Feedback is the latest science and technology news of new scientists, the sidelines of the latest science and technology news. You can email Feedback@newscientist.com to send items you believe readers can be fascinated by feedback.
Retract action
On February 25th, one of the most epic withdrawal notices was the joy of reading feedback. The notice of withdrawal is when it determines that a research published by a scientific journal is highly flawed and unreliable and is effectively published.
With such a result, it is no wonder that Guéguen’s work has become a popular theme in news articles. Sadly, this includes New Scientist Covered in 2008 study Women (which has not yet been withdrawn) claim to be more embracing the chat upline at their peak monthly fertility.
It took almost ten years for the card house to start to shake. In 2017, researcher Nick Brown (People who write blogs as “Steamtraen”) and James Heathers I’ve started writing about Guéguen’s work. They found He was prolific and often “published more than ten prominent empirical articles a year, many of which include extensive fieldwork.” Immediately raise a question: How did he find time? They also began to doubt the great effects that are alleged.
And come now Latest withdrawal. The notifications explaining them are amazing, although I take them in academic language. They warn that “low confidence that the research design was implemented as described” and that “many of the data in these articles was incredible or misanalyzed.” In other words, we didn’t think he did what he said, and in any case, he made it wrong.
The editor says Guéguen did not respond to the query. Frankly, given the nature of his work, feedback suspects that he had only one reply: “Stigma! Stigma! They all got it for me!”
A few weeks ago, Feedback wrote about the troublesome Scunthorpe issue: The difficulty of blocking offensive words online is often seen in completely harmless words such as the names of British towns. Three readers were able to share with us about similar experiences without falling into our email filter.
Richard Black was in the early 2000s when he asked students to help set up a Hotmail email account. (Note for younger readers: Hotmail is the old name of Outlook. It is the email system that parents use at work as Microsoft is nervous in the business software market.) Richard writes: (Note to younger readers: Yahoo… ah, in fact Yahoo is still around.) Anyway, the student’s last name was Peacock.
At about the same time, Richard Hind was “given the budget to implement an email filtering solution.” It worked pretty well, except for “some curious slang terms for ours that were deemed uncomfortable.” However, many “innocent emails” have also been suspended. The only pattern was being sent by staff to friends elsewhere. “I finally clicked,” says Richard. All blocked emails were signed with three kisses or XS.
I also give my thoughts for Patricia Finney. Blog I explained about optimism in the face of climate change in Botticelli’s reenactment The birth of Venus. Facebook refused Nude and nipples” I’m still waiting for an apology,” she says.
Sweet snack
Feedback reading mountains Thunderbird Episode, so we are reluctant to add to it. But a A series of books caught our eye by food historians. The dark history of sugar It’s about colonial adventures that support the sugar industry, not colonial adventures. With a light note, Pudding Philosophy Sounds fun and we were impressed by the title Kneading to know: The history of baking. Author of all these fever-related books? Neil Butterly.
Have you talked about feedback?
You can send stories to feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com. Please include your home address. This week and past feedback can be found on our website.
Mars appears bright blue in this near-infrared image taken by Hera's spacecraft. The month's deimos is a dark mark towards the center of the image
ESA
Space exploration mission to study asteroids that NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft three years ago takes stunning bonus images of Mars and its moon Deimos is on the way to his final destination.
NASA's 2022 Double Planet Redirect Test (DART) was an attempt to show that bodies on a collision course with the planet could be deliberately redirected to avoid catastrophic effects. Observations from Earth showed that NASA successfully alters the orbit of the asteroid by crushing the 610-kilogram ship into distant asteroid shaped leaves at 6.6 km/sec. Dimorphos did not present any risk to the Earth, and simply acted as a subject.
Hera is a subsequent European Space Agency mission designed to explore the effects of crashes in detail. The craft is the size of a small car weighing 1081 kilograms when fully fueled. It was released on October 7, 2024 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket, and on March 12, 2025 I made a flyby to Mars on my way to the asteroid.
Deimos looks dark surrounded by Mars
ESA
Hera came close to 5,000 kilometers to the surface of Mars, received a gravity boost and cast it at Dimorphos. The operation reduced travel time by months and saved fuel.
It was very close to Mars, but I was able to turn on the trio of sensors to take detailed photos of some of the planets. Demos in the same frame. We captured images, infrared cameras and hyperspectral imagers that can sense different colors beyond the limits of the human eye using a 1020 x 1020 pixel resolution.
Hera moved at 9 km/sec compared to Mars, allowing him to image Deimos, a distance of just 1000 kilometers, ranging from 12.4 kilometers long. You can also photograph the side of the moon, which is attractively trapped from Mars, but that's not very common.
Deimos shines much brighter than Mars in this shot taken by Hera's thermal infrared imager
ESA/JAXA
The first concept behind the Hera mission was that it existed when Dart collided with Dimorphos, but delays in funding made it impossible. It will arrive a few years after the impact.
The mission also features two miniature satellites, called Juventus and Milani, or Cubesat. Rather than rotating the traits, these will fly before them and make a drastic pass at smaller, risky distances to collect data. Both are expected to look better if they eventually land on an asteroid and do everything they can in the distance.
Astrophysicists have discovered ILT J110160.52+552119.62, a recently discovered temporary radio source, and that the arrival of that approximately one minute pulse with a periodicity of 125.5 minutes is a red-white, white-white dwarf binary system with orbital periods that match the orbital period observed when two stars are observed when they are engaging.
Artistic illustration showing radioactive pulses emitted by the binary star system: white d star orbit around a red d star. Image credits: Daniëlle Futselaar/Artsource.nl.
In recent years, astronomers have detected radio pulses from sources in the Milky Way that last from seconds to minutes.
These pulses differ from what you would expect from known pulsars that produce pulses on the order of milliseconds.
Furthermore, unlike radiopulsars, these so-called long-term transients (LPTs) are periodic on timescales ranging from minutes to hours.
There have been some hypotheses regarding the origin of these novel pulses, but evidence is scarce.
“There are several highly magnetized neutron stars or magnetores known to exhibit radio pulses in periods of a few seconds,” said Charles Kilpatrick, a northwestern astrophysicist.
“Some astrophysicists also claim that the source is spinning and can emit pulses at regular time intervals, so radio emissions are only shown when the source rotates towards us.”
“I know now that at least some long-term radio transients come from binary.”
“We hope this motivates radio astronomers to localize new classes of sources that could arise from neutron stars or magnetoresistance binaries.”
In their study, Dr. Kilpatrick and colleagues focused on periodic radio signals from transient radio sources designated as ILT J110160.52+552119.62 (ILT J1101+5521);
New imaging techniques were used to detect some of these radio pulses in data collected by low frequency arrays (LOFAR).
Behaving like a large radio camera, the telescope can pinpoint the exact location of the radio source in the sky.
According to the team, the Object is about 1,600 light years away in the Ursa major's constellation.
Follow-up observations with multiple mirror telescopes of 6.5 m diameter in Arizona and the Texas Hobby and Everly telescope showed that the ILT J1101+5521 is not a single flashing star, but two stars that cause pulses together.
A white dwarf in orbit around the two stars, the red war star, brings a common center of gravity into orbit every 125.5 minutes.
Researchers say there are two possibilities for the way stars produce unusually long radio pulses.
Potentially, radio bursts can be emitted from the strong magnetic field of a white dwarf or generated by the interaction of a white dwarf and its stellar companion magnetic field.
However, further observation is required to make this clear.
“Thanks to this discovery, we know that compact objects other than neutron stars can produce bright radio emissions,” says Dr. Kaustub Rajwade, an astronomer at Oxford University.
