Yes, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and a handful of other active spacecraft are currently orbiting the Moon. One of the really cool CubeSats I’m excited about is NASA CAPSTONE, which joined these other spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. CAPSTONE stands for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment. It serves as a pathfinder mission for Gateway as part of NASA’s Artemis program. Gateway is a space station that will orbit the Moon and provide a place for astronauts to resupply and prepare for their trips down to the lunar surface....

Complex disease transmission patterns could explain why it took tens of thousands of years after first contact for our ancestors to replace Neanderthals throughout Europe and Asia. Growing up in Israel, Gili Greenbaum would give tours of local caves once inhabited by Neanderthals and wonder along with others why our distant cousins abruptly disappeared about 40,000 years ago. Now a scientist at Stanford, Greenbaum thinks he has an answer. In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Greenbaum and his colleagues propose that complex disease transmission patterns can explain not only how modern humans were able to wipe out Neanderthals in Europe and Asia in just a few thousand years but also, perhaps more puzzling, why the end didn’t come sooner....

According to the study published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, apixaban, one of the two most popular direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs), has the lowest risk of gastrointestinal bleeding and performs similarly to other DOACs in terms of preventing strokes and other side effects. Over 33 million individuals worldwide suffer from atrial fibrillation, which causes slow or irregular heartbeats; DOACs are used to prevent strokes in these patients. Compared to warfarin, the former standard of treatment, they are now more widely used because they require less follow-up monitoring (which was especially helpful during the Covid-19 outbreak) and have a lower risk of side effects....

NASA’s Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) is targeting launch of the Starliner spacecraft on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 1:20 p.m. EDT Tuesday, August 3, from Space Launch Complex-41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Starliner is expected to arrive at the space station for docking about 24 hours later with more than 400 pounds of NASA cargo and crew supplies. The mission will test the end-to-end capabilities of Starliner from launch to docking, atmospheric re-entry, and a desert landing in the western United States....

After all, thanks to its design, humans can walk upright on two legs (unlike our primate cousins) and mothers can give birth to children with huge heads (therefore big brains). The pelvis is anatomically well-understood, but when it comes to how and when this very essential structure takes form throughout development, our understanding begins to falter. That is changing thanks to recent research by Capellini’s team. The study, which was published in the journal Science Advances, demonstrates when the pelvis forms during pregnancy and identifies the genes and genetic sequences that drive the process....

It’s believed this magma ‘conveyor belt,’ created by shifts in the seabed, continuously made space available for the molten rock to flow for millions of years, beginning around 120 million years ago. Research lead Qiang Jiang, a PhD candidate from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the studied volcanoes were in the Kerguelen Plateau, located in the Indian Ocean, about 3,000 kilometers south west of Fremantle, Western Australia....

Known as LAM-002A (apilimod), the drug has a proven safety record. Preliminary research has shown it can block cellular entry and trafficking of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of COVID-19. Previous trials involving more than 700 patients have shown LAM-002A to be safe for the treatment for autoimmune diseases and follicular lymphoma. The drug has received Fast Track Status and Orphan Drug Designation from the Food & Drug Administration for treatment of lymphoma....

Lex Kemper is an associate professor of physics at NC State. He studies quantum materials: solid materials that have nifty physical properties that make them useful in computing or energy applications. Recently, Kemper was co-author on a paper in Nature Communications that described a phase transition in a particular quantum material (Cerium tri-Telluride, or CeTe3) when it was driven out of equilibrium with ultrafast laser pulses. The project was led by researchers from Michigan State University, with additional contributors from Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory....

For a battery to work, it must have the following three key components: an anode (the negative pole), a cathode (the positive pole), and an electrolyte. Most of the batteries used in our electronic equipment today are based on lithium ions. When the battery charges, the lithium ions leave the cathode and move to the anode. To prevent lithium dendrites forming — a kind of microscopic stalagmite that can induce short circuits in the battery that may cause fire — the anode in commercial batteries is made from graphite rather than metallic lithium, even though this ultra-light metal would increase the amount of energy that can be stored....

