Heavens
TORONTO, September 5, 2019 - York University researchers have made a precise measurement of the size of the proton - a crucial step towards solving a mystery that has preoccupied scientists around the world for the past decade.
A new study from Caltech shows that giant impacts can dramatically lower the internal pressure of planets, a finding that could significantly change the current model of planetary formation.
The impacts, such as the one that is thought to have caused the formation of the earth's moon roughly 4.5 billion years ago, could cause random fluctuations in core and mantle pressures that would explain some puzzling geochemical signatures in Earth's mantle.
Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. Today, there are indications that an active moon outside our solar system, an exo-Io, could be hidden at the exoplanet system WASP-49b.
Maunakea, Hawaii - Astronomers have discovered a planet three times the mass of Jupiter that travels on a long, egg-shaped path around its star. If this planet were somehow placed into our own solar system, it would swing from within our asteroid belt to out beyond Neptune. Other giant planets with highly elliptical orbits have been found around other stars, but none of those worlds were located at the very outer reaches of their star systems like this one.
When breast cancer cells spread through the body, they do so mainly through the lymph system that normally removes excess fluid and waste products from our tissues. Now, scientists from the group of Professor Massimiliano Mazzone (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology) identified a novel subset of immune cells, called Podoplanin-expressing macrophages (PoEMs), that change the tissues near a tumor in a way that promotes the spreading of cancer cells. Getting rid of these PoEMs in a mouse model strongly reduced the ability of breast cancer cells to move to other parts of the body.
A group of researchers may have found a way to reverse falling crop yields caused by increasingly salty farmlands throughout the world.
Led by Brent Nielsen, professor of microbiology and molecular biology at Brigham Young University, scientists have used bacteria found in the roots of salt-tolerant plants to successfully inoculate alfalfa plants against overly salty soil.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have developed a new method with which strong magnetic fields can be precisely measured. They use neutrons obtained from the SINQ spallation source. In the future, it will therefore be possible to measure the fields of magnets that are already installed in devices and thus are inaccessible by other probing techniques. The researchers have now published their results in the journal Nature Communications.
New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) published Aug. 19, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides evidence of the formation and abundance of abiotic methane--methane formed by chemical reactions that don't involve organic matter--on Earth and shows how the gases could have a similar origin on other planets and moons, even those no longer home to liquid water. Researchers had long noticed methane released from deep-sea vents.
New research from astronomers at the University of Washington uses the intriguing TRAPPIST-1 planetary system as a kind of laboratory to model not the planets themselves, but how the coming James Webb Space Telescope might detect and study their atmospheres, on the path toward looking for life beyond Earth.
Wind erosion has been ruled out as the primary cause of methane gas release on Mars, Newcastle University academics have shown.
Methane can be produced over time through both geological and biological routes and since its first detection in the Martian atmosphere in 2003, there has been intense speculation about the source of the gas and the possibility that it could signal life on the planet.
The Devonian period, which was 419 million to 359 million years ago, is best known for Tiktaalik, the lobe-finned fish that is often portrayed pulling itself onto land. However, the "age of the fishes," as the period is called, also saw evolutionary progress in plants. Researchers reporting August 8 in the journal Current Biology describe the largest example of a Devonian forest, made up of 250,000 square meters of fossilized lycopsid trees, which was recently discovered near Xinhang in China's Anhui province.
A new study of rocks that formed billions of years ago lends fresh insight into how Earth's plate tectonics, or the movement of large pieces of Earth's outer shell, evolved over the planet's 4.56-billion-year history.
It has long been known that gold can be used to do things that philosophers have never even dreamed of. The Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow has confirmed the existence of 'gold glue': bonds involving gold atoms, capable of permanently bonding protein rings. Skilfully used by an international team of scientists, the bonds have made it possible to construct molecular nanocages with a structure so far unparalleled in nature or even in mathematics.
AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 5, 2019) - In the face of diabetes, a common condition in which glucose and levels of destructive inflammation soar, whole body vibration appears to improve how well our body uses glucose as an energy source and adjust our microbiome and immune cells to deter inflammation, investigators report.
For the first time they have described how regular use of whole body vibration can create this healthier mix by yielding a greater percentage of macrophages -- cells that can both promote or prevent inflammation -- that suppress rather than promote.
One of the most important events in evolutionary history occurred around 500 million years ago with the spread of plant life from water to land. For plants to thrive in this new environment, root systems had to evolve to grow downwards, following gravity with two primary purposes: anchoring in the soil and providing a source of water and nutrients for growth of the parts of the plant above the ground. This mechanism -- called gravitropism--has been extensively studied in flowering plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana.