Articles by News Staff

Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges; the large circular feature on the upper right, called Galileo Regio, is an ancient region of unknown origin; Ganymede is thought to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth and might contain life; like Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter; this image was taken about 20 years ago by NASA’s Galileo probe, which ended its mission by diving into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2003; currently, NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbits Jupiter and is studying the giant planet’s internal structure, among many other attributes. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Galileo probe.

NASA Reveals New Results from Galileo’s Historic Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

May 1, 2018 by News Staff

On June 27, 1996, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made humanity’s first flyby of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, discovering that it is the only moon...

An artist’s concept of a star-forming cloud. Image credit: © Sci-News.com.

New Study Casts Doubt on Currently Accepted Theories of Star Formation

May 1, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found that long-held assumptions about the relationship between the mass of star-forming clouds of dust and gas...

The findings by Aspy et al discount the theory that Vitamin B6 enhances dream recall by disrupting sleep. Image credit: Peter Pyw.

Study: Taking Vitamin B6 Before Bed Could Help You Remember Your Dreams

May 1, 2018 by News Staff

A new study on the effects of B vitamins on dreaming and sleep has found that Vitamin B6 taken before bed increased dream recall compared to placebo. The...

Physicists Entangle Two Macroscopic-Scale Objects

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

Entanglement — an intriguing phenomenon in which two distant objects can manifest correlations, even if they are far away from each other —...

Meta-Analysis Identifies 30 New Genetic Risk Factors for Major Depression

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

A new genome-wide association meta-analysis has identified 44 genomic variants (loci) that have a significant association with major depression. Of these...

A cloud of atoms is held above a chip by electromagnetic fields; the EPR paradox was observed between the spatially separated regions A and B. Image credit: Department of Physics, University of Basel.

Physicists Observe Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in Bose-Einstein Condensate

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers in Switzerland has observed the quantum mechanical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in a system of interacting ultracold atoms. Their...

In the upper part of this Hubble image, the light from distant galaxies has been smeared and twisted into odd shapes, arcs, and streaks. This phenomenon indicates the presence of a massive galaxy cluster, SDSS J0150+2725, which is bending the light coming from the galaxies behind it with its monstrous gravitational influence. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Sees Giant Galaxy Cluster

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a fantastic photo of a massive galaxy cluster named SDSS J0150+2725. In the upper part of this Hubble...

Oxford researchers Katerina Johnson and Kevin Foster argue that understanding why gut microbiome influences behavior requires a focus on microbial ecology and local effects within the host. Image credit: Open Clipart-Vectors.

Does Gut Microbiota Manipulate Our Minds?

Apr 30, 2018 by News Staff

A duo of scientists at the University of Oxford, UK, has proposed an evolutionary framework to understand why our gut microbiota affects the brain and...

TGO’s CaSSIS camera captured this view of the rim of Korolev crater on April 15, 2018. The image is a composite of three images in different colors that were taken almost simultaneously. Image credit: ESA / Roscosmos / CaSSIS.

ESA’s ExoMars Orbiter Sends First Images from Its New Orbit around Mars

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has sent back its first, color images of Mars from its new, near-circular orbit. ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter...

The new study indicates that oral NaHCO3 activates a splenic anti-inflammatory pathway and provides evidence that the signals that mediate this response are transmitted to the spleen via a novel neuronal-like function of mesothelial cells. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Drinking Baking Soda Daily May Help Reduce Inflammation Caused by Autoimmune Diseases

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers at Augusta University has shown that when rats or healthy people drink a solution of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3), it...

Ryder et al used Hubble to get the first image of a surviving companion to a supernova; this is the most compelling evidence that some supernova explosions originate in binary star systems. Image credit: NASA / ESA / S. Ryder, Australian Astronomical Observatory / O. Fox, STScI.

Hubble Snaps Image of Surviving Binary Companion to Type IIb Supernova

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

On December 10, 2001 Australian amateur astronomer Robert Evans discovered a supernova in the outer edge of NGC 7424, a spiral galaxy located in the southern...

According to Proops et al, some non-human animals can effectively eavesdrop on the emotional state cues that humans reveal on a moment-to-moment basis, using their memory of these to guide future interactions with particular individuals. Image credit: Alexandra / Alexas Fotos.

Study: Horses Can Read and Remember Human Emotional Expressions

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Current Biology, domestic horses can read and then remember people’s emotional expressions, enabling...

