Using custom-built drones strong enough to withstand the extreme Arctic conditions, researchers led by the University of Cambridge made the first drone-based observations of how fractures form under meltwater lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet. These fractures cause catastrophic lake drainages, in which huge quantities of surface water are transferred to the sensitive environment beneath the ice. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the water is transferred and how the ice sheet responds....

Melatonin is used as a dietary supplement to promote sleep and get over jet lag, but nobody really understands how it works in the brain. Now, researchers at UConn Health show that melatonin helps worms sleep, too, and they suspect they’ve identified what it does in us. Our bodies produce melatonin in darkness. It’s technically a hormone, but you can readily buy melatonin as a supplement in pharmacies, nutrition stores, and other retail shops....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. The Earth’s atmosphere contains less xenon, relative to the lighter noble gases, than meteorites similar to the rocky material that formed the planet and some scientists think that xenon is lurking in glaciers, minerals, or in the Earth’s core. Hans Keppler and Svyatoslav Shcheka, geophysicists at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, looked towards Earth’s minerals for answers. They thought that the xenon could be hiding in pockets of magnesium silicate perovskite, one of the major components of the Earth’s lower mantle....

“Alien” species of predatory hammerhead worms – including a spectacularly iridescent green-blue specimen – identified in Europe and Africa. One of the consequences of globalization is the inadvertent spread of invasive plant and animal species. Land flatworms have invaded the entire world, principally via the plant trade. More than ten species are now widespread, such as Obama nungara (originally from Argentina), Platydemus manokwari (from New Guinea) and Bipalium kewense (from Southeast Asia)....

Researchers discovered microscopic fragments of environmental DNA in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, they found that the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA, which was sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. A two-million-year-old ecosystem that weathered extreme climate change has been mapped using the ancient DNA. Scientists hope the results could help to predict the long-term environmental toll of today’s global warming....

“This discovery means that we now have a pathway to build quantum computers using single-atom spins without the need for any oscillating magnetic field for their operation,” says UNSW’s Scientia Professor of Quantum Engineering Andrea Morello. “Moreover, we can use these nuclei as exquisitely precise sensors of electric and magnetic fields, or to answer fundamental questions in quantum science.” That a nuclear spin can be controlled with electric, instead of magnetic fields, has far-reaching consequences....

New research into fossils found at the ‘Pompeii of prehistoric plants,’ in Wuda, Inner Mongolia, reveals that the plants, called Noeggerathiales, were highly-evolved members of the lineage from which came seed plants. Noeggerathiales were important peat-forming plants that lived around 325 to 251 million years ago. Understanding their relationships to other plant groups has been limited by poorly preserved examples until now. The fossils found in China have allowed experts to work out that Noeggerathiales are more closely related to seed plants than to other fern groups....

Spinosaurs are an unusual group of predatory theropod dinosaurs, equipped with long, crocodile-like jaws and conical teeth. These adaptations helped them live a somewhat-aquatic lifestyle that involved stalking riverbanks in quest of prey, among which were large fish. This way of life was very different from that of more familiar theropods, like Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. To better understand the evolution of spinosaur brains and senses, the team scanned fossils of Baryonyx from Surrey and Ceratosuchops from the Isle of Wight....

Skeletal muscles are attached to bones by tendons and are responsible for the body’s movement. When they are damaged, there is often a loss of muscle function because the nerves are no longer sending signals to the brain. Treatment of extensive muscle defect injuries like those caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on the battlefield, for instance, is difficult and often requires reconstructive surgery with muscle grafts. Effective nerve integration of bioengineered skeletal muscle tissues has been a challenge....

The first evidence-based 3D reconstruction of the fossil Asteroxylon mackiei, the most structurally complex plant from the Rhynie chert has shown how roots and other types of axes developed in this ancient plant. The fossil is preserved in chert (a type of flint) found near village of Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The specimens are exceptionally well-preserved in the 407-million-year-old rocks from the Early Devonian period. The reconstruction demonstrates that these plants developed roots in an entirely different way than extant plants develop roots today....

