Articles by News Staff

The receptors required for the gustatory responses to sour compounds have been elusive. Rimal et al discover a Drosophila taste receptor, IR7a, which is required for rejecting a sour chemical. Surprisingly, IR7a is narrowly tuned to acetic acid, suggesting that carboxylic acids are detected by a repertoire of receptors. Image credit: Rimal et al, doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.01.042.

Scientists Identify Sour Taste Receptor in Fruit Flies

Feb 6, 2019 by News Staff

Sour taste allows for the detection of hydrogen ions and organic acids. It is one of the five basic tastes and, along with other chemical and textural...

In conventional electronic devices, electricity requires the movement of electrons (blue spheres) and their positive counterparts, called holes (red spheres), which behave much like the gas molecules in our atmosphere. Although they move rapidly and collide infrequently in the gas phase, electrons and holes can condense into liquid droplets akin to liquid water in devices composed of ultrathin materials. Image credit: QMO Lab, University of California, Riverside.

‘Electron Liquid’ Created at Room Temperature

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has produced the first ‘electron-hole liquid’ at room temperature. In conventional...

This image was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its most recent close flyby of Jupiter on December 21, 2018. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.

NASA Video Shows Massive Storm in Jupiter’s Southern Hemisphere

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

A giant Jovian storm called Oval BA is captured in an amazing new video from NASA’s Juno mission. Oval BA and the famed Great Red Spot. Image credit:...

From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbits once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational ‘glue’ to hold it all together. But this pull of gravity is much weaker in the Galaxy’s far outer disk. There, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way’s gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, instead they give the disk an S-like, or warped, appearance. Image credit: Xiaodian Chen.

New 3D Map of Milky Way Reveals True Shape of Its Stellar Disk

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has used 1,339 classical Cepheid stars — pulsating variable stars each up to 100,000 brighter than our Sun —...

Forster et al created the most comprehensive collection of human intestinal bacteria to date.

Researchers Discover 105 New Species of Human Gastrointestinal Bacteria

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

A team of microbiologists has isolated 105 completely new species of bacteria from healthy people’s intestines. Forster et al created the most comprehensive...

Ten mammalian and five bird species were documented scavenging fish carcasses in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone including Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra). Image credit: Schlichting et al, doi: 10.1016/j.fooweb.2018.e00107.

Wildlife is Abundant in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Confirms New Study

Feb 4, 2019 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Food Webs provides additional evidence that wildlife is abundant in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a large area of...

Airplanes wring extra snow and rain out of clouds. Image credit: Michael Bryant-Mode.

Study: Airplanes Flying Over Rain, Snow Can Intensify Precipitation by 10-Fold

Feb 4, 2019 by News Staff

By analyzing several years of weather radar observations in Finland, a research team led by University of Helsinki scientists has discovered that planes...

This Hubble image shows Messier 85. The image includes infrared, visible and ultraviolet observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. O’Connell.

Hubble Space Telescope Spies Messier 85

Feb 4, 2019 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an amazing new photo of a lenticular — or elliptical — galaxy called Messier 85. This Hubble...

Statins produce significant reductions in major vascular events, but there is less direct evidence of benefit among patients older than 75 years who do not already have evidence of occlusive vascular disease. Image credit: Heung Soon.

Statins Reduce Major Vascular Events, New Meta-Analysis Study Confirms

Feb 4, 2019 by News Staff

Statin therapy produces significant reductions in major vascular events irrespective of age, including in people older than 75 years, according to a new...

In this illustration, MAXI J1820+070 pulls material off a neighboring star and into an accretion disk; above the disk is a region of subatomic particles called the corona. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

NICER Observes ‘X-Ray Echoes’ of Nearby Stellar-Mass Black Hole

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophysicists using NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) have detected X-rays from a stellar-mass black hole called MAXI J1820+070...

Han et al compare stable isotope ratios from the bones and teeth of extant and extinct pandas and show that their trophic niches are distinctly different, although both species had a C3-dominated diet over time and space. The results indicate that ancient pandas possibly had more complex diets and habitats than do their modern counterparts. This image shows a male giant panda named Xiao Liwu at San Diego Zoo. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Ancient Giant Pandas Had More Complex Diet than Do Their Modern Counterparts: Study

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Today, giant pandas are represented by one iconic species, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, and they live only in the understory of particular mountains in southwestern...

A selfie taken by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 2291 (January 15, 2019) at the ‘Rock Hall’ drill site, located on Vera Rubin Ridge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Curiosity Makes First Surface Gravity Measurements on Mars

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Gravimetry — the measurement of tiny changes in gravitational fields — can be used to probe the internal structure of Earth and other planets....

Along the banks of a river, three archosaur inhabitants of the dense Voltzia conifer forest cross paths: Antarctanax shackletoni sneaks up on an early titanopetran insect, Prolacerta broomi lazes on a log, and an enigmatic large archosaur pursues two unsuspecting dicynodonts, Lystrosaurus maccaigi. Image credit: Adrienne StrouAntarctanax shackletoni. Image credit: Adrienne Stroup, Field Museum.p, Field Museum.

Iguana-Sized Reptile Roamed Antarctica 250 Million Years Ago

Feb 1, 2019 by News Staff

Some 250 million years ago (early Triassic epoch), an early relative of dinosaurs and crocodiles lived in what is now a frozen continent, Antarctica, according...

Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completes Its First Orbit of Sun

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully completed its first orbit of the Sun on January 19. Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the...

This image, taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), shows a part the globular cluster NGC 6752. Behind the bright stars of the cluster a denser collection of faint stars is visible -- the previously unknown dwarf spheroidal galaxy Bedin 1. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Bedin et al.

Bedin 1: New Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Discovered in Our Cosmic Backyard

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a new dwarf galaxy in our cosmic neighborhood. Named Bedin 1, the galaxy is approximately...

This illustration helps explain how astronomers tracked the effects of dark energy to about one billion years after the Big Bang by determining the distances to quasars, rapidly growing black holes that shine extremely brightly. Two of the most distant quasars studied are shown in Chandra images in the insets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss; X-rays – NASA / CXC / University of Florence / G. Risaliti & E. Lusso.

Dark Energy May Have Varied over Cosmic Time, New Study Suggests

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft have found evidence that an invisible force called dark...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Denisovans and Neanderthals Lived in Denisova Cave for Thousands of Years

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Two groups of archaic humans — Neanderthals and their enigmatic cousins, Denisovans — occupied Denisova Cave in the Altai region of Siberia...

Newborns have innate skills needed to pick out words. Image credit: Cheryl Holt.

Study: Newborn Babies Have Innate Skills to Pick Out Individual Words

Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Humans are born with operational language processing and memory capacities and can use at least two types of cues to segment otherwise continuous speech,...

Advance marks critical step toward brain-computer interface systems that hold immense promise for those with limited or no ability to speak. Image credit: Kai Kalhh.

Experimental Brain-Computer Interface Translates Brain Signals into Recognizable Speech

Jan 30, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers at Columbia University has developed a speech brain-computer interface system that translates brain signals into intelligible, recognizable...

Pan-STARRS Astronomers Issue Largest Astronomical Data Release Ever

Jan 30, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii has released data from the...

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