The discovery came in University of Queensland research, led by paleontologist Dr. Anthony Romilio, which analyzed southern Queensland dinosaur footprint fossils dated to the latter part of the Jurassic Period, between 165 and 151 million-year-ago. “I’ve always wondered, where were Australia’s big carnivorous dinosaurs?” Dr. Romilio said. “But I think we’ve found them, right here in Queensland. “The specimens of these gigantic dinosaurs were not fossilized bones, which are the sorts of things that are typically housed at museums....

For the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been transformed into nerve cells that helped mice regain the ability to learn and remember. A study at UW-Madison is the first to show that human stem cells can successfully implant themselves in the brain and then heal neurological deficits, says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology. Once inside the mouse brain, the implanted stem cells formed two common, vital types of neurons, which communicate with the chemicals GABA or acetylcholine....

Researchers with UCLA’s Institute of Urologic Oncology and department of urology have classified kidney cancer into several unique subtypes, a breakthrough that will help physicians tailor treatment to individual kidney cancer patients, moving cancer care one step closer to personalized medicine. Their findings are the result of 10 years of UCLA research on kidney cancers at the genetic and molecular levels, with scientists conducting chromosomal analyses in an effort to identify what mutations may be causing and affecting the behavior of the malignancies....

Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research has shown that graphene with nanoscale corrugations of its surface can accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts. This unexpected effect is likely to be present in all two-dimensional materials, which are all inherently non-flat. The Manchester team in collaboration with researchers from China and USA conducted a series of experiments to show that non-flatness of graphene makes it a strong catalyst....

April 11 Editor’s Note: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine released the following statement on the Beresheet lunar lander: “While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit. Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress....

Although the approach will be a distant 7.1 million miles (11.4 million kilometers, or 30 lunar distances) from Earth, it’s still a fairly rare opportunity. “This will be the closest comet Wirtanen has come to Earth for centuries and the closest it will come to Earth for centuries,” said Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. What’s more, Chodas said, “This could be one of the brightest comets in years, offering astronomers an important opportunity to study a comet up close with ground-based telescopes, both optical and radar....

This image was taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and shows an object named SDSS J1138+2754. It acts as a gravitational lens illustrates the true strength of gravity: A large mass — a galaxy cluster in this case — is creating such a strong gravitational field that it is bending the very fabric of its surroundings. This causes the billion-year-old light from galaxies sitting behind it to travel along distorted, curved paths, transforming the familiar shapes of spirals and ellipticals (visible in other parts of the image) into long, smudged arcs and scattered dashes....

College of Veterinary Medicine researchers Yunjeong Kim and Kyeong-Ok “KC” Chang published the study in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, or PNAS. They found that animal models infected with SARS-CoV-2 and treated with a deuterated protease inhibitor had significantly increased survival and decreased lung viral load. The results suggest that postinfection treatment with inhibitors of proteases that are essential for viral replication may be an effective treatment against SARS-CoV-2....

The International Astronomical Union is the naming authority for celestial bodies, and reserves the naming of Moon craters for deceased astronauts and cosmonauts, as well as deceased scientists and polar explorers who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field. Wargo had many remarkable contributions to exploration science throughout his 20-year career at NASA. He was known as a science ambassador to the public, and for his ability to decipher complex science for students and nontechnical audiences....

Much research has pointed to how an unhealthy diet correlates to obesity, but has not explored how diet can bring about neurological changes in the brain. A recent Yale study has discovered that high-fat diets contribute to irregularities in the hypothalamus region of the brain, which regulates body weight homeostasis and metabolism. Led by Sabrina Diano, the Richard Sackler Family Professor of Cellular & Molecular Physiology and professor of neuroscience and comparative medicine, the study evaluated how the consumption of a high-fat diet — specifically diets that include high amounts of fats and carbohydrates — stimulates hypothalamic inflammation, a physiological response to obesity and malnutrition....