Discoveries are reported in a paper It's published in the journal today Natural Astronomy.
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I. de Ruiter et al. Sporadicated radio pulses from white dwarf binaries during orbit. Nut AthlonPublished online on March 12, 2025. doi:10.1038/s41550-025-02491-0
Searching for the land refugia is essential for human survival during the hypothetical sixth mass extinction. Studying comparable crises in the past can provide insights, but there is no evidence of fossils of diverse giant fluid ecosystems that survived the most severe biological crisis of the past 540 million years. In a new study, paleontologists have investigated plant and tetrapod fossils and various microfossils in the Permian-Triassic Nantaodonggou section in Xinjiang, China. Their fossil records reveal the presence of gymnasium forests and fern fields in a vibrant area, but marine life has experienced mass extinction.
Artistic reconstruction of the end of Permian mass extinctions based on fossil parinomorphs, plants, and tetrapods, and the end of Permian mass extinctions based on sedimentary data from the Southern Jiang section of China's New Jiang. Image credit: DH Yang.
The mass extinction of Permian, which occurred about 252 million years ago, is widely recognized as the most serious of the five major plant zoic extinctions.
This catastrophic event leads to the extinction of about 80% of known species and is a fact that is well supported by marine fossil records.
Some scientists suggest that volcanic eruptions in Siberia caused widespread terrestrial destruction through wildfires, acid rain and toxic gases.
This evidence includes the continuous extinction of properties. Gigantopteris Flora in southern China Grosso Pteris Flora crossing Gondwanaland around the mass extinction of the Endopermians.
However, other scientists argue that these devastating effects are limited by latitude and atmospheric circulation.
Several fossil discoveries suggest that certain Mesozoic plants exist before extinction events, referring to uninterrupted evolution.
Newly discovered fossils from the southern taodonggou section, located in the Tapan Hami Basin in Xinjiang Province, northwestern China, offer a unique perspective.
“We further confirm that the presence of intact tree trunks and fern stems represents local vegetation rather than transported remains,” said Professor Minli Wang, a researcher at the Institute of Geology and Paleontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Although some plant species have disappeared locally, researchers have found that the overall extinction rate for spores and pollen species is probably only about 21%.
This conclusion is based on the discovery of many “missing” species in the early Triassic formations elsewhere, indicating temporary migration rather than permanent extinction.
This stable vegetation base was essential for the rapid recovery of local ecosystems.
Fossil evidence shows that within just 75,000 years after the extinction ended, the region supported a diverse tetrapod, including herbivorous. lystrosaurus And carnivorous chronicers show that they can quickly return to complex food webs.
This finding contrasts with previous understanding that it took more than a million years for the ecological restoration of the Endopermians to follow the extinction.
New evidence suggests that local ecological diversity in this field has recovered more than 10 times faster than in other regions.
Scientists cited the region's stable, semi-humid climate as essential to its biological resilience. According to a Paleosol Matrix analysis, the area received consistent rainfall of approximately 1,000 mm per year during this period.
Its consistent precipitation has provided southern gu with more abundant vegetation and habitable environment than other regions following the mass extinction of Permians, providing important support for migrating migrant animals.
Despite its proximity to the volcanic activity that caused the extinction of the Endopermians, the Tarpanhami Basin provides safe shelter for terrestrial life, indicating that even seemingly dangerous places can harbor important biodiversity.
“This suggests that local climate and geographical factors create an incredible pocket of resilience and hope for conservation efforts in the face of changes in the global environment,” says Professor Feng Shui of Nanjing Geology Institute, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“In light of current concerns about a potential sixth large-scale extinction driven by human activity, this discovery of a “life oasis” underscores the importance of identifying and protecting such natural refsias. ”
study Published in the journal Advances in science.
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Huiping Peng et al. 2025. Refludium in the abandoned indid: Unearthing the lost flora that escaped the mass extinction of Permians. Advances in science 11 (11); doi:10.1126/sciadv.ads5614
The journey to the International Space Station for the four astronauts has been delayed due to issues with one of the clamp arms holding the SpaceX rocket in place on the launch pad. The mission controller stopped the planned launch on Wednesday, and NASA has not yet announced the new release date and time.
Originally, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Willmore were expected to stay at the ISS for just a week in June as part of a test flight for Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, but due to vehicle issues, they are now in orbit for nine months.
Astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams will be on the ISS in June. AP
The launch for Crew 10 was scrubbed with about 43 minutes left on the countdown clock. The lift-off was scheduled for 7:48pm from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket.
There are additional opportunities for the launch this week on Thursday at 7:26pm and Friday at 7:03pm, pending resolution of clamp arm hydraulic issues.
SpaceX Crew-10 Commander Anne McClain is waving alongside his crew at the Kennedy Space Center on Friday. From left are pilots Nicole Ayers, Japanese astronauts Onish and McClain, and astronaut Kiril Peskov. Greg Newton / AFP-Getty Images
Once Crew 10 arrives at the space station, they will take over from the current crew, including Williams, Wilmore, and two other members, preparing for the astronauts’ return home.
Williams and Wilmore will return home on the SpaceX Dragon Capsule, which arrived at the space station in September. This will mark the end of their months-long mission on the ISS.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spaceship is being prepared for launch at the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday. Terry Renna / AP
The situation has sparked political discussion, with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump involved. Trump claimed that the Biden administration returned the astronauts to Earth for political reasons, which has been refuted. Plans for NASA to use SpaceX vehicles for the return journey remain unchanged.
NASA has not yet announced the date of the crew’s closure and landing, which typically occurs after a handover period for exchanging information about ongoing projects at the space station.
Another 128 months were discovered, orbiting Saturn, bringing the planet to a total of 274. It's more than what's around all other planets in the solar system. However, astronomers face problems as advances in telescope technology allow them to gradually find small planetary objects.
Edward Ashton Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan and his colleagues have found a new moon with a telescope in Canada, France and Hawaii, revealing dozens who have previously avoided astronomers. They took several hours of imagery of Saturn, adjusted them through the sky for the movement of the planets, stacking them on top of each other, revealing objects that were otherwise too thin to be visible.
All new moons are 2 to 4 kilometres in diameter and could have been formed hundreds of millions or billions of years ago by collisions, Ashton said.
“These are tiny little rocks floating in space, so some people may not be doing anything,” Ashton says. “But I think it's important to have a catalog of all the objects in the solar system.”
The dot at the center of this image is one of the moons of Saturn’s new “fuzzy blob”
Edward Ashton et al. (2025)
Despite the wealth of data collected by his team, these most recent months still only appear as “fuzzy blobs,” Ashton says. There are more powerful telescopes that can solve Moon in more detail, Many people have small areas of vision, but that would mean taking more images, he says.
The newly discovered moon is recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and Ashton and his team You now have the right to name it. Ashton, a Canadian, says he approached representatives of Indigenous Canadian people for suggestions, but also pondered the idea of a kind of public naming contest.
Is there more moons there? Scientists have spent decades scanning the area around Saturn with an increasingly powerful telescope in recent years. In 2019, 20 new moons were found, and Ashton and his colleagues already 62 discovered Apart from the 128 that was recently discovered in 2023. Ultimately, further discoveries are likely to require advances in telescope technology, Ashton believes that thousands of moons are easily found in orbit around Saturn, and even discounting the small rocky remains found in the planet’s rings.
Mike Alexandersen The Minor Planet Center, which records the planetary bodies of the IAU, says there are likely many moons in the solar system, as telescope improvements allow you to see small objects. He says he has to make a decision about what he doesn’t do with the moon.
