previous studies, the frequency BOs have been experimentally demonstrated in a nonlinear fibre with cross-phase modulation. However, the frequency spectrum has been obtained only at the output of the fibre, and thus the evolution process of BOs has been measured only indirectly. In addition, frequency BOs have been theoretically demonstrated in micro-resonators under temporal modulation. Considering the compact structure of ring resonators, the direct observation of BOs still faces difficulties in compensating for the power reduction when collecting signals.

In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Bing Wang from School of Physics and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and co-workers have directly observed the frequency BOs in a modulated fibre loop with time detuning. The spectrum of the incident optical pulse experienced a periodic movement in the frequency lattice formed by the phase modulation. The time detuning produced an effective electric-field force in the lattice, which was associated with the effective vector potential varying with the spectrum evolution. Additionally, the transient evolution of the spectrum was measured in real time by using the dispersive Fourier transformation (DFT) technique. Based on the frequency-domain BOs, a maximum frequency shift up to 82 GHz was achieved. The bandwidth of the input pulse was also broadened up to 312 GHz. The study offers a promising approach to realizing BOs in synthetic dimensions and may find applications in frequency manipulations in optical fibre communication systems. These scientists summarize the principle of the work:

"The phase modulation induces the coupling between the adjacent frequency modes which constructs a lattice in the frequency dimension. As the optical pulse propagates in fibre loop, the roundtrip time can be adjusted by using an optical delay line. A small time detuning can be introduced between the pulse circulation time and modulation period, which serves as an effective electric-field force in the frequency lattice and thus land thus gives rise to frequency BOs. We show that the vector potential can also contribute to generation of the effective force, which varies with the propagation distance. "

"To realize real-time measurement of the pulse spectrum coupled out from the loop, a spectroscope based on the DFT is connected at the end of the fibre-loop circuit. A long dispersion-compensating fibre performs a Fourier transform, which maps the spectrum envelope of the optical pulse into a time-domain waveform. Thanks to the dispersion in fibre, real-time measurement of the frequency spectrum with a resolution of ~9.8 GHz can be achieved."

"We implement the incidence of both short and broad pulses and directly observe the oscillating and breathing modes of frequency BOs. As the short pulse propagates in the fibre loop, one sees that the spectrum of the incident pulse evolves along a cosinoidal trajectory, referring to frequency BOs. For a broad pulse, the spectrum manifests a breathing pattern accompanied by a self-focusing effect during evolution." they added.

"Based on the present method, the spectrum manipulations overcome the microelectronic bandwidth limitation. This study may find many applications in high-efficiency frequency conversion and signal processing. Additionally, in the aid of BOs, we verified that the vector gauge potential can be employed to manipulate the optical properties of photons in synthetic frequency lattice, which provides a unique way to control light, especially in the field of topological photonics." the scientists forecast.

The conditions on Earth are ideal for life. Most places on our planet are neither too hot nor too cold and offer liquid water. These and other requirements for life, however, delicately depend on the right composition of the atmosphere. Too little or too much of certain gases - like carbon dioxide - and Earth could become a ball of ice or turn into a pressure cooker. When scientists look for potentially habitable planets, a key component is therefore their atmosphere.

Sometimes, that atmosphere is primitive and largely consists of the gases that were around when the planet formed - as is the case for Jupiter and Saturn. On terrestrial planets like Mars, Venus or Earth, however, such primitive atmospheres are lost. Instead, their remaining atmospheres are strongly influenced by surface geochemistry. Processes like the weathering of rocks alter the composition the atmosphere and thereby influence the habitability of the planet.

How exactly this works, especially under conditions very different from those on Earth, is what a team of scientists, led by Kaustubh Hakim of the Centre for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and the NCCR PlanetS, investigated. Their results were published today in The Planetary Science Journal.