White Sands footprints tell the story of a group of humans tracking and hunting a giant ground sloth. Image credit: Alex McClelland, Bournemouth University.

Ice Age Humans Hunted Giant Ground Sloths, Fossilized Footprints Show

Apr 26, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has found evidence of an interaction between Ice Age humans and now-extinct giant ground sloths. White Sands footprints...

Gaia’s all-sky view of our Milky Way Galaxy and neighboring galaxies, based on measurements of nearly 1.7 billion stars. Brighter regions indicate denser concentrations of especially bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer bright stars are observed. The color representation 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 Galactic plane, the flattened disc that hosts most of the stars in our home Galaxy. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears vivid and teeming with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of stars located further away, behind the clouds. Many of these conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are being born. Sprinkled across the image are also many globular and open clusters -- groupings of stars held together by their mutual gravity, 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. In small areas of the image where no color information was available -- to the lower left of the Galactic center, to the upper left of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and in the top portion of the map -- an equivalent grayscale value was assigned. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Catalog of Nearly 1.7 Billion Stars

Apr 26, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s Gaia mission has released the largest catalogue ever of Milky Way stars. It includes the positions on the sky for approximately 1.7 billion stars,...

While it is well known that cacao is a major source of flavonoids, this is the first time the effect has been studied in human subjects to determine how it can support cognitive, endocrine and cardiovascular health. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Eating Dark Chocolate Improves Memory, Reduces Inflammation and Stress, Two Studies Say

Apr 26, 2018 by News Staff

Consuming dark chocolate with at least 70% cacao has positive effects on stress levels, inflammation, mood, memory and immunity, according to two studies...

This artist’s impression of SPT2349-56 shows a group of interacting and merging galaxies in the early Universe. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Astronomers Discover Two Massive Protoclusters of Young Galaxies in Early Universe

Apr 26, 2018 by News Staff

Peering deep into space — an astounding 90% of the way across the observable Universe — two groups of astronomers led by University of Edinburgh’s...

This image shows curious holes in Arctic sea ice, located about 50 miles (80.5 km) northwest of Canada’s Mackenzie River Delta. Image credit: John Sonntag / NASA’s Operation IceBridge Mission.

Mysterious Holes in Beaufort Sea Ice Puzzle Researchers

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

On April 14, 2018, scientists working on NASA’s Operation IceBridge — a multi-year airborne science mission to study changing ice conditions at...

Artist’s impression of a massive black hole. Image credit: Alain Riazuelo / CC BY-SA 2.5.

Milky Way Galaxy May Have Several ‘Wandering’ Supermassive Black Holes

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

In a new study, a team of astronomers from Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, the University of Washington, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris,...

Indigenous Bajau People Evolved Larger Spleens for Free-Diving

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

The indigenous Bajau people of Southeast Asia spend their whole lives at sea, working 8-hr diving shifts with traditional equipment and short breaks to...

$A visualization of the polarization of the CMB, as detected by Planck. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 380,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. A small fraction of the CMB is polarized – it vibrates in a preferred direction. This is a result of the last encounter of this light with electrons, just before starting its cosmic journey. For this reason, the polarization of the CMB retains information about the distribution of matter in the early Universe, and its pattern on the sky follows that of the tiny fluctuations observed in the temperature of the CMB. In these images, the color scale represents temperature differences in the CMB, while the texture indicates the direction of the polarized light. The patterns seen in the texture are characteristic of E-mode polarization, which is the dominant type for the CMB. The large oval shows the CMB polarization as seen by Planck on the entire sky. For the sake of illustration, both data sets have been filtered to show mostly the signal detected on scales around 5° on the sky. However, fluctuations in both the CMB temperature and polarization are present and were observed by Planck also on larger as well as smaller angular scales. To provide a taste of the fine structure of the measurement obtained by Planck, a zoomed-in view on a smaller patch of the sky, measuring 20° across, is also provided on the left. This is first shown with the same filtering as the all-sky image (upper frame), then with a different filter that shows mostly the signal detected on angles on the sky of about 20 arcminutes (lower frame). Image credit: ESA / Planck Collaboration.$

Physicists Find New Way of Exploring Cosmic Microwave Background

Apr 25, 2018 by News Staff

A team of Canadian physicists has developed a new way to improve our knowledge of the Big Bang by measuring radiation from its afterglow, called the cosmic...

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