“I know that the IAU has decided not to prioritize naming anything smaller than a kilometer because of the number of months that are likely to exist. But that’s not the same as they don’t recognize it as the moon,” says Alexandersen. “Only if the spaceship goes to visit it would they name it.”
He suggests that the cutoff between the moon and the rock particles that form part of the planet’s rings is probably between 1 kilometres and 1 meter in diameter. “In the end, it’s probably going to be an IAU, not my decision. And it’s probably going to be a relatively arbitrary kind of thing,” says Alexandersen.
Elizabeth’s Day At Imperial College, London says one day there may even be commercial reasons to have an accurate map of the solar system. “You may want to extract resources from the asteroids and moons in your solar system, so make sure you understand what’s important to that,” says Day.
Kepler’s Renaissance Astronomy in Prague: Czech Republic
Discover the enormous heritage of Renaissance astronomers Johannes Kepler and Taicho Bray.
The article was revised on March 12, 2025
It revealed that Saturn’s total number of months is greater than other planets combined
If we could exchange bodies, we could see and feel the world just like everyone else. This idea was not only a favorite Hollywood plot, but was recalled by the 17th century philosopher and empiricist pioneer John Locke. He used it to explore one of the greatest philosophical challenges of the human condition. Are your subjective experiences the same as others?
For Locke, the appeal of the body exchange story is probably based on today’s endurable confidence. This means that it is impossible to objectively measure subjective experience. This yawning gap in science is a problem.
Let’s take a look at an example of pain that is notoriously difficult to measure objectively. Studies have shown that women have less pain relief than men, even with similar amounts of distress. Things are even worse for people in marginalized groups. Fortunately, Investigate now The neurologist methods can rewrite how we communicate the sensation of pain, and have a major impact on equalizing treatment. A new approach to answering the question of whether color perception is the same proves fruitful for everyone (see “Are we all considered the same color? We have an answer in the end”).
Trying to measure subjective energy levels can be called “woowoo.”
The perception of color is one thing, but what about more ambiguous concepts such as energy? When you try to measure someone’s subjective energy levels, you may feel it beyond the realm of research.
Still, as our cover story explains (see “New Understanding of Tiredness Uncovering How You Recover Your Energy”), looking fresh in mind-body connections, along with biological mechanisms for energy generation in our cells, reveals a new understanding of what may drive intangible sensations that appear to lack energy.
The coalescence of such science is worthy of a tentative celebration. At first, I work to work to understand what appears to be beyond objective measurements. It helps doctors to better understand and treat patients, and helps us all lead a better life. no Funny Friday– Style body swap is required.
Qnodeos is an operating system that allows you to connect different types of quantum computers.
Studio Oostrum/Blijft Eigendom Van Fotograaf
Researchers created the first operating system for quantum networks, making it easier to link quantum computers to each other.
“By building only hardware, we make quantum networks useless.” Stephanie Wenner At Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She has been working on connecting quantum computers to a network for a long time. This allows for the exchange of information very safely and perform calculations in new ways, but this requires understanding of the technical nity-gritty of each device involved. Together with her colleagues, Wehner has now developed a way to run quantum networks more universally.
The operating systems the team has built are software that allows you to control devices within a quantum network regardless of the type of qubit or qubit that make them. Such control devices become more difficult due to the fact that networked quantum computers receive both quantum information from other quantum computers and traditional signals from classical computers that serve the interface.
To demonstrate that an operating system called Qnodeos can handle both, researchers tested it on two types of quantum computers and several different tasks. They used two quantum computers made from specially processed diamonds and another quantum computer made from electric charged atoms. Using these two types of quantum hardware, researchers ran a delegated quantum computing test program, similar to using laptops to perform calculations in the cloud. We also tested the ability of Qnodeos to handle multitasking by running two programs at once.
Joe Fitzsimmons At the Quantum Computing Startup Horizon Quantum, based in Singapore and Ireland, it states that this is a major advance in laying the foundations of the quantum internet. He says, “If you start to take the idea of seriously building a general-purpose quantum network, there's a lot to do,” and the new operating system will lead to a long list of things to develop next, such as routing protocols.
Wehner says that Qnodeos development is like creating coloring pages. They outline all the shapes and struggle to color them all. For example, the work raised the question of how to write a scheduling program for quantum networks. “This wasn't even on my radar before, but now I'm very excited,” she says.
Two layers of bismuth sandwiched between two layers of disulphide
Luo Jun Du
By crushing the molten droplets at a large pressure between two sapphires, a sheet of thick atoms of two thick atoms can be produced. Researchers who developed the process say that rare materials can use applications in industrial chemistry, optics, and computers.
Last year, scientists created a golden sheet Thick single atom which was called “Galden” after graphene, a material made from a single layer of carbon atoms. Such materials are described as 2D because they are chemically as thin as possible.
However, it has never been possible to make other 2D metals. New techniques developed by Luo Jun Du The Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues can create two sheets of bismuth, gallium, indium, tin, and lead, which are as thin as atomic bonds allow.
To squeeze the metals, the researchers used two very flat sapphire crystals with a thin layer of disulfide in a bilayer (MOS2). They placed powdered metal between these jaws, heated to 400°C until they formed droplets, crushing them with a huge pressure of up to 200 megapascals. The metal was compressed until it cooled to just two atoms thick, or, in the case of bismuth. When the pressure was removed, the 2D metal was stuck between the MOS2. The seat then slipped out of the sapphire.
Du says the process was devised eight years ago, but the team dug up the recent fruit when MOS discovered it2. The layers remained the thin metal sheet stable. “The single layer of freestanding metal atoms is simply unstable from a thermodynamic perspective. Therefore, we [had to] We’re developing whole new techniques,” says Du. “The process seems simple, but it works.”
In addition to creating very thin layers of atoms, researchers were able to fine-tune the throttle pressure and create three, four, or more atoms with accuracy.
2D metals can have anomalous properties that help scientists explore macroscopic quantum phenomena and superconductivity, DU says, which could lead to ultra-low power transistors, clear computer displays, and highly efficient catalysts for chemical reactions.
One problem is MOS2 Encapsulating metal sheets is not easily removed. DU says this may be problematic in some applications, but the experiments suggest that it does not affect electrical conductivity, thus not hindering the 2D metal used in electronic devices.
Organometallic molecules are made up of metal ions surrounded by a carbon-based framework. They are relatively common in early actinide elements such as uranium, but are little known in later actinides. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are currently preparing an organometallic complex from 0.3 milligrams of bacherium 249.
The purple/blue solution in this vial contains Barcheromene crystals. Image credit: Alyssa Gaiser/Berkeley Lab.
Barcrium, one of the 15 actinides in the F block of the periodic table, was discovered in 1949 by pioneering nuclear chemist Glenn Sieborg.
However, this heavy element is very radioactive and not easy to study. And only very small quantities of the products produced globally each year are produced.
Dr. Stephen Minasian, a scientist at the Berkeley Institute, said:
“This finding provides a new understanding of how burcrium and other actinides behave towards their periodic table peers.”
“A small number of facilities around the world can protect both compounds and workers while managing the risk of highly radioactive materials that react vigorously with oxygen and moisture in the air,” added Professor Poly Arnold, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley and director of the Chemistry Sciences at Berkeley Lab.
At Berkeley Lab’s Heavy Element Research Laboratory, researchers designed a new glovebox that uses highly radioactive isotopes to allow for lethargic synths.
They then performed single crystal X-ray diffraction experiments with just 0.3 milligrams of Vercrium-249.
