A new study from MIT researchers has found that Mars, like Earth, can “refresh” asteroid surfaces if in close enough contact. For nearly as long as astronomers have been able to observe asteroids, a question has gone unanswered: Why do the surfaces of most asteroids appear redder than meteorites — the remnants of asteroids that have crashed to Earth? In 2010, Richard Binzel, a professor of planetary sciences at MIT, identified a likely explanation: Asteroids orbiting in our solar system’s main asteroid belt, situated between Mars and Jupiter, are exposed to cosmic radiation, changing the chemical nature of their surfaces and reddening them over time....

The Martian dust storm has grown in size and is now officially a “planet-encircling” (or “global”) dust event. Though Curiosity is on the other side of Mars from Opportunity, dust has steadily increased over it, more than doubling over the weekend. The atmospheric haze blocking sunlight, called “tau,” is now above 8.0 at Gale Crater — the highest tau the mission has ever recorded. Tau was last measured near 11 over Opportunity, thick enough that accurate measurements are no longer possible for Mars’ oldest active rover....

Astronomers have detected massive clusters of galaxies, some with more mass than a hundred Milky Way galaxies, dating from as early as only about three billion years after the big bang, and their stars had to form at even earlier times. In the present-day Universe, clusters are still forming through hierarchical processes like major mergers with neighboring clusters. Astronomers are working to better understand cluster formation and evolution in part because the details will also help to constrain cosmological parameters and the properties of dark matter....

Cannabidiol (CBD) oils and products have become increasingly popular with consumers as ways to find relief from aches and pains, anxiety, sleep disturbances, and other chronic issues. But are these products safe, and are they helpful? A review of the latest research, to be published in September in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, finds there’s a growing body of preclinical and clinical evidence to suggest that CBD oils may hold promise for treating conditions such as chronic pain and opioid addiction....

Countries led by women have not fared significantly better in the COVID-19 pandemic than those led by men — it may be just our Western media bias that makes us think they have! In this paper the authors explore whether countries led by women have fared better during the COVID-19 pandemic than those led by men. Media and public health officials have lauded the perceived gender-related influence on policies and strategies for reducing the deleterious effects of the pandemic....

Through the Artemis program NASA and a coalition of international partners will return to the Moon to learn how to live on other worlds for the benefit of all. With Artemis missions NASA will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon in 2024 and about once per year thereafter. Through the efforts of humans and robots, we will explore more of the Moon than ever before; to lead a journey of discovery that benefits our planet with life changing science, to use the Moon and its resources as a technology testbed to go even farther and to learn how to establish and sustain a human presence far beyond Earth....

The fossilized skeleton was originally nicknamed ‘Cooper’ after the nearby Cooper Creek where it was first discovered by the Mackenzie property owners and excavated with Queensland Museum in 2007. Finding ‘Cooper’ has changed the lives of the Mackenzie family and has led to the establishment of the Eromanga Natural History Museum. Australotitan belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as the titanosaurians, which were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods and the largest known land-dwelling animals to have ever existed....

Are people consuming larvae of the skipper butterfly Aegiale hesperiaris, or the larva of the moth Comadia redtenbacheri, the latter of which is thought to be declining in numbers in recent years? Or is the worm the larva of a weevil, or another unidentified insect species? Researchers used DNA-based identification analysis of larvae inside 21 commercially available mezcals to determine their identity. Specimens were obtained from mezcal bottles that were purchased between 2018 and 2022....

Microbes that convert electricity into methane gas could become an important source of renewable energy, according to scientists from Stanford and Pennsylvania State universities. Researchers at both campuses are raising colonies of microorganisms, called methanogens, which have the remarkable ability to turn electrical energy into pure methane – the key ingredient in natural gas. The scientists’ goal is to create large microbial factories that will transform clean electricity from solar, wind, or nuclear power into renewable methane fuel and other valuable chemical compounds for industry....

