How does an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider work?
The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator and lies in a tunnel below CERN, the European physics lab just outside Geneva. Ramp: Once the LHC is fully loaded, its two proton ...
How atmospheric rivers form
Based on simulations using real weather data in the Atlantic Ocean, the work was focused specifically on the transport of water from the tropics of the Caribbean to the Iberian Penin...
Hippocampus: In search of memory storage
From here, the neurons transmit to the Cornu Ammonus region CA3, which, in turn, projects to CA1. Functional model traces the path of memory Based on that anatomical structure, a fu...
Extra DNA creates cucumber with all female flowers
Some high-yield cucumber varieties produce only female flowers, and a new study identifies the gene duplication that causes this unusual trait. When grown in nutrient-rich, soil-free...
Evolution is unpredictable and irreversible, biologists show
Using simulations of an evolving protein, they show that the genetic mutations that are accepted by evolution are typically dependent on mutations that came before, and the mutations...
Epicenter of brain’s predictive ability pinpointed by scientists
Experts say humans’ reactions are in fact the body adjusting to predictions the brain is making based on the state of our body the last time it was in a similar situation. The un...
Earth organisms survive under low-pressure Martian conditions
Methanogens, microorganisms in the domain Archaea, use hydrogen as their energy source and carbon dioxide as their carbon source, to metabolize and produce methane, also known as nat...
DNA that only females have
In birds, the females have their own sex chromosome, the W chromosome. Two copies of it produces a male, one copy (plus a W chromosome) produces a female, says Hans Ellegren. In orde...
The Genetic History of Ice Age Europe
The genetic data show that, beginning 37,000 years ago, all Europeans come from a single founding population that persisted through the Ice Age, said Reich. This branch seems to have...
Star with different internal driving force than the sun
Sunspots are cool areas caused by the strong magnetic fields where the flow of heat is slowed. On our star, the Sun, the sunspots are seen in a belt around the equator, but now scien...
Cayman Islands to deploy genetically modified mosquitoes
The company has deployed its mosquitoes to fight Zika in Brazil following initial trials there and previously conducted tests in the Cayman Islands and Panama. Oxitec and officials i...
Will we ever colonize Mars?
Let’s go over them one by one… Benefits: As already mentioned, there are many interesting similarities between Earth and Mars that make it a viable option for colonization. Over ti...
What is lunar regolith?
Essentially, you would be seeing the components of what is known as regolith, which is a collection of particles of dust, soil, broken rock, and other materials found here on Earth. ...
Understanding how cells follow electric fields
Many living things can respond to electric fields, either moving or using them to detect prey or enemies. UC Davis dermatology professor Min Zhao, Peter Devroetes at Johns Hopkins Un...
Solar Impulse takes off for six-day, six-night Pacific flight
Pilot Andre Borschberg, 62, left the ground in Nanjing, in eastern China, heading for the US island of Hawaii, at about 2:40 am (1840 GMT), after extended delays awaiting a suitable ...
Scientists mix matter and anti-matter to resolve decade-old proton puzzle
Nuclear physicists have used two different methods to measure the proton’s electric form factor. But sometimes, the electron interacts with the proton differently; it may conjure up ...
New evidence emerges on the origins of life
New research shows that the close linkage between the physical properties of amino acids, the genetic code, and protein folding was likely the key factor in the evolution from buildi...
NASA orders first ever commercial human spaceflight mission from Boeing
Boeing was awarded the first service flight of the CST-100 crew capsule to the International Space Station as part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability agreement with NAS...
Cassini prepares for last up-close look at Hyperion
The view was obtained during Cassini’s close flyby on Sept. 26, 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make its final close approach to Saturn...
What are extrasolar planets?
Over time, the methods for detecting these extrasolar planets have improved, and the list of those whose existence has been confirmed has grown accordingly (to almost 2000!) Detectio...
Self-replicating nanostructures made from DNA
However, Junghoon Kim, Junwye Lee, Shogo Hamada, Satoshi Murata, and Sung Ha Park of Sungkyunkwan University and Tohoku University have designed a controllable self-replicating syste...
Researchers first to create a single-molecule diode
Diodes are fundamental building blocks of integrated circuits; they allow current to flow in only one direction. Credit: Latha Venkataraman, Columbia Engineering Under the direction...
Non-aqueous solvent supports DNA nanotechnology
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have now shown that they can assemble DNA nanostructures in a solvent containing no water. With this work, we have shown that DNA n...
New project aims to establish a human colony on Mars
The rover is slated to be launched in 2018, 2 years after the start of NASA’s InSight mission on which the teams’ robot would be based on. Credit: MarsPolar In 2020 the Mars Transpo...
NASA’s Europa mission begins with selection of science instruments
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA has selected nine science instruments for a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, to investigate whether the mysterious icy moon could harbor conditions s...