The results showed a symmetrical structure with a barcrium atoms sandwiched between two 8-membered carbon rings.
Scientists have named the new molecular Bacheromene because its structure is similar to a uranium organometallic complex called Uranosene.
An unexpected discovery revealed that electronic structure calculations revealed that the bacherium atom at the center of the Balkeracene structure has a quadruple oxidation state (positive charge of +4) stabilized by the barkerium carbon bond.
“The traditional understanding of the periodic table suggests that bacherium behaves like lanthanide terbium,” Dr. Minasian said.
“But Barcrium ions are much happier in the +4 oxidation state than the other F-block ions we expected to be the most similar,” Professor Arnold added.
“A more accurate model showing how actinide behavior changes are needed across the periodic table to solve problems related to long-term nuclear waste storage and repair.”
“This clear portrait of actinides like the barklium provides a new lens for the behavior of these fascinating elements,” says Dr. Rebecca Abelgel, a researcher at Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Berkeley.
a paper The explanation of this study was published in the journal Science.
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Dominic R. Russo et al. 2025. Barcrium carbon bonds in quadruple Berkeromene. Science 387 (6737): 974-978; doi: 10.1126/science.adr3346
In a cave in northern Spain, researchers found fossilized face fragments of ancient human ancestors.
The ruins, known as “Pink,” are estimated to be between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old. However, they pose a mystery as the face fragments do not match any known species from the same area and cannot be definitively identified.
Maria Martinon Torres, a paleontologist at the Spanish National Centre for the Evolution of Humans and a co-author of the study, stated in a press call, “We have documented a previously unknown population in Europe. These fossils represent the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Western Europe.”
The initial fragment was unearthed in 2022, with new details featured in Wednesday’s issue of Nature Journal Nature.
Research findings tentatively suggest that Pink may be linked to human ancestors, potentially Homo Erectus. The fossil was named partly after the band Pink Floyd and Rosa Huguet, the study’s lead author and archaeological site coordinator.
Dr. Rosa Huguet.Maria D. Gillen/Ifes Kerkha
This discovery is significant as it provides a more accurate timeline for the arrival of human ancestors in Western Europe. It also helps bridge the evolutionary gap between the oldest human fossil finds in Europe, dating back about 1.8 million years to the site in dmanisi, Georgia, where Homo Aristroux was discovered, going back approximately 900,000 years.
Rodrigo Lacruz, a professor of molecular pathology at New York University, stated that this finding could aid in understanding early human evolution and migration narratives in Europe.
The research team confirmed that Pink’s fossils are adult but could not determine their gender. The discovery was made about 60 feet deep within the Sierra de Atapueca archaeological site, known for its rich historical record of rock formations.
Within the same sediment layer as Pink, evidence suggests that these early ancestors were involved in hunting and butchering animals for meat.
Archaeological excavation work at the Sima Del Elefante Cave site.Maria D. Gillen/Ifes Kerkha
There is evidence suggesting that human ancestors entered Europe in multiple waves, with many of these groups later diminishing. Fossil records show discontinuity across Atapuerca sites and Western Europe, indicating a prolonged period without human presence.
Chris Stringer, a professor and research leader in human evolution at the Museum of Natural History in London, suggested that a climate event may have caused a significant decline or complete depopulation of humans in Western Europe.
The Simadel Elephante cave, where Pink was discovered, has previously yielded intriguing fossils. In 2007, researchers found a small jawbone believed to be around 1.2 million years old, possibly closely related to Pink.
Maria Martinón-Torres expressed surprise and excitement at the discovery of new fossils even deeper within the cave.
The abundant collection of fossils in the region is likely due to its geographical features, providing a natural corridor and resources that attracted early humans.
Archaeological excavation work in the area is ongoing, with researchers hopeful for more surprises.
“We will continue to excavate,” Martinón Torres stated. “There may be more surprises to come.”
According to a new study by a physicist at the University of Sheffield and a certified officer at the University of Madrid, black holes can migrate into white holes, eject matter, and even return to space.
Steffen Gielen & Lucía Menéndez-Pidal Research Quantum dynamics of planar black holes require the unification of conjugation of natural time coordinates. Image credit: Sci.News.
According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, anyone trapped within a black hole falls towards the center and is destroyed by immeasurable gravity.
Known as a singularity, the center is a point where the problem of the giant star, thought to have collapsed to form a black hole, is crushed by an infinitely small point.
This singularity breaks down understanding of physics and time.
New research, a fundamental theory that uses the laws of quantum mechanics to explain the nature of the universe at the level of atoms and even smaller particles, proposes a fundamentally different theoretical perspective that may represent a new beginning, rather than a singularity that means an end.
“It is said that black holes often suck everything including time, but new papers theorize that white holes act inversely, bringing energy and time back into space,” said Dr. Stephen Gillen of the University of Sheffield and Dr. Lucia Menendez Pidal of Madrid's compliant university.
In their work, the authors use a simplified theoretical model of black holes known as planar black holes.
Unlike typical spherical black holes, the boundaries of planar black holes are flat, two-dimensional surfaces.
Researchers' research suggests that the same mechanism may also apply to typical black holes.
“It has long been a question of whether quantum mechanics can change the understanding of black holes and provide insight into their essence,” Dr. Gielen said.
“In quantum mechanics, it's the time when we understand that systems can't end because they change and evolve permanently.”
The scientists' findings use the laws of quantum mechanics to show how the singularities of black holes can be replaced by a large area of quantum fluctuation that does not end space and time – a region of small temporary changes in spatial energy. Instead, space and time move into a new phase called the Whitehall. So the white holes may start to take time.
“It is generally thought to be related to observers, but in our research it comes from the mysterious dark energy that permeates the entire universe,” Dr. Gielen said.
“We propose that time is all over the universe and is measured by dark energy responsible for its current expansion.”
“This is an important new idea that will allow you to understand what happens within a black hole.”
In this study, physicists use dark energy almost as a reference point, and as a complementary idea that allows energy and time to be measured from one another.
In appetite, the theory that what we perceive as a singularity is actually beginning suggests the existence of something even more enigmatic on the other side of the white hole.
“Hypossibly, an observer (a hypothetical entity) can pass through a black hole, through what we consider singularity, and appear on the other side of the white hole. It's a very abstract concept of an observer, but in theory it can happen,” Dr. Gielen said.
Team's paper It was published in the journal this week Physical Review Letter.
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Steffen Gielen & Lucía Menéndez-Pidal. 2025. Black hole singularity resolution in monopolar gravity from uniformity. Phys. Pastor Rett 134, 101501; doi: 10.1103/physrevlett.134.101501
The outbreak of the disease in West Texas has sent 29 people, most of them, to hospitals, as they continue to grow. Two people have died, including a six-year-old child.
It remains to be seen how many people have become ill in the outbreak. There have been at least 223 confirmed cases, but experts believe hundreds more people may have been infected since late January. As public health officials try to slow the spread of the highly contagious virus, some experts are worried about long-term complications.
Measles is different from other childhood viruses that come and go. In severe cases, it can cause pneumonia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately one in 1,000 patients develop encephalitis or encephalitis or encephalitis, with one or two deaths in 1,000 people.
This virus can wipe out the immune system, a complication known as “immune amnesia.”
When you get sick with a virus or bacteria, the immune system has the ability to form memories that can quickly recognize and respond to pathogens if they are encountered again.
Measles targets cells in the body, such as plasma cells and memory cells, and contains their immunological memory, and destroys some of them in the process.