A molecule developed by researchers at the University of Helsinki can inactivate the coronavirus spike protein and offers effective short-term protection against the COVID-19 virus. Cell cultures and animal studies show that TriSb92, a new molecule developed by the researchers, protects against coronavirus infection for at least eight hours even in cases of high exposure risk. In contrast to vaccine protection, the effect of TriSb92 begins immediately after its administration....

Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, EPFL’s four-legged “cheetah-cub robot” has the same advantages as its model: it is small, light and fast. Still in its experimental stage, the robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics. Even though it doesn’t have a head, you can still tell what kind of animal it is: the robot is definitely modeled upon a cat....

High-precision observations over the last two decades have indicated that our Universe consists of about 75% Dark Energy, 20% Dark Matter, and 5% ordinary matter. Galaxies and matter in the universe clump in an intricate network of filaments and voids, known as the Cosmic Web. Computer experiments on massive supercomputers have shown that in such a Universe a huge number of small “dwarf” galaxies weighing just one-thousandth of the Milky Way should have formed in our cosmic neighborhood....

On the third day of its Artemis I journey, NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft is now more than halfway to the Moon. “Today, we met to review the Orion spacecraft performance, and it is exceeding performance expectations,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager. Flight controllers used Orion’s cameras on Friday to inspect the crew module thermal protection system and European Service Module. This was the first of two planned external evaluations for the spacecraft....

The answer is an effect from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity called the “gravitational redshift,” where light is shifted to redder colors because of gravity. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered the phenomenon in two stars orbiting each other in our galaxy about 29,000 light-years (200,000 trillion miles) away from Earth. While these stars are very distant, gravitational redshifts have tangible impacts on modern life, as scientists and engineers must take them into account to enable accurate positions for GPS....

A research team of the Department of Physics, Keio University, has discovered a molecular cloud with a peculiar helical structure by observation with the NRO 45m Telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NAOJ), National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. The team led by Shinji Matsumura, a second-year Ph. D. candidate, and Tomoharu Oka, an Associate Professor, named it a “pigtail” molecular cloud from its morphology. The “pigtail” molecular cloud is located in the Galactic center, approximately 30,000 light-years away from the solar system....

The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that — like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping — the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are “primed” for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes and a greater likelihood of death. The study — published today in Nature Communications — details the genetic changes caused by chronic lung disease in the molecular makeup of a variety of cells, including the epithelial cells that line the lung and airways....

The discovery in-vitro (cells) and validated in mice was “unexpected,” according to the researchers, who believe harnessing the mechanism might extend the life of the immune system, enabling people to live healthier and longer lives, and would also have therapeutic use for diseases such as cancer and dementia. Their findings were recently published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Explaining the study, lead author, Dr. Alessio Lanna, Honorary Professor at UCL Division of Medicine, said: “Immune cells are on constant high-alert, always ready to fight pathogens....

“One of our most important findings is the arrangement of cross-struts within the vertebral centrum,” says Dave Martill of the University of Portsmouth, UK. “It is unlike anything seen previously in a vertebra of any animal. The neural tube is placed centrally within the vertebra and is connected to the external wall via a number of thin rod-like trabeculae, radially arranged like the spokes of a bicycle wheel and helically arranged along the length of the vertebra....

Human civilization has now entered a new era of intelligence. As computing has grown more pervasive, society and every one of us are deeply embedded in the network of universal computing and reap the benefits of intelligent computing. Significant scientific discoveries and applications based on intelligent computing have emerged in many important areas, such as the solution of protein folding difficulties, the discovery of new antibiotics, and medical imaging diagnostics utilizing AI, thanks to the deep integration of machine intelligence, data, and computing methodologies....

An impactor hurtled toward Earth around two billion years ago, crashing into the planet not far from where Johannesburg, South Africa is now. The impactor, most likely an asteroid, created what is now the largest crater on Earth. Based on earlier research, it is largely acknowledged by scientists that the Vredefort crater was created by an object with a diameter of around 15 kilometers (about 9.3 miles) and a velocity of 15 kilometers per second....