Scientists have been trying to figure out exactly what the future entails for the Yellowstone caldera. Unlike other more speculative theories, this most recent study tries to unlock the future by examining the past. The scientists published their findings in the journal GSA. The Yellowstone caldera has had some large eruptions in the past, but most of these are actually anomalous compared to the vast number of smaller eruptions that have occurred over the last few million years....

Cognition, bone mass, skin thickness, and lifespan are all affected by Menin’s decline. According to a new scientific study, the decline in the hypothalamic Menin may play a key role in aging. The findings reveal a previously unknown driver of physiological aging and suggest that supplementation with a simple amino acid may mitigate some age-related changes. The research, by Lige Leng of Xiamen University, Xiamen, China, and colleagues, was published on March 16th in the open access journal PLOS Biology....

Researchers at Princeton University discovered that a material known as a topological insulator, made from the elements bismuth and bromine, exhibits specialized quantum behaviors normally seen only under extreme experimental conditions of high pressures and temperatures near absolute zero. The finding opens up a new range of possibilities for the development of efficient quantum technologies, such as spin-based, high-energy-efficiency electronics. Physicists have observed novel quantum effects in a topological insulator at room temperature for the first time....

Greatest risk seems to be among earliest responders on day of attack. The risk of prostate cancer was 24% higher among 9/11 rescue and recovery workers after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, with the highest risk among the earliest responders, finds research published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine. The findings indicate a shorter latency period from occupational exposure to disease development than that reported in other studies of men not involved in 9/11 recovery/rescue work, although the impact of screening practice can’t be ruled out, say the researchers....

Proteins fold spontaneously into precise conformation, time after time, optimized by evolution. Yet given the number of contortions possible for chains of amino acids, dictating how a sequence will fold itself into a predictable structure has been a daunting task. Researchers have been able to accomplish this feat. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature. A team from David Baker’s laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins that fold reliably into predicted conformations....

In efforts to fight obesity and enhance drug absorption, scientists have extensively studied how gastric juices in the stomach break down ingested food and other substances. However, less is known about how the complex flow patterns and mechanical stresses produced in the stomach contribute to digestion. Researchers from France, Michigan, and Switzerland built a prototype of an artificial antrum, or lower stomach, to present a deeper understanding of how physical forces influence food digestion based on fluid dynamics....

A team of researchers at the Kavli IPMU led by Robert Quimby has identified what may prove to be the first ever Type Ia supernova (SNIa) magnified by a strong gravitational lens. In this work, the ‘standard candle’ property of Type Ia supernovae is used to directly measure the magnification due to gravitational lensing. This provides the first glimpse of the science that will soon come out of dark matter and dark energy studies derived from deep, wide-field imaging surveys....

New research has revealed that chemical reactions previously thought to be ‘impossible’ in space actually occur ‘with vigor,’ a discovery that could ultimately change our understanding of how alcohols are formed and destroyed in space – and which could also mean that places like Saturn’s moon Titan, once considered too cold for life to form, may have a shortcut for biochemical reactions. A team at the University of Leeds, UK recreated the cold environment of space in the laboratory and observed a reaction of the alcohol methanol and an oxidizing chemical called the ‘hydroxyl radical’ at minus 210 degrees Celsius....

Scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to image NGC 6956 to study its Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that brighten and dim at regular periods. Since the period of Cepheid variable stars is a function of their brightness, scientists can measure how bright these stars appear from Earth and compare it to their actual brightness to calculate their distance. As a result, these stars are extremely useful in determining the distance of cosmic objects, which is one of the hardest pieces of information to measure for extragalactic objects....

Astronomers have discovered binary neutron stars before, as a part of pulsar surveys—pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. They’re the size of a city (~10km radius); have extremely strong magnetic fields; rotate up to 1000 times per second; and emit beams of radiation along their poles. As they spin, these beams may point towards the Earth like a lighthouse, allowing them to be observed by radio telescopes. Due to their extremely periodic motion, pulsars can serve as accurate clocks to test Einstein’s theory of General Relativity....

The compact case could provide rapid coronavirus test results in regions of Africa where testing facilities and medical infrastructure fall far short of European standards. The case is a small, mobile laboratory equipped with a diagnostic device, solar power supply, various reagents, some reference RNA extracts, and rubber gloves. “With this tool, a so-called RPA test can be done directly on site, even in the most remote areas. It takes only 15 minutes to get a result,” said virologist Dr....

In our cells, DNA acts as a language, creating the unique characteristics that make each of us who we are. Tandem repeats occur within DNA when a pattern of one or more nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA made up of the chemicals cytosine (C), adenine (A), guanine (G), and thymine (T), is repeated multiple times in a row. An example of this could be: CAG CAG CAG, in which the sequence CAG is repeated three times....

“In some ways, this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain,” said Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, and lead author of the study. “A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.” Astronomers made this discovery using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton, and radio data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India....

In February 2023, sea ice around Antarctica reached the lowest extent ever observed since the start of the satellite record in 1979. But despite several recent years of low extents, the long-term trend for sea ice in southern polar waters is essentially flat; it is the declines in sea ice at the other pole—in the Arctic—that are pushing the global sea ice trend downward. Sea ice around Antarctica reached its lowest extent on February 21, 2023, at 1....

The tiny skeleton discovered on the Isle of Skye, called Bellairsia gracilis, is only 6 cm (2.4 inches) long and dates from the Middle Jurassic, 166 million years ago. The exceptional new fossil comprises a near-complete skeleton in life-like articulation, missing only the snout and tail. This makes it the most complete fossil lizard of this age anywhere in the world. Bellairsia has a mixture of ancestral and modern features in its skeleton, providing evidence of what the ancestor of today’s lizards (which are part of the wider animal group known as ‘squamates’) might have looked like....

The findings are part of the Grim Lens-Amplified Survey from Space (GLASS) Early-Release Science Program, led by Professor Tommaso Treu from the University of California, Los Angeles. The program’s aim is to study the early universe when the first stars and galaxies ignited, leading to the ionization of neutral gas and the emergence of light, known as the epoch of reionization. However, details of reionization have remained unknown because telescopes until today have not been capable of observing galaxies in this period of the universe’s history in detail....

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego have broken down the genomic and life history traits of three classes of viruses that have caused endemic and global pandemics in the past and identify natural products — compounds produced in nature — with the potential to disrupt their spread. In a review appearing in the Journal of Natural Products, marine chemists Mitchell Christy, Yoshinori Uekusa, and William Gerwick, and immunologist Lena Gerwick describe the basic biology of three families of RNA viruses and how they infect human cells....

The protein map of mitochondria represents a critical foundation for further exploring the functions of these cellular powerhouses, and holds implications for disease understanding. The new research has recently been published in the prestigious journal Nature. Mitochondria are essential components of cells and are surrounded by a double membrane that separates them from the rest of the cell. They produce the majority of the energy needed to sustain these activities....

By inspecting the body’s immune response at a molecular level, a research team has developed a new way to test patients for COVID-19. Their method can potentially catch infections a matter of hours after exposure — far earlier than current COVID-19 tests can detect the virus — with near-perfect accuracy. The team describes their innovation, which is still in the early stages of development, in the February 27 issue of the journal Cell Reports Methods....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Science. French astrophysicists suggest that the spreading of rings is fundamental to the birthing process of satellites. The scientists came to this conclusion through theoretical modeling. They found that the moon formation begins at the edge of a planetary ring, where a satellite can start to take shape without being shredded by the gravitational pull of the planet. There, the moonlets coagulate from the ring material before migrating outward....