“No one can escape this,” said Dr. Michael Mina, a vaccine expert and a former professor of epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
In a 2019 survey, Mina and his team discovered that measles infections can be wrecked from anywhere 11% to 73% of human antibody stockpiledepends on how serious the infection is. This means that if people had 100 antibodies to Chicken Pox before they developed measles, they would be left at just 50 after measles infection, potentially catching them and getting sick.
Iwasakimon, professor of immunology at Yale University School of Medicine, said: You forget who the enemy is. ”
Virtually everyone who contracts measles weakens the immune system, but some are hit harder than others.
“There's no world where you get measles and it won't destroy some [immunity]He said. “The problem is that it will destroy enough to have clinical impact.”
In a previous study in 2015, Mina presumed that the virus was a virus before vaccination, when measles was common It may be related to half of childhood deaths due to infectionmainly from other diseases such as pneumonia, sepsis, diarrheal diseases, meningitis.
Researchers found that after measles infection, the immune system was suppressed almost immediately and remained intact for two to three years.
“Immune amnesia begins as soon as the virus replicates in them [memory] Cells,” Mina said.
The best protection against serious complications is the measles vaccine. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective in preventing infection.
What is “immune amnesia”?
Our bodies are constantly exposed to a variety of bacteria and viruses in our environment. Over time, our immune system learns to remember a particular intruder and can take action immediately if we find something that doesn't belong to our body.
“Children are in contact with all sorts of microorganisms, and most of those encounters have not led to illness,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, pediatrician and director of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at NYU Langone Health. “Children often recover and have memories, so if they see the same strain of the virus that causes diarrhea, they will be the second disease they are exposed to.”
With immune amnesia, he said that if people are exposed to strains of the same virus again, their bodies will act as if it was the first time they had it and they don't have that robust protection.
This means that the measles virus can destroy the immunity that people have accumulated over time, such as pneumonia, colds, flu, bacteria, and more that can cause other pathogens.
Mina elicited a comparison with HIV, saying that the level of immunosuppression in severe measles infection can be compared to HIV that has not been treated for years. However, he warned that HIV affects various parts of the immune system, and that people's immune systems can ultimately recover from measles.
How does measles destroy the immune system?
Highly contagious viruses can destroy long-lived plasma cells that are present in the bone marrow and are essential to the immune system. Cells are like factories that expel antibodies to protect us from intruders entering our bodies.
“It's almost like bombing a sacred city,” Mina said.
Measles also targets cells in our body, called memory cells. This is a cell that remembers what intruders look like, allowing the immune system to quickly identify and fight them in the future.
When you breathe a virus, it is enveloped in cells called macrophages. Macrophages function as “trojan horses” to collect viruses in lymph nodes, Iwasaki said.
Once there, the virus can bind and destroy these memory cells, wiping away some of our built-in immunity in the process.
“one time [memory cells] As it is excluded, we basically no longer have any memory of those specific pathogens, so we are more susceptible to most infectious diseases that are unrelated to measles,” Iwasaki said.
Will the immune system recover?
The way your body begins to regain immune memory after being surrounded by measles is to be exposed to other viruses and bacteria, get sick again, and boost your immune system.
Such immunity can be relearned, but University of Pennsylvania immunologist John Welley says that while such immunity can be relearned, he is particularly susceptible to other infectious diseases.
“As every parent of a daycare child knows, if you'’re building a lot of immunity at the time, you’re suffering through it,” Welley said.
Mina relearned our immunity and compared it to why babies seem to get sick frequently.
“The illness a baby gets is not because the baby is more vulnerable, because they don't have the same immunological memory set yet,” he said. “They have to spend several years accumulating it through exposure, which is kind of what people experience after measles.”
How Measles Causes Brain Inflammation
What's even more frightening is an untreated measles complication called subacute sclerosing pan encephalitis (SSPE), a brain disease that can occur for more than a decade, which is fatal after someone recovers from an infection.
For poorly understood reasons, the measles virus can cause persistent infections and lead to brain damage, leading to cognitive decline, coma, and death.
Researchers believe that SSPE was once considered rare, but is more common than realization. a Review of measles cases in California From 1998 to 2015, SSPE cases were found to occur at a higher rate than expected among children who were not vaccinated.
Dr. Bessie Gibberge, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Northwest Medicine, said the disease is progressive and symptoms occur at normal stages.
“It can start with just a change in personality and a change in behavior,” she said. In children, it can be as subtle as worse performance in school.
The disease then progresses and can eventually lead to seizures and abnormal movements, Siebarghese said. Finally, parts of the brain that regulate vital signs such as breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure can be damaged and can lead to death.
There is no cure for this disease and is almost always fatal. Patients usually survive 1-3 years after diagnosis. In the US, there are usually four to five cases each year, which can be underestimated, says Ratner of Nyu Langone Health.
“It’s probably more common than we think because it’s not always diagnosed,” he said. “But as these outbreaks become more common, I think we will clearly see more cases of SSPE.”
The new NASA Observatory was launched into space on Tuesday with a mission that would help scientists unravel what happened in the first fraction one second after the Big Bang.
The Spherex mission (short for Universe History, Reionization Epoch, Ice Explorer’s Spectroscopic Optical Meter) is designed to map the entire sky, study millions of galaxies, and stitch together how the universe has formed and evolved.
According to NASA, it has been postponed several times since late February to help engineers evaluate the rocket and its components recently due to bad weather at launch sites.
The cone-shaped spacecraft ended Tuesday at approximately 8:10pm above the Space Sex Falcon 9 rocket from Van Denburg Space Force Base in California. Also, to get into orbit there were four suitcase-sized satellites deployed on another mission by NASA to study the sun.
The $488 million Spherex Observatory will investigate the entire sky four times over a two-year mission. Spacecraft instruments observe the universe in 102 different colors or wavelengths.
The Spherex Observatory, located horizontally, allows you to see all three layers of photon shields and telescopes. BAE System / NASA
Colors in the infrared range have longer wavelengths than what the eye sees, so they are essentially invisible to humans. However, in the universe, infrared light from stars, galaxies and other celestial bodies contains important information about composition, density, temperature and chemical composition.
A technique known as spectroscopy allows scientists to analyze infrared light and divide it into different colors, just like the way prisms divide sunlight into colorful rainbows. Therefore, data collected by the Spherex Observatory gives researchers insight into the chemistry and other properties of hundreds of millions of galaxies in the universe.
NASA said these observations would help scientists study how galaxies are formed, trace the origins of Milky Way waters, and connect what happened later. The Big Bang that Created the Universe Approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope investigated the lowest mass limits of brown dwarfs within Flame Nebula, a hotbed of star formation in Orion’s constellation.
A collage of this image from the Flame Nebula shows a view of near-infrared light from Hubble on the left, while the two insets on the right show the near-infrared view taken by Webb. Image credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/M. Meyer, University of Michigan/A. Pagan, Stsci.
Flame Nebula It is about 1,400 light years away from Orion’s constellation.
Also known as NGC 2024 and SH2-277, this ejection nebula is about 12 light years wide and is less than a million years.
The Flame Nebula was discovered on January 1, 1786 by British astronomer William Herschel, born in Germany.
It is part of the Orion molecular cloud complex and includes famous nebulae such as the Hosehead Nebula and the Orion Nebula.
In a new study, astronomers used Webb to explore the lowest mass limits of brown dwarfs within the flame nebula.
The results, they found, were free-floating objects with mass about 2-3 times the mass of Jupiter.
“The goal of this project was to explore the fundamental low-mass limits of the star- and brown dwarf formation process,” said Dr. Matthew De Julio, an astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Webb allows you to investigate the faintest and lowest mass objects.”
