Articles by News Staff

This illustration shows a Brachiosaurus eating from an Araucaria tree. These dinosaurs had enormous necks and relatively short tails. The animal to which the foot belongs was nearly 4 m high at its hip. Image credit: Davide Bonadonna.

Giant Dinosaur Foot Proclaimed Largest Ever Discovered

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

A fossilized dinosaur foot believed to be the largest in the world has been unearthed in Weston County, Wyoming, the United States. This illustration shows...

Moon May Have Had Conditions Suitable for Life, Astrobiologists Say

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

There may have been two windows of habitability for the Moon, according to new research by University of London’s Professor Ian Crawford and Dr. Dirk...

Andromeda Galaxy Merged with Massive Neighbor 2 Billion Years Ago

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, collided and merged with a large galaxy approximately 2 billion years ago, according to new research. Even...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Proton Aurora Discovered on Mars

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft has found a new type of Martian aurora that occurs over much of the day side of the...

Ahn et al levitated a nanoparticle in vacuum and driven it to rotate at high speed, which they hope will help them study the properties of vacuum and quantum mechanics. Image credit: Vincent Walter, Purdue University.

Researchers Develop World’s Fastest Nanomechanical Rotor

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

At more than 60 billion revolutions per minute, a nanomechanical rotor developed by Purdue University researcher Tongcang Li and co-authors is more than...

This mosaic of Cerealia Facula is based on images obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in its second extended mission, from an altitude as low as about 21 miles (34 km). The contrast in resolution obtained by the two phases is visible here, reflected by a few gaps in the high-resolution coverage. This image is superposed to a similar scene acquired in the low-altitude mapping orbit of the mission from an altitude of about 240 miles (385 km). The increased resolution afforded by the low altitude is revealing intimate details about the relationships between bright and dark materials across the facula, which will help resolve the mystery of its origin. Cerealia Facula is located at about 19.7 degrees north latitude and 239.6 degrees east longitude. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA / PSI.

Dawn Shows Ceres’ Mysterious Bright Spots in Spectacular Detail

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

New images of Ceres, taken by NASA’s Dawn orbiter, show the bright areas in sharper detail than ever before. This mosaic of Cerealia Facula is based...

The occasional use of stone tools as ‘strike-a-lights’ was a technocultural feature shared among Neanderthals in France.

Neanderthals Could Start Fires with Mineral Pyrite and Stone Tools

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

New research published in the journal Scientific Reports provides clear evidence that Neanderthals made fire by striking a piece of pyrite, the yellow...

The fruit fly brain contains roughly 100,000 neurons, which can now be traced in detail using a dataset that includes roughly 21 million images Zheng et al traced the paths of neurons (colored threads) that reach out to the mushroom body, a region involved in memory and learning. Image credit: Zheng et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.019.

Fruit Fly Brain Imaged at Synaptic Resolution

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

A team of neuroscientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus has taken detailed pictures of the whole brain of an adult female...

MPS is a novel neuroprotective molecule that is more than two orders of magnitude more potent than the related molecule, ethosuximide. The discovery may enable novel treatments for human neurodegenerative diseases to be developed in the future. Image credit: National Institute on Aging / National Institutes of Health.

Novel Compound Protects against Neurodegeneration in Animal Study

Jul 23, 2018 by News Staff

An international group of scientists from the University of Liverpool and the University of Washington Department of Medicine has identified a novel compound...

This close-up color image of a small-scale dust storm on Mars was acquired by the HRSC instrument on ESA’s Mars Express in April 2018. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Spots Small-Scale Dust Storm

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows a local dust storm with a towering cloud front,...

These images of Titan were created using 13 years of data acquired by Cassini’s VIMS instrument. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Nantes / University of Arizona.

NASA Releases Spectacular New Infrared Images of Titan

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

The newly-released series of images, made from data obtained by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA’s Cassini...

Life reconstruction of Akainacephalus johnsoni. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin, Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Akainacephalus johnsoni: New Armored Dinosaur Species Discovered

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new species of ankylosaurid dinosaur being named Akainacephalus johnsoni has been discovered by paleontologists Jelle Wiersma and Randall Irmis from...

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The distance is 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from the surface of the planet. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. The center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system, over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) long and up to 5 miles (8 km) deep, extending form Noctis Labyrinthus, the arcuate system of graben to the west, to the chaotic terrain to the east. Many huge ancient river channels begin from the chaotic terrain from north-central canyons and run north. The three Tharsis volcanoes (dark red spots), each about 15.5 miles (25 km) high, are visible to the west. South of Valles Marineris is very ancient terrain covered by many impact craters. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Mars’ Atmosphere Acts as Single, Interconnected System

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has...

Mantantzis et al found that increasing blood sugar levels not only improves memory and performance, but makes older adults feel happier during a task. Image credit: Gabriela Sanda.

Glucose Improves Memory in Older Adults: Study

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A small dose of glucose can improve memory in older adults, motivate them to work harder and puts them in a good mood when performing difficult tasks,...

Xiaophis myanmarensis lived in a forest environment in what is now Myanmar. Image credit: Cheung Chung Tat.

99-Million-Year-Old Snake Hatchling Found Encased in Burmese Amber

Jul 19, 2018 by News Staff

The fossilized remains of an embryonic-to-hatchling snake have been found preserved in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar (also known as Burma). Xiaophis myanmarensis...

Artist’s illustration depicting the destruction of a young planet. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss.

Young Star Caught Snacking on Planetary Debris

Jul 19, 2018 by News Staff

For decades, astronomers have puzzled over the variability of young stars residing in Taurus-Auriga dark clouds, a group of molecular clouds located in...

In the large-scale survey by Akhtar et al, 6,641 respondents provided descriptions of their first memory and their age when they encoded that memory, and they completed various memory judgments and ratings. The established view is that the distribution around mean age at encoding is truncated, with very few or no memories dating to the preverbal period, that is, below about two years of age. However, Akhtar et al found that 2,487 first memories (nearly 40% of the entire sample) dated to an age at encoding of two years and younger, with 893 dating to one year and younger. Image credit: Myriam.

Study: Nearly 40% of People Have Fictional First Memory

Jul 19, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the University of Bradford, Nottingham Trent University and City, University of London, UK, has conducted a large-scale survey...

This image of Neptune was obtained during the testing of the Narrow-Field adaptive optics mode of the MUSE/GALACSI instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO / P. Weilbacher, AIP.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Captures Sharp Images of Neptune

Jul 19, 2018 by News Staff

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved the first light with a new adaptive optics mode...

An artist’s impression of the giant exoplanet 2MASS 0249c. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find Twin of Giant Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered a giant gaseous planet orbiting a pair of brown dwarfs called 2MASS J02495639-0557352AB (2MASS 0249 for short). The new exoplanet,...

Earth-Moon system. Image credit: Comfreak.

Meghalayan: Collapse of Ancient Agricultural Civilizations Defines Holocene’s Youngest Stage

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

The Meghalayan, the youngest stage of the current Holocene epoch, began at the time when ancient agricultural societies experienced an abrupt and critical...

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