Conditions are decisive

"We want to understand how the chemical reactions between the atmosphere and the surface of planets change the composition of the atmosphere. On Earth, this process - the weathering of silicate rocks assisted by water - helps to maintain a temperate climate over long periods of time", Hakim explains. "When the concentration of CO2 increases, temperatures also rise because of its greenhouse effect. Higher temperatures lead to more intense rainfall. Silicate weathering rates increase, which in turn reduce the CO2 concentration and subsequently lower the temperature", says the researcher.

However, it need not necessarily work the same way on other planets. Using computer simulations, the team tested how different conditions affect the weathering process. For example, they found that even in very arid climates, weathering can be more intense than on Earth if the chemical reactions occur sufficiently quickly. Rock types, too, influence the process and can lead to very different weathering rates according to Hakim. The team also found that at temperatures of around 70°C, contrary to popular theory, silicate weathering rates can decrease with rising temperatures. "This shows that for planets with very different conditions than on Earth, weathering could play very different roles", Hakim says.

Implications for habitability and life detection

If astronomers ever find a habitable world, it will likely be in what they call the habitable zone. This zone is the area around a star, where the dose of radiation would allow water to be liquid. In the solar system, this zone roughly lies between Mars and Venus.

"Geochemistry has a profound impact on the habitability of planets in the habitable zone", study co-author and professor of astronomy and planetary sciences at the University of Bern and member of the NCCR PlanetS, Kevin Heng, points out. As the team's results indicate, increasing temperatures could reduce weathering and its balancing effect on other planets. What would potentially be a habitable world could turn out to be a hellish greenhouse instead.

As Heng further explains, understanding geochemical processes under different conditions is not only important to estimate the potential for life, but also for its detection. "Unless we have some idea of the results of geochemical processes under varying conditions, we will not be able to tell whether bio-signatures - possible hints of life like the Phosphine that was found on Venus last year - indeed come from biological activity", the researcher concludes.

During the past 25 years astronomers have discovered a wide variety of exoplanets, made of rock, ice and gas, thanks to the construction of astronomical instruments designed specifically for planet searches. Also, using a combination of different observing techniques they have been able to determine a large numher of masses, sizes, and hence densities of the planets, which helps them to estimate their internal composition and raising the number of planets which have been discovered outside the Solar System.

However, to study the atmospheres of the rocky planets, which would made it possible to characterize fully those exoplanets which are similar to Earth, is extremely difficult with currently available instruments. For that reason, the atmospheric models for rocky planets are still not tested.

So it is interesting that the astronomers in the CARMENES (Calar Alto high- Resolution search for M dwarfs with Exoearths with Near-infrared and optical échelle Spectrographs), consortium in which the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) is a partner, have recently published a study, led by Trifon Trifonov, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy at Heidelberg (Germany), about the discovery of a hot super-Earth in orbit around a nearby red dwarf star Gliese 486, only 26 light years from the Sun.

To do this the scientists used the combined techniques of transit photometry and radial velocity spectroscopy, and used, among others, observations with the instrument MuSCAT2 (Multicolour Simultaneous Camera for studying Atmospheres of Transiting exoplanets) on the 1.52m Carlos Sánchez Telescope at the Teide Observatory. The results of this study have been published in the journal Science.

The planet they discovered, named Gliese 486b, has a mass 2.8 times that of the Earth, and is only 30% bigger. "Calculating its mean density from the measurements of its mass and radius we infer that its composition is similar to that of Venus or the Earth, which have metallic nuclei inside them", explains Enric Pallé, an IAC researcher and a co-author of the article.

Gliese 486b orbits its host star on a circular path every 1.5 days, at a distance of 2.5 million kilometres. In spite of being so near to its star, the planet has probably conserved part of its original atmosphere (the star is much cooler than our Sun) so that it is a good candidate to observe in more detail with the next generation of space and ground telescopes.

For Trifonov, "the fact that this planet is so near the sun is exciting because it will be possible to study it in more detail using powerful telescopes such as the iminent James Webb Space Telescope and the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope) now being built".

