Operations teams have confirmed NASA’s mission to “touch” the Sun survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024. Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone received late on Dec. 26 confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the…

In the search for new materials that can enable more efficient electronics, scientists are exploring so-called 2-D materials. These are sheets of just one atom thick, that may have all kinds of interesting electronic properties. If two sheets are placed on top of each other at specific angles, this may lead to new properties such as superconductivity. University of Groningen materials scientist Antonija Grubišić-Čabo and her colleagues studied such a ‘twisted’ material and discovered that it defied theoretical predictions. Together…

Cancer in children and adolescents is rare. Nevertheless, malignant diseases are still one of the most common causes of death in this age group. Survivors of childhood or adolescent cancer often suffer chronic health problems with increased morbidity and mortality rates. The most important known risk factor for childhood cancer is genetic predisposition to cancer. Certain disease-associated variants in a person’s genes increase the risk of developing cancer. ‘Understanding the causes of cancer in children and adolescents is essential in…

To stay healthy, plants balance the energy they put into growing with the amount they use to defend against harmful bacteria. The mechanisms behind this equilibrium have largely remained mysterious. Soil Bacteria: The Unexpected Key to Plant Immunity Now, engineers at Princeton have found an answer in an unexpected place: the harmless, or sometimes beneficial, bacteria that cluster around plants’ roots. In an article published Dec. 24 in the journal Cell Reports, researchers showed that some types of soil bacteria can influence a…

His work helps to pave the way to major contributions to improvements to the facility, and to data analysis and interpretation by means of theory or modelling. Three excellent posters were also honoured. “Patrick Heighway deserves the prestigious prize for his pivotal role in measuring X-ray diffraction at extreme pressures and temperatures at the HED-HiBEF Instrument”, says Emma McBride from Queen’s University, Belfast and chairperson of the User Organization Executive Committee (UOEC). His work combines experimental data with molecular dynamics…

Wajarri artist, Judith Anaru, painted a fast radio burst as part of a series commissioned by CSIRO to celebrate the research being undertaken with CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope on Wajarri Country. Image Credit: Judith Anaru, CRAFT, 2019 The first trial of an Australian-developed technology has detected mysterious objects by sifting through signals from space like sand on a beach. The first trial of an Australian-developed technology has detected mysterious objects by sifting through signals from space like sand on a…

By exploring structural changes in the brain related to bipolar disorder and comparing them with major depression, two of the most devastating mental health conditions worldwide, the global initiative seeks to pave the way for more effective treatments. A new study, led by USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI), will explore structural alterations in the brains of people with bipolar disorder (BD), a chronic mental illness with one of the highest rates of attempted suicide — and for…

Researchers from SANKEN (The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research), at Osaka University discover that temperature-controlled conductive networks in vanadium dioxide enhance the sensitivity of silicon device to terahertz light  Osaka, Japan – High-speed electronic devices that do not use much power are useful for wireless communication. High-speed operation has traditionally been achieved by making devices smaller, but as devices become smaller, fabrication becomes increasingly difficult. Have we reached a dead end? Not yet! A research team at Osaka University…

Researchers are attempting to develop room-temperature superconductors, which would revolutionize energy efficiency  Rice University physicist Emilia Morosan is part of an international research collaboration that has been awarded multimillion-dollar funding from The Kavli Foundation to develop and test next-generation superconductors through artificial intelligence and quantum geometry. This global initiative, spearheaded by Päivi Törmä of Aalto University in Finland, seeks to push the boundaries of quantum materials science and superconductivity. The project includes funding from the Klaus Tschira Foundation and philanthropist Kevin Wells, fueling this…

Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope help to explain the cluster’s mysterious starburst, usually only seen in younger galaxies.  The core of a massive cluster of galaxies appears to be pumping out far more stars than it should. Now researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a key ingredient within the cluster that explains the core’s prolific starburst. In a new study published in Nature, the scientists report using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the Phoenix cluster —…

Scientists successfully identify microbe fossils in terrestrial rocks like those found on Mars, opening up the possibility of searching for fossils on the Red Planet The first life on Earth formed four billion years ago, as microbes living in pools and seas: what if the same thing happened on Mars? If it did, how would we prove it? Scientists hoping to identify fossil evidence of ancient Martian microbial life have now found a way to test their hypothesis, proving they…

Researchers in the Department of Entomology found that the secret to the bees’ success in food gathering is all in the “waggle.” As far as animals go, honeybees are world-class dancers. While not as deep and complex as a Super Bowl half-time show, the bees’ moves, known as the “waggle” dance, convey very specific food foraging instructions to their nestmates. The direction the dancer moves explains to other bees which way to go, and the duration of the waggle dance,…

University of Arizona neuroscientists studying the brains of songbirds have found that aging alters the gene expressions that control the birds’ song. The finding could lead to earlier diagnoses and better treatments for human neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, which are known to hinder vocal production in their early stages. The study, published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, found that networks of interacting genes, in a region of the bird’s brain involved with singing, dramatically…

A study published in JCAP places new limits on quantum gravity using data from the underwater detector KM3NeT Quantum gravity is the missing link between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the yet-to-be-discovered key to a unified theory capable of explaining both the infinitely large and the infinitely small. The solution to this puzzle might lie in the humble neutrino, an elementary particle with no electric charge and almost invisible, as it rarely interacts with matter, passing through everything on our…

Research hints at calcium’s potential role in enforcing a specific molecular handedness among primitive polyesters and early biomolecules A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo has uncovered a surprising role for calcium in shaping life’s earliest molecular structures. Their findings suggest that calcium ions can selectively influence how primitive polymers form, shedding light on a long-standing mystery: how life’s molecules came to prefer a single “handedness” (chirality). Like our left…

Light conditions in the morning before waking up affect restfulness Sleep is a necessary part of people’s daily routine, but modern lifestyles and technology have ushered in an era of decreased rest time and subsequent fatigue. Further, the bedroom environment, such as light, sound, and temperature, is important for a good night’s sleep, though this is often neglected in residential architecture. In search of a conclusive remedy, common sleep studies use artificial light that is easy to control. Osaka Metropolitan…

Researchers at the HIPS decipher novel mode of action of natural product antibiotic The development and spread of antibiotic resistance represents one of the greatest threats to global health. To overcome these resistances, drugs with novel mode of action are urgently needed. Researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) have now uncovered the mode of action of a promising class of natural products – the chlorotonils. These molecules simultaneously target the bacterial cell membrane and the bacteria’s…

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and collaborating institutions reveal in Nature Cell Biology a strategy that helps medulloblastoma, the most prevalent malignant brain tumor in children, spread and grow on the leptomeninges, the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. They discovered a novel line of communication between metastatic medulloblastoma and leptomeningeal fibroblasts that mediates recruitment and reprogramming of the latter to support tumor growth. The findings suggest that…

Farmers apply nitrogen fertilizers to crops to boost yields, feeding more people and livestock. But when there’s more fertilizer than the crop can take up, some of the excess can be converted into gaseous forms, including nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that traps nearly 300 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. About 70% of human-caused nitrous oxide comes from agricultural soils, so it’s vital to find ways to curb those emissions. Before they can recommend practices…

Using the video game Minecraft to understand human social learning The ability to learn socially from one another is a defining feature of the human species. Social learning enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations. And although we are able to build cities full of skyscrapers, send people into space, and collectively develop cures for diseases, most studies investigating social learning mechanisms focus on relatively simple, abstract tasks that bear little resemblance to real-world social learning environments. As a…