“This tells us how easy it is, in terms of evolution, for a complex organ to self-assemble under certain circumstances,” said Yale paleontologist Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, co-author of a new study in the journal Current Biology. “Eyes are classically conceived of as these remarkably complex structures. In fact, the developing brain is just waiting to make eyes given the right signals.” In the study, researchers from Yale and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Germany present evidence that pineal and parapineal eyes, located on the top of the head, were present simultaneously in Saniwa ensidens, an extinct monitor lizard that lived nearly 50 million years ago....

A new public transportation design concept aims to give passengers the confidence to take a bus ride by minimizing contact, using anti-microbial fabric and installing self-sanitizing handles. The “Futurebus,” designed by an international team that includes Northwestern University student Ryan Teo, alters the way passengers hop on and off the bus by combining all ingresses and egresses into a single large sliding door. This allows riders to flow in and out freely without contact....

Astronomers Ignas Snellen and Anthony Brown from Leiden University, the Netherlands, deduced the mass of the planet Beta Pictoris b from the motion of its host star over a long period of time as captured by both Gaia and Hipparcos. The planet is a gas giant similar to Jupiter but, according to the new estimate, is 9 to 13 times more massive. It orbits the star Beta Pictoris, the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor....

While new drug design is serious work, discovering how proteins fold can be fun, too: A crowdsourcing game called Foldit allows players to try different fold configurations for points and rankings. In a recent challenge, Foldit players came up with 56 designs that were reproduced as stable structures in a lab. And X-ray studies at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source verified that three of these proteins’ real-life structures match the player-generated models....

The African baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) is called the tree of life. Baobab trees can live for more than a thousand years and provide food, livestock fodder, medicinal compounds, and raw materials. Baobab trees are incredibly significant. However, there are growing conservation concerns and until now, a lack of genetic information. The African baobab tree has 168 chromosomes — critical knowledge for further genetic studies, conservation, and improvement for agricultural purposes....

A new study, co-authored by a Yale scientist, finds that starting or halting such schemes too quickly could imperial most groups of animals. According to the findings, published this week in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, a rapid implementation or termination of geoengineering projects could affect the rate of climate change so fast that most species wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to keep up with the changes....

Future computers are expected to use the laws of quantum physics to accomplish certain tasks in the blink of an eye that require decades for present-day computers. Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich, have now gained fundamental insights into a particular kind of atomic ensemble – a so-called Rydberg gas – that might play a role in the future design of a quantum computer....

Pain is one of evolution’s most effective mechanisms for detecting injury and letting us know that something is wrong. It acts as a warning system, telling us to stop and pay attention to our body. But what if pain is more than just a mere alarm signal? What if pain is in itself a form of protection? A new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School suggests that may well be the case in mice....

According to a study recently published in Scientific Reports, Rhodiola rosea reduced the number of inflammatory biomarkers and improved insulin response in a mouse model of type 2 diabetes. It also decreased fasting blood sugar levels and altered the composition of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. “The prevalence of type 2 diabetes and the associated health costs have risen steadily in recent decades. Humans have used plants and natural products for thousands of years to treat diseases, and our study shows Rhodiola rosea is a good candidate for further investigation,” said corresponding author Dr....

Monday, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT). “Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk....

There are two main reasons crocodiles survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. First, crocodiles can live for a very long time without food. Second, they lived in places that were the least affected when the asteroid hit Earth. When the asteroid hit earth About 66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled Earth. But then a massive asteroid, more than 9 kilometers wide, slammed into the shallow sea near what is now Mexico....

Having hope for the future could protect people from risky behaviors such as drinking and gambling — according to new research from the University of East Anglia. Researchers studied ‘relative deprivation’ — the feeling that other people have things better than you in life. They wanted to find out why only some people experiencing this turn to escapist and risky behaviors such as drinking alcohol, taking drugs, over-eating, or gambling, while others do not....

When cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar was shot dead in 1993, the four hippos he brought to his private zoo in Colombia were left behind in a pond on his ranch. Since then, their numbers have grown to an estimated 80-100, and the giant herbivores have made their way into the country’s rivers. Scientists and the public alike have viewed Escobar’s hippos as invasive pests that by no rights should run wild on the South American continent....

The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) coordinated a cross-organizational observing campaign of the asteroid 1999 KW4 as it flew by Earth, reaching a minimum distance of 5.2 million km (3.2 million miles) on May 25, 2019. 1999 KW4 is about 1.3 km (0.8 miles) wide, and does not pose any risk to Earth. Since its orbit is well known, scientists were able to predict this fly-by and prepare the observing campaign....

CfA astronomers Frederica Ricci, Lorenzo Lovisari, Ralph Kraft, Grant Tremblay, Bill Forman, and Belinda Wilkes led a team that for the past eight years has used the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble, and the VLA radio facility to probe nuclear outbursts and merger activity in the galaxy 3C196.1 through the analysis of the distribution and excitation of its hot gas. Their images show that the gas lies in hot bubbles rising outward from the nuclear region into zones of cooler material, along with shocks arising from the creation of the bubbles that (like stormy weather) shape its environment....

Discovered in November 1834 by British astronomer John Herschel, NGC 1898 has been scrutinized numerous times by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Today we know that globular clusters belong to the oldest known objects in the Universe and that they are relics of the first epochs of galaxy formation. While we already have a pretty good picture on the globular clusters of the Milky Way — still with many unanswered questions — our studies on globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies just started....

Surrounded by dust, this new Hubble image shows the young forming star known as HBC 1. The star is in an immature and adolescent phase of life, while most of a sun-like star’s life is spent in a stable stage comparable to human adulthood. In this view, HBC 1 illuminates a wispy reflection nebula known as IRAS 00044+6521. Formed from clouds of interstellar dust, reflection nebulae do not emit any visible light of their own....

On September 27, 2022, after making landfall in western Cuba, Hurricane Ian entered the Gulf of Mexico as a category-3 storm with a trajectory aimed at Florida. NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this natural-color image (above) of Hurricane Ian at about noon local time (16:00 Universal Time) on September 27, 2022, using its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). This was just hours after it moved off the northwest coast of Cuba....

Like SARS-CoV, which caused the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2003, SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the same Betacoronavirus genus. By considering the genetic similarity between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, the team leveraged experimentally-determined immunological data to identify a set of SARS-CoV- derived B cell and T cell epitopes that exactly match to SARS-CoV-2. Epitopes are biomarkers recognized by the immune system to trigger actions against the virus. As no mutation has been observed in the identified epitopes among the available SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences, immune targeting of these epitopes may potentially offer protection against the novel pneumonia COVID-19....

Tackling mental health disorders among survivors of COVID-19 should be a priority, say researchers. A study published by The BMJ recently finds that COVID-19 is associated with an increased risk of mental health disorders, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and sleep disorders, up to one year after initial infection. The findings suggest that tackling mental health disorders among survivors of COVID-19 should be a priority. Some studies have suggested that people with COVID-19 might be at increased risk of anxiety and depression, but they included only a small selection of mental health outcomes and tracked patients over a maximum of six months....