Gliese 486b takes the same length of time to spin on its axis as to orbit its host star, so that it always has the same side facing the star. Although Gliese 486 is much fainter and cooler than the Sun, the radiation is so intense that the surface of the planet heats up to at least 700K (some 430 degrees C). Because of this, the suface of Gliese 486b is probably more like the surface of Venus that that of the Earth, with a hot dry landscape, with burning rivers of lava. However, unlike Venus, Gliese 486b may have a thin atmosphere.

Calculations made with existing models of planetary atmospheres can be consistent with both hot surface and thin atmosphere scenarios because stellar irradiation tends to evaporate the atmosphere, while the planet's gravity tends to hold it back. Determining the balance between the two contributions is difficult today.

"The discovery of Gliese 486b has been a stroke of luck. If it had been around a hundred degrees hotter all its surface would be lava, and its atmosphere would be vaporized rock", explains José Antonio Caballero, a researcher at the Astrobiology Centre (CAB, CSIC-INTA) and co-author of the article. "On the other hand, if Gliese 486b had been around a hundred degrees cooler, it would not have been suitable for the follow-up observations".

Future planned observations by the CARMENES team will try to determine its orbital inclination, which makes it possible for Gliese 486b to cross the line of sight between us and the surface of the star, oculting some of its light, and producing what are known as transits.

They will also make spectroscopic measurements, using "emission spectroscopy", when the areas of the hemisphere lit up by the star are visible as phases of the planet (analagous to the phases of our Moon), during the orbits of Gliese 486b, befor it disappears behind the star. The spectrum observed will contain information about the conditions on the illuminated hot surface of the planet.

"We can't wait until the new telescopes are available", admits Trifonov. "The results we may obtain with them will help us to get a better understanding of the atmospheres of rocky planets, their extensión, their very high density, their composition, and their influence in distributing energy around the planets.

The CARMENES project, whose consortium is made up by 11 research institutions in Spain and Germany, has the aim of monitoring a set of 350 red dwarf stars to seek planets like the Earth, using a spectrograph on the 3.5 m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory (Spain). The present study has also used spectroscopic measurements to infer the mass of Gliese 486b. Observations were made with the MAROON-X instrument on Gemini North (8.1m) in the USA, and archive data were taken from the Keck 10 m telescope (USA) and the 3.6m telescope of ESO, (Chile).

The photometric observations come from NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) space observatory, (USA), whose data were basic for obtaining the radius of the planet, from the MuSCAT2 instrument on the 1.52m Carlos Sánchez Telescope at the Teide Observatory (Spain) and from the LCOGT (Las Cumbres Observational Global Telescope) in Chile, among others.

A newly discovered planet could be our best chance yet of studying rocky planet atmospheres outside the solar system, a new international study involving UNSW Sydney shows.

The planet, called Gliese 486b (pronounced Glee-seh), is a 'super-Earth': that is, a rocky planet bigger than Earth but smaller than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. It orbits a red dwarf star around 26 light-years away, making it a close neighbour - galactically speaking.

With a piping-hot surface temperature of 430 degrees Celsius, Gliese 486b is too hot to support human life. But studying its atmosphere could help us learn whether similar planets might be habitable for humans - or if they're likely to hold other signs of life.

The findings are published today in Science.

"This is the kind of planet we've been dreaming about for decades," says Dr Ben Montet, an astronomer and Scientia Lecturer at UNSW Science and co-author of the study.

"We've known for a long time that rocky super-Earths must exist around the nearby stars, but we haven't had the technology to search for them until recently.

"This finding has the potential to transform our understanding of planetary atmospheres."

Like Earth, Gliese 486b is a rocky planet - but that's where the similarities end.

Our neighbour is 30 per cent bigger and almost three times heavier than Earth. It's possible that its surface - which is hot enough to melt lead - may even be scattered with glowing lava rivers.

Super-Earths themselves aren't rare, but Gliese 486b special for two key reasons: firstly, its heat 'puffs up' the atmosphere, helping astronomers take atmospheric measurements; and secondly, it's a transiting planet, which means it crosses over its star from Earth's perspective - making it possible for scientists to conduct in-depth analysis of its atmosphere.