The low mass limits that the required teams are looking for are set by a process known as fragmentation.
In this process, the large molecular clouds that produce both star and brown dwarfs are broken down into smaller units or fragments.
Fragmentation relies heavily on several factors where temperature, thermo-pressure, and gravity balance are the most important.
More specifically, as fragments contract under gravity, their cores become hot.
If the core is large enough, the hydrogen starts to fuse.
The outward pressure created by that fusion counters gravity, stops collapse and stabilizes the object.
However, the core is not compact, it is hot enough to burn hydrogen, and continues to shrink as long as it emits internal heat.
This near-infrared image of a portion of the Webb flame nebula highlights three low-mass objects found in the right inset. Image credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI/M. MEYER, University of Michigan.
“We’ve seen a lot of effort into making it,” said Dr. Michael Meyer, an astronomer at the University of Michigan.
“If the clouds cool efficiently, they collapse and fall apart.”
When the fragment becomes opaque enough to reabsorb its own radiation, fragmentation stops, thereby stopping cooling and preventing further decay.
The theory places the lower bounds of these fragments between 1-10 Jupiter masses.
This study significantly reduces its scope as the Webb census counted fragments of different masses within the nebulae.
“As we found in many previous studies, going to a lower mass actually increases the amount of objects about ten times as much as Jupiter’s mass,” Dr. Deirio said.
“Studies using Webb are sensitive to Jupiter up to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter, and as they get below 10 times the mass of Jupiter, there are considerably fewer.”
“We discovered that there are fewer 5 Jupiter Mass objects than the Ten Jupiter Mass object, and we can see that there are fewer 3 Jupiter Mass objects than the 5 Jupiter Mass objects.”
“We don’t actually find any objects below the mass of two or three Jupiter. We’re hoping to see if they’re there, so we’re assuming this could be the limit itself.”
“For the first time, Webb was able to investigate beyond that limit,” added Dr. Meyer.
“If that limitation is real, there really is no object of 1 Jupiter mass that floats freely in our Milky Way galaxies, unless it forms as a planet and is kicked out of the planetary system.”
a paper Regarding the survey results, Astrophysics Journal Letter.
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Matthew de Julio et al. 2025. Identification of sales in the initial mass function of young star clusters up to 0.5 mJ. apjl 981, L34; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ADB96A
For a century, astronomers have been studying Bernard's stars in the hopes of finding planets around them. First discovered by Ee Barnard at the Yerkes Observatory in 1916, it is the closest single star system to Earth. I'm using an astronomer now Maroon-X Instruments At the Gemini Northeres Scope, half of the NSF's International Gemini Observatory, there is solid evidence of three exoplanets around Bernard's star, two of which were previously classified as candidates. We also combined data from Maroon-X with data from Espresso instrument ESO's very large telescope confirms the existence of a fourth planet and raises it from candidate to candidate genuine exoplanet.
Illustration of an exoplanet artist orbiting Bernard's star. Image credits: International Gemini Observatory / Noirlab / NSF / Aura / P. Marenfeld.
Bernard's star is an M3.5 type star in the constellation of Ophetus.
Alpha Centauri's triple steller system is the closest star to the Sun, almost six light years away.
Also known as the Gliese 699 or GJ 699, Bernard's star is thought to be 10 billion years old due to its slow spin and low levels of activity.
According to a new study, stars host at least four planets, each with only about 20-30% of the Earth's mass.
They are very close to their home star, so in a few days they zip around the entire star.
It probably means they are too hot so uninhabitable, but this discovery is a new benchmark for discovering small planets around nearby stars.
“It's a really exciting discovery. The Bernard star is our universe's neighbor, but even so, we know little about it,” said doctoral degree Ritvik Basant. A student at the University of Chicago.
“The accuracy of these new instruments from previous generations signal a breakthrough.”
Stars are much brighter than planets, so it's easy to find the effects that planets have on them – such as watching the wind by seeing how the flag moves.
The Maroon-X instrument looks for one such effect. The gravity of each planet is pulled slightly towards the position of the star. In other words, the stars seem to wobble back and forth.
Maroon-X can measure the color of light very accurately, pick up these small shifts, and even bully the number of planets that have to circumvent the stars to have this effect.
Basant and colleagues rigorously coordinated and analyzed data taken on 112 different nights over three years.
They found solid evidence of three planets around Bernard's star.
When the team combined the findings with data from espresso instruments, they saw good evidence of the fourth planet.
“These planets are probably rocky planets, not gas planets like Jupiter,” the astronomer said.
“It would be hard to secure it secured. The angle seen from Earth means that they cannot see them crossing in front of the stars.
“But by gathering information about similar planets around other stars, we can make better guesses about their makeup.”
Team's Survey results It was released today Astrophysics Journal Letter.
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Ritvik Basant et al. 2025. Four sub-Earth planets orbiting Bernard's star from Maroon X and Espresso. apjl 982, L1; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ADB8D5
A team of four astronauts is gearing up for launch to the International Space Station on Wednesday. This marks the beginning of the process to bring NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Willmore back to Earth.
Williams and Wilmore have been capturing public interest since their launch in June on a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Initially planned to stay at the space station for a week, they are now set to spend nine months in orbit.
During their journey to the ISS, the Boeing capsule faced various challenges like thruster malfunctions and propellant leaks. Consequently, NASA decided to return the Starliner craft to Earth with only one crew member, leaving the two astronauts aboard the orbiting outpost.
NASA then rearranged crew rotations to free up seats on the SpaceX Dragon Capsule for Williams and Willmore to return home.
On September 29th, the capsule arrived at the space station carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos astronaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The plan is for Willmore and Williams to hitch a ride back with them at the end of their approximately six-month mission.
As the new crew gets ready to launch, NASA astronauts Anne McLain and Nicole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Onishi, and Russian astronaut Kiril Peskov are set to blast off into space on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the Crew-10 mission.
The liftoff is scheduled for 7:48pm from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Crew-10 astronauts are expected to dock around 6am on Thursday and reach the space station later that day, taking over from the current crew of four.
Another 128 months were discovered, orbiting Saturn, bringing the planet to a total of 274. It's more than what's around all other planets in the solar system. However, astronomers face problems as advances in telescope technology allow them to gradually find small planetary objects.
Edward Ashton Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan and his colleagues have found a new moon with a telescope in Canada, France and Hawaii, revealing dozens who have previously avoided astronomers. They took several hours of imagery of Saturn, adjusted them through the sky for the movement of the planets, stacking them on top of each other, revealing objects that were otherwise too thin to be visible.
All new moons are 2 to 4 kilometres in diameter and could have been formed hundreds of millions or billions of years ago by collisions, Ashton said.
“These are tiny little rocks floating in space, so some people may not be doing anything,” Ashton says. “But I think it's important to have a catalog of all the objects in the solar system.”
The dot at the center of this image is one of the moons of Saturn's new “fuzzy blob”
edward ashton et al. (2025)
Despite the wealth of data collected by his team, these most recent months still only appear as “fuzzy blobs,” Ashton says. There are more powerful telescopes that can solve Moon in more detail,Many people have small areas of vision, but that would mean taking more images, he says.
The newly discovered moon is recognized by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and Ashton and his teamYou now have the right to name it. Ashton, a Canadian, says he approached representatives of Indigenous Canadian people for suggestions, but also pondered the idea of a kind of public naming contest.
