Articles by News Staff

An artist’s reconstruction of the gateway and drain at the ancient city of Harappa. Image credit: Chris Sloan.

Indus Civilization People Ate Mainly Meat and Dairy Products

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

An analysis of ceramic lipid residues from rural and urban sites of the Indus Civilization in northwest India provides chemical evidence for milk, meat...

A pair of kiwi by John Gerrard Keulemans in A history of the birds of New Zealand, 1873. Image credit: National Library NZ.

First Remote-Touch Probing Birds Appeared in Cretaceous Period

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

Some probe-foraging birds locate their buried prey by detecting vibrations in the substrate using a specialized tactile bill-tip organ. This remarkable...

Beta-caryophyllene and caryophyllene oxide-induced horse manure rolling behavior of Ginny, the giant panda at Beijing Zoo. Image credit: Zhou et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004640117.

Wild Giant Pandas Roll in Horse Manure to Increase Cold Tolerance

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

Wild giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) not only frequently sniff and wallow in fresh horse manure at low ambient temperatures, but also actively rub...

Al-Shaar et al. found that greater intakes of total, unprocessed, and processed red meat were each associated with a higher risk of coronary heart disease. Compared with total, unprocessed, or processed red meat, other dietary components such as soy, nuts, and legumes were associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease. These associations were stronger among older men. These findings are consistent with the effects of these foods on low density lipoprotein cholesterol levels and support a health benefit of limiting red meat consumption and replacement with plant protein sources; this would also have important environmental benefits. The team also found that substituting whole grains or dairy products for total red meat and substituting eggs for processed red meat were also associated with a lower coronary heart disease risk. Image credit: Ulrike Leone.

Replacing Red Meat with Plant Foods Reduces Coronary Heart Disease Risk, Study Suggests

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

According to a new study published in The BMJ, substituting high quality plant foods such as legumes, nuts, or soy for red meat might reduce the risk of...

An artist’s impression of what the Milky Way might look like seen from above. The colored rings show the rough extent of the Heracles galaxy. The yellow dot shows the position of the Sun. Image credit: Danny Horta-Darrington, Liverpool John Moores University / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SDSS.

Astronomers Find ‘Fossil Galaxy’ Hidden in Depths of Milky Way

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

A small satellite galaxy, named Heracles, collided with our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 billion years ago and its remnants account for about one third of...

Jupiter and Saturn have been traveling across the sky together all year, but in December, get ready for them to really put on a show. Over the first three weeks of the month, watch each evening as the two planets get closer in the sky than they’ve appeared in two decades. Look for them low in the southwest in the hour after sunset, Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Jupiter and Saturn Will Form ‘Double Planet’ for First Time since Middle Ages

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

On December 21, 2020, the Solar System’s two gas giants will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since 1226 CE. Jupiter...

A fragment of the Tagish Lake meteorite. Image credit: Mike Zolensky, NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Scientists Find Precursor of Prebiotic Chemistry in Three Meteorites

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has detected a polyheterocyclic organic molecule called hexamethylenetetramine in three carbonaceous meteorites: Murchison,...

The positions of 16 new supernova remnant candidates in the Large Magellanic Cloud are marked in yellow; previously classified X-ray supernova remnants -- MCSNR J0541-6659, MCSNR 0522-6740 and MCSNR J0542-7104 -- are marked in violet color. Image credit: Yew et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa3382.

Astronomers Spot Ancient Supernova Remnants in Large Magellanic Cloud

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have confirmed three supernova remnants and discovered 16 new supernova remnant candidates in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite...

Aspyn Palatnick holding the world’s first mobile genetics laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s 125th anniversary Open House. Image credit: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Researchers Develop Handheld DNA Sequencer

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

By pairing a new app called iGenomics with a handheld DNA sequencer, users can easily align and analyze relatively small genomes, like those of viral pathogens. Aspyn...

Hayabusa-2’s container with material from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu and its parachute in South Australia. Image credit: JAXA.