"Understanding super-Earths is challenging because we don't have any examples in our backyard," says Dr Montet.

"Gliese 486b is the type of planet we'll be studying for the next 20 years."

Lessons from the atmosphere

A planet's atmosphere can reveal a lot about its ability to support life.

For example, a lack of atmosphere might suggest the planet's nearby star is volatile and prone to high stellar activity - making it unlikely that life will have a chance to develop. On the other hand, a healthy, long-lived atmosphere could suggest conditions are stable enough to support life.

Both options help astronomers solve a piece of the planetary formation puzzle.

"We think Gliese 486b could have kept a part of its original atmosphere, despite being so close to its red dwarf star," says Dr Montet.

"Whatever we learn about the atmosphere will help us better understand how rocky planets form."

As a transiting planet, Gliese 486b gives scientists two unique opportunities to study its atmosphere: first when the planet passes in front of its star and a fraction of starlight shines through its atmospheric layer (a technique called 'transmission spectroscopy'); and then when starlight illuminates the surface of the planet as it orbits around and behind the star (called 'emission spectroscopy').

In both cases, scientists use a spectrograph - a tool that splits light according to its wavelengths - to decode the chemical makeup of the atmosphere.

"This is the single best planet for studying emission spectroscopy of all the rocky planets we know," says Dr Montet.

"It's also the second-best planet to study transmission spectroscopy."

Life on Gliese 486b

Gliese 486b is a great catch for astronomers - but you wouldn't want to live there, says Dr Montet.

"With a surface of 430 degrees Celsius, you wouldn't be able to go outside without some kind of spacesuit," he says.

"The gravity is also 70 per cent stronger than on Earth, making it harder to walk and jump. Someone who weighed 50 kilograms on Earth would feel like they weighed 85 kilograms on Gliese 486b."

On the plus side, the quick transition of the planet around its star means that interstellar visitors would have a birthday every 36 hours.

They would just need to expect the party to be interrupted.

"The planet is really close to its star, which means you'd really have to watch out for stellar storms," says Dr Montet.

"The impacts could be as innocuous as beautiful aurorae covering the sky, or they could completely wipe out electromagnetic systems."

But despite these dangers of living on Gliese 486b, Dr Montet says it's too valuable a planet to cross off our interstellar bucket list just yet.

"If humans are able to travel to other star systems in the future, this is one of the planets that would be on our list," he says.

"It's so nearby and so different than the planets in our own solar system."

Narrowing the search for habitable planets

The study was part of the CARMENES project, a consortium of eleven Spanish and German research institutions that look for signs of low-mass planets around red dwarf stars.

Red dwarfs are the most common type of star, making up around 70 per cent of all stars in the universe. They are also much more likely to have rocky planets than Sun-like stars.

Based on these numbers, the best chance for finding life in the universe may be looking around red dwarfs, says Dr Montet - but this comes with a catch.

"Red dwarfs are known to have a lot of stellar activity, like flares and coronal mass ejections," says Dr Montet. "This kind of activity threatens to destroy a planet's atmosphere.

"Measuring Gliese 486b's atmosphere will go a long way towards deciding if we should consider looking for signs of life around red dwarfs."

From an Aussie backyard to NASA

The findings were made possible using data from NASA's all-sky survey called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission and telescopes in Spain, USA, Chile and Hawaii.

Almost 70 people were involved in the study, including two Australians: Dr Montet from UNSW Science, and Thiam-Guan (TG) Tan, a citizen astronomer who built an observatory in his own backyard in Perth. Mr Tan helped confirm the planet by observing a transit of Gliese 486b.

"I built my observatory more than 10 years ago to see if I could participate in the search for planets," says Mr Tan. "It has been very satisfying to be able to confirm that a bloke in a backyard can contribute to significant discoveries, such as Gliese 486b."

In addition to Gliese 486b, Mr Tan has helped discover more than 70 planets using his observatory.

"It's an interesting time in astronomy," says Dr Montet. "TESS is producing all of this data, but it's more information than any person or group can look at.