The study found that individuals wearing masks were less likely to engage in deviant behavior than those who were not wearing them, which included breaking parking regulations, running red lights, and cheating for money. According to the researchers, this is not a coincidence since wearing a mask in China raises moral awareness, which encourages certain individuals to follow the law more. “We found that masks, in China, function as a moral symbol that reduces the wearer’s deviant behavior,” says Jackson Lu, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a newly published paper detailing the findings....

Europe’s latest weather satellite got a glimpse of the Moon before our celestial neighbor disappeared from view behind Earth on Friday. Since its launch two months ago, MSG-3 has been working well and is on its way to entering service. The image shows the second full Moon of the month – known as a ‘blue’ Moon – just before it disappeared from the MSG-3 satellite’s sight behind the southern hemisphere....

The research, which was published in the December issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offers a glimpse of what astronomers will find with Webb’s near-infrared camera. The instrument is designed to peer through clouds of interstellar dust that have previously blocked astronomers’ view of stellar nurseries, especially those that produce stars similar to Earth’s sun. Reiter, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and co-authors from the California Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, Queen Mary University in London and the United Kingdom’s Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland, analyzed a portion of Webb’s first images of the Cosmic Cliffs, a star-forming region in a cluster of stars known as NGC 3324....

We create countless memories as we live our lives but many of these we forget. Why? Counter to the general assumption that memories simply decay with time, ‘forgetting’ might not be a bad thing – that is according to scientists who believe it may represent a form of learning. The scientists behind the new theory – outlined today in leading international journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience – suggest that changes in our ability to access specific memories are based on environmental feedback and predictability....

A new study co-authored by MIT economists uncovers a major reason for this trend: Big companies that spend more on capital and less on workers are gaining market share, while smaller firms that spend more on workers and less on capital are losing market share. That change, the researchers say, is a key reason why the labor share of GDP in the U.S. has dropped from around 67 percent in 1980 to 59 percent today, following decades of stability....

Reaching a length of more than six meters, pythons are among the world’s largest snakes. Today, various species of these constrictors are found primarily in Africa, Southern and Southeast Asia, and Australia. “The geographic origin of pythons is still not clear. The discovery of a new python species in the Messel Pit is therefore a major leap forward in understanding these snakes’ evolutionary history,” explains Dr. Krister Smith of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt....

Engineers at Yale University have developed a new breed of micro fuel cell that could serve as a long-lasting, low-cost, and eco-friendly power source for portable electronic devices, such as tablet computers, smartphones, and remote sensors. The researchers describe the novel device in a paper published online in the journal Small. An alternative to a battery, a fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce energy, giving off only water and heat as byproducts....

“Why do plants have thorns?” is an easy question: The thorns help protect against hungry animals that like to munch on the plants. “Where do thorns come from?” is a more complicated question — but Yale scientists have found an answer. Their insight, reported today in the June 18 issue of Current Biology, may help change the way oranges and other crops are grown. First, a primer for non-botanists: Many plants have sharp, spiky armor that can be classified as thorns, prickles or spines....

We have a fair understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that regulate star formation in galaxies, from the interstellar matter to the diffuse clouds distributed in space, whose gravitational contraction leads to the birth of stars within large stellar clusters. But observations of distant galaxies have questioned this picture, the size and mass of these distant stellar nurseries largely exceeding that of their local counterparts. An international team of astrophysicists led by the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, for the observations and Zurich (UZH) for the simulations has tackled this inconsistency, which seems to question our knowledge of star formation when we study the early Universe, far away in time and space....

Thanks to the sniffling noses, coughs, and colds that accompany the colder months of the year, we are all too familiar with the seasonal patterns of some respiratory viruses. A new review published in Frontiers in Public Health suggests that COVID-19, the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, will likely follow suit and become seasonal in countries with temperate climates, but only when herd immunity is attained. Until that time, COVID-19 will continue to circulate across the seasons....