Is there more moons there? Scientists have spent decades scanning the area around Saturn with an increasingly powerful telescope in recent years. In 2019, 20 new moons were found, and Ashton and his colleagues already 62 discovered Apart from the 128 that was recently discovered in 2023. Ultimately, further discoveries are likely to require advances in telescope technology, Ashton believes that thousands of moons are easily found in orbit around Saturn, and even discounting the small rocky remains found in the planet's rings.
Mike Alexandersen The Minor Planet Center, which records the planetary bodies of the IAU, says there are likely many moons in the solar system, as telescope improvements allow you to see small objects. He says he has to make a decision about what he doesn't do with the moon.
“I know that the IAU has decided not to prioritize naming anything smaller than a kilometer because of the number of months that are likely to exist. But that's not the same as they don't recognize it as the moon,” says Alexandersen. “Only if the spaceship goes to visit it would they name it.”
He suggests that the cutoff between the moon and the rock particles that form part of the planet's rings is probably between 1 kilometres and 1 meter in diameter. “In the end, it's probably going to be an IAU, not my decision. And it's probably going to be a relatively arbitrary kind of thing,” says Alexandersen.
Elizabeth's Day At Imperial College, London says one day there may even be commercial reasons to have an accurate map of the solar system. “You may want to extract resources from the asteroids and moons in your solar system, so make sure you understand what's important to that,” says Day.
Small Mixedectid Mammals Called Mixedectes Pungens Analysis of a remarkably complete skeletal structure discovered in New Mexico shows that the skeletal characteristics that live in the leaves were primarily dieting on the leaves, weighing about 1.3 kg.
Mixedectes Pungens (foreground) lived in the same forest as early primates Torrejonia Wilsoni (background). Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.
Mixedectes Pungens He lived in western North America during the early Ale Holocene period, about 62 million years ago.
First described in 1883 by the drinker Coop of the famous American paleontologist Edward, the species was previously known for its fossilized teeth and jawbone fragments.
In the new study, Professor Eric Salgis of Yale University and his colleagues looked into the new skeleton Mixedectes Pungens – The most complete dental-related skeletal structure still recovered for mixed-cutide mammals from the Nasimiento Formation in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA.
“This 62 million-year-old skeleton of quality and integrity provides novel insights into the mixetide, including a much clearer picture of evolutionary relationships,” Professor Sargis said.
“Our findings show that they are relatives of primates and corgos – flying lemurs native to Southeast Asia – make them a fairly close human relative.”
The researchers determined that the new specimen belongs to a mature adult weighing about 1.3 kg.
The anatomy of the animal's limbs and nails indicates that it is dendritic and can cling perpendicular to the trunks and branches of a tree.
Its molars have a coat of arms to break down abrasive materials, suggesting that they were omnivorous and mostly ate the leaves.
“This fossil skeleton provides new evidence on the way placental mammals have become ecologically diverse following the extinction of dinosaurs,” says Dr. Stephen Chester, a researcher at the City University of New York and Brooklyn University at the Yale Peabody Museum.
“Characteristics such as greater weight and increased dependence on leaves. Mixedectes Pungens To thrive on the same tree that is likely to be shared with other early primate relatives. ”
Mixedectes Pungens Ale In North America during the early Holocene, it was very large for tree-inhabiting mammals.
For example, the new skeleton is significantly larger than the partial skeleton of Torrejonia Wilsonia small arboric mammal from an extinct group of primates called plesiadapiforms, discovered along with it.
meanwhile Mixedectes Pungens Living on the leaves, Torrejonia WilsoniThe meals were mainly made up of fruits.
These distinctions between size and diet suggest that the Mixeodotids occupied a unique ecological niche in the early days of the past, distinguishing them from contemporaries who inhabit their trees.
Two phylogenetic analyses conducted to clarify the evolutionary relationships of species confirmed that the mixed disease is Euarcontan, a mammalian group consisting of Tressue, primates and corgos.
“One analysis supported them as being an archaic primate, while the other wasn't,” Professor Sargis said.
“However, in the latter analysis we confirmed that Mixodectids are Primatomorphans, a group within Euarchonta, made up of primates and corgos, but not Treeshrews.”
“This study does not completely resolve the discussion about where Mixodectids belong to evolutionary trees, but it is significantly narrower.”
Survey results Today I'll be appearing in the journal Scientific Report.
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SGB Chester et al. 2025. New remarkably complete skeleton of Mixodectes Cretaceous – reveals the argonism of protozoan mammals during the Oxalocene after mass extinction of the secondary genes. Sci Rep 15, 8041; doi:10.1038/s41598-025-90203-z
Megatooth shark, Otodus Megalodonthe iconic shark is primarily represented by the enormous teeth of the Neogene fossil record, but the lack of well-preserved skeletal hampers an understanding of various aspects of its biology. In the new study, paleontologists reassessed some of their biological properties using a new approach, based on known vertebral specimens. Otodus Megalodon 165 species of extinction and 10 orders of living sharks. Their results show that Otodus Megalodon Their bodies were thin and could have reached about 24.3 m in length.
Otodus Megalodon It was extinct 3.6 million years ago. Image credit: Alex Boersma/PNAS.
Otodus MegalodonIt is also called Carcharocles MegalodonThis is a giant megatooth shark that lived in the oceans of the world from 23 to 3.6 million years ago.
This creature is usually portrayed as a super-sized monster in popular culture, with a recent example of science fiction films.
“Otodus Megalodon A professor, colleagues and colleagues at DePaul University said:
“Several vertebrae, pracoid scales, and tessellated cartilage fragments have also been reported to date.”
“However, the lack of a complete fossil specimen has led to uncertainty regarding the true size of this prehistoric shark.”
In their study, the authors examined incomplete vertebral specimens of Otodus MegalodonIt is composed primarily of trunk vertebrae, 11.1 m from the Miocene of Belgium. It was also a specimen of 165 species of extinction and living Neotheratia sharks.
“Assuming that Otodus Megalodon If there was a body plan that matched the majority of sharks, we determined that their head length and tail length accounted for about 16.6% and 32.6% of the total length, respectively,” they said.
“Because the Belgian specimen is 11.1 m, its head and tail were calculated to be about 1.8 m and 3.6 m in length, respectively, which specifically results in an estimated total length of 16.4 m. Otodus Megalodon Individual. “
“The largest vertebrae in a Belgian specimen is 15.5 cm in diameter, but estimated Otodus Megalodon Vertebrae with a diameter of 23 cm have been reported from Denmark. ”
“If a Danish vertebra represents the largest vertebra in the body, that individual could have measured approximately 24.3 m in length.”
Based on a comparison of their body proportions, they have a body shape Otodus Megalodon It probably looked like a modern lemon shark on the surface (Negaprion Brevillo Stris), has a slender body than the great white sharks of modern times.
They also have huge modern sharks, such as whale sharks.Rhincodon Types) And the shark was exposed (Cetorhinus Maximus), like many other giant aquatic vertebrates like whales, they have slender bodies, as their large stubborn bodies are hydrodynamically inefficient for swimming.
In contrast, dark white sharks that become even more severe as they grow can grow larger, but are not huge (below 7 m) due to hydrodynamic constraints.
“Our new research solidified that idea. Otodus Megalodon “We've been working hard to get the better of our team,” said Phillip Sternes, educator at SeaWorld San Diego.
“What distinguishes our research from all previous papers on body size and shape estimation Otodus Megalodon Jakewood, a doctoral student at Florida Atlantic University, added:
According to the team, it is 24.3 m long. Otodus Megalodon It weighs approximately 94 tons and estimates of cruising speeds of 2.1-3.5 km/h.