"Citizen scientists have an opportunity to get involved in testing astronomical data, whether it's confirming a planet sighting or looking for transiting planets.

"These kind of collaborations between professional and amateur astronomers are really helping advance the scientific field."

People interested in getting involved in astronomical research can look at the Planet Hunters website, says Dr Montet. TESS data is made available to the community only two months after its collected.

"The easiest way to get involved is to create an account and start looking at TESS data," he says. "You don't even need a fancy telescope.

"Who knows - you might even be able to find the next Earth-sized planet."

TROY, N.Y. -- Envisioning an animal-free drug supply, scientists have -- for the first time -- reprogrammed a common bacterium to make a designer polysaccharide molecule used in pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. Published today in Nature Communications, the researchers modified E. coli to produce chondroitin sulfate, a drug best known as a dietary supplement to treat arthritis that is currently sourced from cow trachea.

Genetically engineered E. coli is used to make a long list of medicinal proteins, but it took years to coax the bacteria into producing even the simplest in this class of linked sugar molecules -- called sulfated glycosaminoglycans --that are often used as drugs and nutraceuticals..

"It's a challenge to engineer E. coli to produce these molecules, and we had to make many changes and balance those changes so that the bacteria will grow well," said Mattheos Koffas, lead researcher and a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "But this work shows that it is possible to produce these polysaccharides using E. coli in animal-free fashion, and the procedure can be extended to produce other sulfated glycosaminoglycans."

At Rensselaer, Koffas worked with Jonathan Dordick a fellow professor of chemical and biological engineering, and Robert Linhardt a professor of chemistry and chemical biology. All three are members of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies. Dordick is a pioneer in using enzymes for material synthesis and designing biomolecular tools for the development of better drugs. Linhardt is a glycans expert and one of the world's foremost authorities on the blood-thinner heparin, a sulfated glycosaminoglycans currently derived from pig intestine.

Linhardt, who developed the first synthetic version of heparin, said engineering E. coli to produce the drug has many advantages over the current extractive process or even a chemoenzymatic process.

"If we prepare chondroitin sulfate chemoenzymatically, and we make one gram, and it takes a month to make, and someone calls us and says, 'Well, now I need 10 grams,' we're going to have to spend another month to make 10 grams," Linhardt said. "Whereas, with the fermentation, you throw the engineered organism in a flask, and you have the material, whether it's one gram, or 10 grams, or a kilogram. This is the future."

"The ability to endow a simple bacterium with a biosynthetic pathway only found in animals is critical for synthesis at commercially relevant scales. Just as important is that the complex medicinal product that we produced in E. coli is structurally the same as that used as the dietary supplement." said Dordick.

Koffas outlined three major steps the team had to build into the bacteria so that it would produce chondroitin sulfate: introducing a gene cluster to produce an unsulfated polysaccharide precursor molecule, engineering the bacteria to make an ample supply of an energetically expensive sulfur donor molecule, and introducing a sulfur transferase enzyme to put the sulfur donor molecule onto the unsulfated polysaccharide precursor molecule.

Introducing a working sulfotransferase enzyme posed a particularly difficult challenge.

"The sulfotransferases are made by much more complex cells," Koffas said. "When you take them out of a complex eukaryotic cell and put them into E. coli, they're not functional at all. You basically get nothing. So we had to do quite a bit of protein engineering to make it work."

The team first produced a structure of the enzyme, and then used an algorithm to help identify mutations they could make to the enzyme to produce a stable version that would work in E. coli.

Although the modified E. coli produce a relatively small yield -- on the order of micrograms per liter -- they thrive under ordinary lab conditions, offering a robust proof of concept.

"This work is a milestone in engineering and manufacturing of biologics and it opens new avenues in several fields such as therapeutics and regenerative medicine that need a substantial supply of specific molecules whose production is lost with aging and diseases," said Deepak Vashishth, director of the CBIS. "Such advances take birth and thrive in interdisciplinary environments made possible through the unique integration of knowledge and resources available at the Rensselaer CBIS."