Physiotherapy, as well as strength and stability exercises, are common treatment options. But how can the treatment be as effective as possible? Which method reduces pain the most effectively? A recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Pain by Goethe University Frankfurt revealed new insights. The researchers began with data from 58 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving over 10,000 individuals suffering from chronic low back pain throughout the globe. The relevant data from the original manuscripts were first filtered out and then analyzed in groups....

Physicists are hoping to find the first evidence of dark matter – a hidden substance that is thought to pervade the Earth and the Universe. BBC World Service science reporter Rebecca Morelle has been to Italy to take a look inside the Darkside-50 experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory before it is switched on. Use the link above to access a three minute video that gives you an inside look at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory and the Darkside-50 experiment, an experiment searching for dark matter....

However, in a new study that was just published in the journal Science, researchers from The Ohio State University describe a new, safer method to turn these short-lived, high-energy molecules into much more stable ones. “Carbenes have an incredible amount of energy in them,” said David Nagib, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. “The value of that is they can do chemistry that you just cannot do any other way....

NASA’s extensive fleet of spacecraft allows scientists to study the Sun extremely close-up – one of the agency’s spacecraft is even on its way to fly through the Sun’s outer atmosphere. But sometimes taking a step back can provide new insight. In a new study, scientists looked at sunspots – darkened patches on the Sun caused by its magnetic field – at low resolution as if they were trillions of miles away....

There may be a small answer to one of the biggest problems on the planet. German researchers report in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology that they have identified and characterized a strain of bacteria capable of degrading some of the chemical building blocks of polyurethane. “The bacteria can use these compounds as a sole source of carbon, nitrogen, and energy,” said Dr. Hermann J. Heipieper, a senior scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ in Leipzig, Germany and co-author of the new paper....

If confirmed, the findings would force significant revisions to several prominent theories posed as alternatives to the Standard Model of particle physics, which was developed in the early 1970s. Researchers from Yale, Harvard, and Northwestern University conducted the study, which was published October 17 in the journal Nature. The discovery is a window into the mind-bending nature of particles, energy, and forces at infinitesimal scales, specifically in the quantum realm, where even a perfect vacuum is not truly empty....

Takuya Hashimoto, a postdoctoral researcher at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Waseda University, Japan, and his team used ALMA to observe B14-65666, an object located 13 billion light-years away in the constellation Sextans. Because of the finite speed of light, the signals we receive from B14-65666 today had to travel for 13 billion years to reach us. In other words, they show us the image of what the galaxy looked like 13 billion years ago, less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang....

This Picture of Week shows the Boomerang Nebula, a protoplanetary nebula, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The background purple structure, as seen in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a classic double-lobe shape with a very narrow central region. ALMA’s ability to see the cold molecular gas reveals the nebula’s more elongated shape, in orange. An ancient, red giant star in the throes of a frigid death has produced the coldest known object in the cosmos — the Boomerang Nebula....

In “Preparing for COVID-19 Related Drug Shortages,” Andrew G. Shuman, MD, and co-authors discuss how the federal and state governments, as well as health care providers, need to develop ethically sound policies that address already perilously low supplies of certain commonly-used medications, which are dwindling further due to resources needed to combat COVID-19. “It is critical that these conversations occur now due to current shortages, as well as the necessary lead time to plan for future shortages,” said Dr....

Prostaglandin class drugs are a class of hormone-like chemicals that influence processes including blood circulation and inflammation. Their use offers a way to churn out different versions of the molecules thanks to organocatalysis, an organic chemistry discipline that speeds up chemical reactions with the help of carbon-based molecules to avoid the drawbacks of metal catalysts. The findings, published in the journal Nature, provide with researchers an easier way of accessing the family of molecules that includes prostaglandin....