MIT researchers are now developing an oral contraceptive that only has to be taken once a month, which could reduce unintended pregnancies that result from forgetting to take a daily dose. This kind of monthly contraceptive could have a significant impact on the health of women and their families, especially in the developing world, the researchers say. “We are hopeful that this work — the first example ever of a month-long pill or capsule to our knowledge — will someday lead to potentially new modalities and options for women’s health as well as other indications,” says Robert Langer, the David H....

Elevated urate in the blood (hyperuricemia) is a precursor of gout, which is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis worldwide. A study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology that included 14,624 U.S. adults found that four modifiable risk factors—body mass index, diet, alcohol consumption, and diuretic use—each has important roles in the development of hyperuricemia. The findings indicate that public health efforts to promote a healthy diet and prevent obesity would help reduce the frequency of hyperuricemia and eventually the risk of gout in the general population....

But now, researchers have used the latest in genomic data to gain the most detailed information yet of their evolutionary history. Armed with a vast amount of genomic information, a team of researchers led by Dr. Thomas Bourguignon, now professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, has performed the first molecular dating to gain the clearest picture yet of the biogeographical history of cockroaches. They have traced back the key evolutionary time points of the cockroach—all the way back almost 300 million years ago when the Earth’s mass was organized into the Pangaea supercontinent....

This view is a mosaic of four visible light images taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington....

Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH, used X-ray crystallography to solve the structure of AEG12. Senior author Geoffrey Mueller, Ph.D., head of the NIEHS Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Group, said at the molecular level, AEG12 rips out the lipids, or the fat-like portions of the membrane that hold the virus together. “It is as if AEG12 is hungry for the lipids that are in the virus membrane, so it gets rid of some of the lipids it has and exchanges them for the ones it really prefers,” Mueller said....

Pulsations are a common feature of stars. They are natural resonances, formed by trapped waves like those in musical instrument, and provide a unique way to look inside stars. Studies that use pulsations — the field of asteroseismology — allow us to test models of stellar evolution, and have been extremely successful on a range of different classes of stars. In one class of stars, however, scientists have been frustrated in their attempts to use astroseismology....

CfA astronomer Karen Collins was a member of a large team that discovered the mysterious variable object TIC 400799224. They searched the Catalog using machine-learning-based computational tools developed from the observed behaviors of hundreds of thousands of known variable objects; the method has previously found disintegrating planets and bodies that are emitting dust, for example. The unusual source TIC 400799224 was spotted serendipitously because of its rapid drop in brightness, by nearly 25% in just a few four hours, followed by several sharp brightness variations that could each be interpreted as an eclipse....

They are billions of times larger than our Sun: how is it possible that, as recently observed, supermassive black holes were already present when the Universe, now 14 billion years old, was “just” 800 million years old? For astrophysicists, the formation of these cosmic monsters in such a short time is a real scientific headache, which raises important questions on the current knowledge of the development of these celestial bodies....

Stem cells – unspecialized cells that have the potential to develop into different types of cells – play an important role in medical research. In the embryotic stage of an organism’s growth, stem cells develop into specialized heart, lung, and skin cells, among others; in adults, they can act as repairmen, replacing cells that have been damaged by injury, disease, or simply by age. Given their enormous potential in future treatments against disease, the study and growth of stem cells in the lab is widespread and critical....

A team of scientists from Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork and the National University of Singapore have designed and fabricated ultra-small devices for energy-efficient electronics. By finding out how molecules behave in these devices, a ten-fold increase in switching efficiency was obtained by changing just one carbon atom. These devices could provide new ways to combat overheating in mobile phones and laptops, and could also aid in electrical stimulation of tissue repair for wound healing....

The 1-minute 45-second burn changed Orion’s velocity by about 454 feet per second. It was performed using the Orion main engine on the European Service Module. The engine is an orbital maneuvering system engine modified for use on Orion and built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The engine has the ability to provide 6,000 pounds of thrust. The proven engine flying on Artemis I flew on 19 Space Shuttle flights, beginning with STS-41G (the 13th flight of the Space Shuttle program) in October 1984 and ending with STS-112 (the 111th Space Shuttle Mission) in October 2002....