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Flatworms left in sunlight spur investigations into rare metabolic disorders

A type of flatworm could be a new weapon in the hunt for better ways to treat a group of diseases that can cause extreme sensitivity to light, facial hair growth, and hallucinations, according to a study published in the journal eLife.

Porphyrias are a group of rare metabolic disorders characterized by red and purple pigments accumulating in the body. With the accidental discovery that the skin color of the flatworm Schmidtea mediterranea (S. mediterranea) changes under prolonged exposure to sunlight, these animals could provide a new model for studying the diseases.

It pays to increase energy consumption

What is the most optimal energy behaviour in everyday life with variable electricity prices? Researchers at Aarhus University have carried out extensive theoretical mapping of the way private consumers can save money for heating in a modern supply system based on electricity.

Surprisingly enough, the mapping shows that by using approximately 10 per cent more energy for heating, it is possible to save about 10 per cent on the heating bill, at the same time as protecting the environment with lower carbon dioxide emission.

Use energy and save money

Measuring the Milky Way: 1 massive problem, 1 new solution

HAMILTON, May 31, 2016 - It is a galactic challenge, to be sure, but Gwendolyn Eadie is getting closer to an accurate answer to a question that has defined her early career in astrophysics: what is the mass of the Milky Way?

The short answer, so far, is 7 X 1011 solar masses. In terms that are easier to comprehend, that's about the mass of our Sun, multiplied by 700 billion. The Sun, for the record, has a mass of two nonillion (that's 2 followed by 30 zeroes) kilograms, or 330,000 times the mass of Earth.

"And our galaxy isn't even the biggest galaxy," Eadie says.

Theft behind Planet 9 in our solar system

Through a computer-simulated study, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden show that it is highly likely that the so-called Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This would make it the first exoplanet to be discovered inside our own solar system. The theory is that our sun, in its youth some 4.5 billion years ago, stole Planet 9 from its original star.

A new 'Einstein ring' is discovered

The PhD student Margherita Bettinelli, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of La Laguna (ULL), together with an international team of astrophysicists has recently discovered an unusual astronomical object: an Einstein ring. These phenomena, predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, are quite rare but scientifically interesting. The interest is sufficiently strong that this object has been given its own name: the "The Canarias Einstein ring".

Leaving the electrical grid in the Upper Peninsula

Known for snow rather than sun, Michigan's Upper Peninsula could still support a significant network of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy systems. Solar energy alone in the region is seasonally restricted. However, solar coupled with cogeneration and batteries could overcome any cloudy, cold winter day.

Like to get more bang for your sustainability-boosting buck? Here's how

Manufacturers, retailers, governments and other buyers are under a lot of pressure these days to preferentially purchase products with relatively low environmental footprints. But options can be overwhelming: Is it better to favor suppliers who use renewable electricity to produce their products, or those that use recycled cardboard for the boxes that contain them? Until now there has been no easy way to answer that, since measuring the impact of green products can be costly and comparing the relative environmental and economic merits of different products is next to impossible.

Google searches for 'chickenpox' reveal big impact of vaccinations

ANN ARBOR -- Countries that implement government-mandated vaccinations for chickenpox see a sharp drop in the number of Google searches for the common childhood disease afterward, demonstrating that immunization significantly reduces seasonal outbreaks.

That's one of the findings from a new University of Michigan-led study that analyzed thousands of Google searches for "chickenpox." The researchers downloaded and analyzed freely available Google Trends data from 36 countries on five continents, covering an 11-year period starting in 2004.

NASA looks at winds in developing tropical cyclone

The low pressure area located between Bermuda and the Bahamas, designated as System 91L became a little better defined today. NASA's RapidScat analyzed the system's winds, and NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided a visible look at the developing system.

A planet 1,200 light-years away is a good prospect for a habitable world

A distant planet known as Kepler-62f could be habitable, a team of astronomers reports.

The planet, which is about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra, is approximately 40 percent larger than Earth. At that size, Kepler-62f is within the range of planets that are likely to be rocky and possibly could have oceans, said Aomawa Shields, the study's lead author and a National Science Foundation astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellow in UCLA's department of physics and astronomy.

Remains of bizarre group of extinct snail-eating Australian marsupials discovered

Fossil remains of a previously unknown family of carnivorous Australian marsupials that lived 15 million years ago have been discovered at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site in north-western Queensland by a UNSW Australia-led team of researchers.

"Malleodectes mirabilis was a bizarre mammal, as strange in its own way as a koala or kangaroo," says study lead author UNSW Professor Mike Archer.

Mars is emerging from an ice age

Radar measurements of Mars' polar ice caps reveal that the mostly dry, dusty planet is emerging from an ice age, following multiple rounds of climate change. Understanding the Martian climate will help determine when the planet was habitable in the past, how that changed, and may inform studies of climate change on Earth. Models have suggested that Mars has undergone ice ages in the past, but empirical data to confirm this has been sparse.

SwRI scientists discover evidence of ice age at martian north pole

San Antonio, Texas -- May 26, 2016 -- Using radar data collected by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a Southwest Research Institute-led team found evidence of an ice age recorded in the polar deposits of Mars. Ice ages on Mars are driven by processes similar to those responsible for ice ages on Earth, that is, long-term cyclical changes in the planet's orbit and tilt, which affect the amount of solar radiation it receives at each latitude.

Migration back to Africa took place during the Paleolithic

The Palaeogenomics study conducted by the Human Evolutionary Biology group of the Faculty of Science and Technology, led by Concepción de la Rua, in collaboration with researchers in Sweden, the Netherlands and Romania, has made it possible to retrieve the complete sequence of the mitogenome of the Pestera Muierii woman(PM1)using two teeth. This mitochondrial genome corresponds to the now disappeared U6 basal lineage, and it is from this lineage that the U6 lineages, now existing mainly in the populations of the north of Africa, descend from.

Astronomers find giant planet around very young star

In contradiction to the long-standing idea that larger planets take longer to form, U.S. astronomers today announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a star so young that it still retains a disk of circumstellar gas and dust.