The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Astronomy. “On Earth, reflections that bright are often an indication of liquid water, even buried lakes like Lake Vostok,” said Dan Lalich, research associate. “But on Mars, the prevailing opinion was that it should be too cold for similar lakes to form.” But the fact remains, Lalich stated, that the bright reflection exists and needs to be explained. Lalich ran simulations with four materials – atmosphere, water ice, carbon dioxide (CO2) ice, and basalt – and gave each layer a permittivity, an intrinsic property of the material that describes its interaction with electromagnetic radiation traveling through it....

The vaccine was developed at the University of Oxford Jenner Institute. It uses a replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus to deliver a SARS-CoV-2 protein to induce a protective immune response. ChAdOx1 has been used to develop investigational vaccines against several pathogens, including a closely related coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The scientists quickly adapted the platform to SARS-CoV-2 when the first cases of COVID-19 emerged. They showed that the vaccine rapidly induced immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 in mice and rhesus macaques....

Two blood proteins have been shown by scientists to influence how long and healthy a life we live, research suggests. Developing drugs that target these proteins could be one way of slowing the aging process, according to the largest genetic study of aging. As we age, our bodies begin to decline after we reach adulthood, which results in age-related diseases and death. This latest research investigates which proteins could influence the aging process....

A small asteroid, designated 2014 RC, will safely pass very close to Earth on Sunday, September 7, 2014. At the time of closest approach, based on current calculations to be about 2:18 p.m. EDT (11:18 a.m. PDT / 18:18 UTC), the asteroid will be roughly over New Zealand. From its reflected brightness, astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about 60 feet (20 meters) in size. Asteroid 2014 RC was initially discovered on the night of August 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, located on the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii....

Temperatures in the corona — the tenuous, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — spike upwards of 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, while just 1,000 miles below, the underlying surface simmers at a balmy 10,000 F. How the Sun manages this feat remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics; scientists call it the coronal heating problem. A new, landmark mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — scheduled to launch no earlier than August 11, 2018 — will fly through the corona itself, seeking clues to its behavior and offering the chance for scientists to solve this mystery....

Levodopa, or L-dopa, is considered the most effective treatment for Parkinson’s disease today. After a few years of treatment, however, almost all patients develop a debilitating side-effect called L-dopa induced dyskinesia, or LID, which causes involuntary movements in the limbs, face, and torso. Deep brain stimulation can alleviate LID, but the procedure is highly invasive and not all patients are eligible. Now, a new study led by researchers at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the CUNY School of Medicine shows that drugs that increased signaling by a protein called sonic hedgehog, or Shh, can inhibit LID....

Researchers at Yale University analyzing specialized MRI exams found significant changes in the microstructure of the brain’s white matter in adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to a control group, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The changes were most pronounced in the region that facilitates communication between the two hemispheres of the brain....

A pandemic can strike at any time. It takes little more than the right roll of genetic dice in a virus circulating among animals, followed by a chance encounter with a person or some go-between species, like pigs or mosquitoes. But as the new coronavirus whips around the world with a speed matched by few of the infectious diseases that have emerged in modern times, it poses the question: Why now?...

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. The tiny blades are no longer than 3 cm in length and were used as tips for throwable spears or additions to spiky club-like weapons, states Curtis Marean, an archaeologist at Arizona State University, in Tempe. Twenty-seven microliths were found in layers of sand and soil dating back 71,000 years and representing a time span of 11,000 years. This adds credence to the idea that early humans were able to pass on their ideas to the next generation....

The combination of these two solar events caused a moderate geomagnetic storm that produced a stunning aurora visible as far south as southern England and central Germany. This image was captured by photographer Hanna Baguley on the Isle of Anglesey (Ynys Môn), North Wales, UK. The conditions are expected to continue, with further auroral activity foreseen for tonight, February 27. The CME was associated with a solar flare that occurred close to midnight (UTC) on February 25....

Nature has evolved a dazzling array of materials that help organisms thrive in diverse habitats. Sometimes, scientists can exploit these designs to develop useful materials with similar or completely new functions. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have made a durable and flexible super-water-repelling material inspired by spiky porcupinefish skin. Superhydrophobic materials are extremely water repellent, causing droplets of water that fall on them to roll off or even bounce off....

The universe overflows with repeating patterns. From the smallest cells to the largest galaxies, scientists are often rewarded by observing similar patterns in vastly different places. One such pattern is the iconic surfer’s waves seen on the ocean – a series of curled hills moving steadily in one direction. The shape has a simple cause. A fast fluid, say wind, moving past a slower one, say water, naturally creates this classic shape....

A new report published today (November 7) in the journal Nature Sustainability chronicles agronomic, economic, and environmental outcomes of perennial rice cultivation across China’s Yunnan Province. The retooled crop is already changing the lives of more than 55,752 smallholder farmers in southern China and Uganda. “Farmers are adopting the new perennial rice because it’s economically advantageous for them to do so. Farmers in China, like everywhere else, are getting older....

Information flows in a well-defined direction in the brain: Chemical and electrical signals are passed from one neuron to the other across the synapse, from the pre-synaptic to the post-synaptic neuron. Now, Peter Jonas and his group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) show that information also travels in the opposite direction at a key synapse in the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for learning and memory....

The Hubble Space Telescope has made over 1.5 million observations since its launch in 1990, capturing stunning subjects such as the Eagle Nebula and producing data that has been featured in almost 18,000 scientific articles. But no image has revolutionized the way we understand the universe as much as the Hubble Deep Field. Taken over the course of 10 days in 1995, the Hubble Deep Field captured roughly 3,000 distant galaxies varying in their stages of evolution, stunning the world....

When astronomers discovered planet GJ 1214b circling a star more than 47 light-years from Earth in 2009, their data presented two possibilities: Either it was a mini-Neptune shrouded in a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, or it was a water world nearly three times the size of Earth. Along came Jacob Bean, now an assistant professor in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago, who used a new method called multi-object spectroscopy to analyze the planet’s atmosphere from large, ground-based telescopes....

In the course of evolution, animals have become adapted to certain food sources, sometimes even to plants or to fruits that are actually toxic. The driving forces behind such adaptive mechanisms are often unknown. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now discovered why the fruit fly Drosophila sechellia is adapted to the toxic fruits of the morinda tree. Drosophila sechellia females, which lay their eggs on these fruits, carry a mutation in a gene that inhibits egg production....

Researchers at CRANN and Trinity’s School of Physics have discovered that a new material can act as a super-fast magnetic switch. When struck by successive ultra-short laser pulses it exhibits “toggle switching” that could increase the capacity of the global fiber optic cable network by an order of magnitude. Expanding the capacity of the internet Switching between two states – 0 and 1 – is the basis of digital technology and the backbone of the internet....

While investigating the aftermath of a long gamma-ray burst (GRB), two independent teams of astronomers using a host of telescopes in space and on Earth have uncovered the unexpected hallmarks of a kilonova. This is the colossal explosion triggered by colliding neutron stars. This discovery challenges the prevailing theory that long GRBs exclusively come from supernovae, the end-of-life explosions of massive stars. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the Universe....

Scientists from NUST MISIS developed a unique composite material that can be used in harsh temperature conditions, such as those in nuclear reactors. The microhardness of the sandwich material is 3 times higher compared to the microhardness of its individual components. These properties withstand temperatures up to 700°C (1,300°F). The results of the research were published in Materials Letters. To create a new generation of fast-neutron reactors, new structural materials are needed, because the steel, which is considered for use in the shells of fuel elements, is unable to withstand the required heating of 550-700°C (1,000-1,300°F) ....