Hayabusa-2 Returns Samples of Asteroid Ryugu to Earth

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

On December 6, 2020, JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft delivered a landing capsule with samples of material collected from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid...

This image of a sunspot was taken on January 28, 2020 by NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer. The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The sunspot is sculpted by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gas boiling up from below. This image uses a warm palette of red and orange, but the context viewer took this sunspot image at the wavelength of 530 nm -- in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Image credit: NSO / AURA / NSF.

Inouye Solar Telescope Captures Its First Image of Sunspot

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

An image of a sunspot captured by NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope clearly shows the potential of the telescope and its set of state-of-the-art...

An ancient Japanese wooden sailing vessel. Image credit: Pratyeka / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Paleolithic Humans Deliberately Crossed Ocean to Japanese Islands 35,000 Years Ago: Study

Dec 7, 2020 by News Staff

Paleolithic people deliberately crossed the challenging ocean to migrate to the Ryukyu Islands of southwestern Japan, even though the islands would not...

A microbial cell (center of the picture) detected from a sediment core sample at the depth of 1176.8 m at 120 degrees Celsius. Scale bar - 20 μm. Image credit: JAMSTEC / IODP.

Scientists Find Single-Celled Microorganisms in Deep, Hot Subseafloor Sediments

Dec 4, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has discovered microbial life, in particular bacterial vegetative cells, in up to 1.2-km-deep and up to 120 degrees...

An artist’s reconstruction of ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi. Image credit: Katrina Kenny.

Cambrian Deep-Sea Arthropods Had Complex Compound Eyes

Dec 4, 2020 by News Staff

A team of paleontologists from Australia and the United Kingdom has found that ancient deep-sea creatures called radiodonts developed sophisticated eyes...

Part of the SMASH dataset showing an unprecedented wide-angle view of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / SMASH / D. Nidever, Montana State University / Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage / Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin.

Astronomers Capture Deepest Views Ever of Magellanic Clouds

Dec 4, 2020 by News Staff

New images, taken with the 520-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-m Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory,...

An aerial oblique photo of the volcanoes in the Islands of Four Mountains, Alaska, taken in July 2014. In the center is the summit of Mount Tana. Behind Tana are (left to right) Herbert, Cleveland, and Carlisle volcanoes. Image credit: John Lyons / USGS.

Geologists Find Evidence for Giant Underwater Volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

The Islands of Four Mountains, a small group of volcanic islands in the central Aleutians, could actually be part of a single, undiscovered giant volcano...

These images of the Stingray Nebula were captured by Hubble in 1996 (left) and 2016 (right). Image credit: NASA / ESA / B. Balick, University of Washington / M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía / G. Ramos-Larios, Universidad de Guadalajara.

Hubble Observes Rapidly Fading Stingray Nebula

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

A planetary nebula called the Stingray Nebula has faded precipitously over just the past 20 years, according to an analysis of the archival images from...

Giant sloth drawing. Image credit: Morcote-Ríos et al., doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.026.

12,000-Year-Old Rock Drawings of Ice Age Megafauna Discovered in Colombian Amazon

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Archaeologists on the ERC project LASTJOURNEY have discovered spectacular rock pictographs in three separate rock shelters in the Guaviare Department of...

Data from more than 1.8 billion stars have been used to create this map of the entire sky. It shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite and released as part of Gaia’s Early Data Release 3. Brighter regions represent denser concentrations of bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer and fainter stars are observed. The color of the image is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is actually a flattened disk seen edge-on that contains most of the Galaxy’s stars. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears bright, and thronged with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of more distant stars. Many of these clouds conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are currently being born. Dotted across the image are also many globular and open clusters, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / A. Moitinho.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Data on More Than 1.8 Billion Stars

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium released today the most detailed ever catalogue of Milky Way stars. The new data set,...

The young Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 m deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 km. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

Study: Early Mars Likely Had Energy Source for Underground Life

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Science Advances, the Martian subsurface would have been the most habitable region for simple life forms...

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