“The growth patterns recorded in Belgian vertebral specimens are Otodus Megalodon A newborn about 3.6-3.9 m long was given birth to a newborn, and the embryos were nourished through egg-eating behavior,” the author said.
“A known fossil record with newly inferred additional growth patterns Otodus Megalodon And the white shark lineage supports the idea that the rise of the great white shark likely played a role in the ultimate end mise about five million years ago. Otodus Megalodon For competition. ”
“Many interpretations we have made are still tentative, but they are data-driven and serve as a reasonable reference point for future research into the biology of Otodus MegalodonProfessor Shimada said.
study Published online in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica.
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Shimada Mana et al. 2025. Reassessment of the size, shape, weight, cruising speed and growth parameters of extinct megatooth sharks; Otodus Megalodon (Lamniformes: Otodontidae), and new evolutionary insights into its giants, life history strategies, ecology, and extinction. Palaeontologia Electronica 28(1): A12; doi: 10.26879/1502
Once upon a time, a strong and attractive hero lost one or both of his parents. He then overcomes a series of obstacles and faces off against a monster that terrorized his community. The hero defeated the monsters and was celebrated.
If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a path traveled by Superman, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and countless other fictional heroes dating back centuries. Its enduring appeal has been baffling researchers for almost a long time. However, in recent years, storytelling research has been energized as linguists, psychologists and cultural evolutionary experts have begun to investigate subjects using myths and large private databases, powerful algorithms and evolutionary mindsets. We have finally begun to connect answers to key questions, such as why we make a good story, why there are more permanent than others, and how we can trace the roots of the most popular, and how stories can pass through time and space.
It’s an epic quest, but there has never been a better time to take on it. Unlike his brother Grimm and other early folktales collectors, modern surveyors of storytelling don’t need to do any painstaking fieldwork. They don’t even have to stray from computer screens and diagram the emergence and evolution of stories. “Social media is an almost natural experiment in storytelling, and we do our collections through that platform,” says Timothy Tangerini, folklore player and ethnic editor at the University of California, Berkeley. Furthermore, this new scientific approach can illuminate some phenomena that look like modern times…
It is not well known how lightning starts in a thunderstorm. With the newly developed 3D mapping and polarization system, physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory observed that some lightning not only began with positive high-speed discharges, but also faster and wider negative discharges soon began. Surprisingly, the signal polarization is tilted from the direction of the discharge propagation, and the polarization of the two opposite discharges rotates towards each other, indicating that the initiating high-speed discharge is not driven solely by the storm electric field. The authors analyzed these observations in a cosmic ray shower and found that these seemingly strange features could be consistently explained.
Lightning starts with a positive fast discharge followed by a faster, broader negative discharge observed in 3D. The signal polarization from the direction of discharge propagation tilts and rotates between two opposite high-speed discharges. These functions are through a cosmic ray shower that pretreats the discharge path and directs the direction of the discharge current. Image credit: ELG21.
“Scientists still don’t fully understand how lightning starts in a thunderstorm,” says Dr. Xuan-Min Shao, the lead author of the study.
“We noticed an unusual pattern of how lightning started using 3D radio frequency mapping and polarization techniques. Instead of a speedy electrical discharge, the flash of lightning quickly, faster, and negative emissions followed.”
Generally, after the opposition to electrical charge (positive and negative) is separated by clouds, lightning begins, resulting in the emissions that people consider lightning.
In their study, utilizing an innovative, Los Alamos-developed mapping and polarization system called BIMAP-3D, Dr. Xiao and colleagues observed that signal polarization from these discharges had a diagonal pattern from the direction of propagation.
This indicates that something other than the electric field played a role in the initiation of lightning.
In addition to being oblique, physicists have noticed that the direction of polarization has changed between positive and negative emissions.
They attribute this behavior to cosmic ray showers, high-energy particles from spaces entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
These cosmic rays can generate secondary high-energy electrons and positrons in the atmosphere, further ionizing the air, creating paths into thunder, and travel faster after lightning.
Researchers found that high-energy electrons and positrons are pushed in different directions by the Earth’s magnetic field and the cloud’s electric field, leading to oblique discharge currents, i.e. tilted polarization from the path of the cosmic ray shower.
Positrons and electrons were deflected in different directions of the electromagnetic field, explaining why they behaved differently between fast positive and negative discharges.
“This concept can also explain the common case that involves only high-speed positive discharges, and therefore the onset of most lightning flashes,” the scientist said.
Their result It was released on March 3rd Journal of Go Physical Research: Atmosphere.
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Xuan-Min Shao et al. 2025. 3D radio frequency mapping and polarization observations show that a flash of lightning was ignited by a cosmic ray shower. JGR atmosphere 130 (5): E2024JD042549; doi: 10.1029/2024JD042549
Antarctic adelie penguins are under threat from bird flu
Steve Bloom Images/Aramie Stock Photos
H5N1 bird flu was first discovered in a dead bird in Antarctica. Fatal tensions in avian flu are currently spreading south along the Antarctic Peninsula, with devastating consequences for wildlife such as penguins and could spread across the continent.
“It’s scary. Luckily, it only affects a few. [birds]”I say Juliana Viana at the Pope Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. “I hope it stays that way, but the bird flu in Chile and Peru was a disaster. It killed thousands of seabirds and sea lions.”
Between November 2024 and January 2025, Vianna’s team investigated 16 nesting sites for seabirds along the Antarctic Peninsula. Researchers found 35 dead Skuas with no signs of injury. Samples from 11 bodies were found to be positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus that has spread around the world in recent years.
Skuas removes corpses and is ahead of other birds, so eating infected birds is particularly likely to cause infection. Skuas in this area are hybrids between the Antarctic (Stercorarius Maccormicki) and brown (Stercorarius Antarcticus)SKUAS.
So far, no other species of birds have been confirmed, but Vianna says she was also said to have been found dead on March 9th. “We spoke with the Chilean Antarctic Institute,” she says. “They saw the dead squau and the penguin.”
As penguins breed in dense colonies, there is a fear that H5N1 spreads rapidly between them, killing most of several groups. Some penguin species may be resistant, as birds’ susceptibility to H5N1 varies from species to species, Vianna said.
The highly pathogenic form of H5N1 avian influenza has been circulating in Europe, Asia and Africa since 2020, killing many wild birds and causing outbreaks on poultry farms. For example, in the UK, H5N1 was killed A quarter of Gannett 2023.
In 2021, it arrived in North America and was later found to infect dairy cows’ breasts and spread between them. By the end of 2022 it had spread to the southern tip of South America, killing thousands of marine mammals and many different species of birds along the way.
The sick brown squat and giant plaster on Bird Island, just off a large island in South Georgia, tested positive for the virus in 2023. South Georgia is approximately 1,500 km from the Antarctic Peninsula.
“Reported deaths of SKUAS are of concern,” he says. Thijs Kuiken At Rotterdam, the University of Erasmus, Netherlands. Some species in the area are only found on small islands and could be wiped out by avian flu, he says.
However, the tests described in Vianna’s study only show that SKUA has been infected with H5 influenza, and Kuiken does not know whether it is a highly pathogenic form.
Vianna says that’s correct, but samples were sent for additional tests not detailed in the paper. “So it’s been confirmed as a highly pathogenic avian flu,” she says.
On February 25th, another group of researchers reported Find H5N1 in the Closet and Kergellen archipelago In the Indian Ocean near Antarctica, where the virus killed elephant seals and several species of birds. That is, the virus moved towards Australia and New Zealand along the way in Antarctica. This is the only major country that is free from the virus.
When her school closed in March 2020, Baltimore English teacher Chimere Sweeney thought that once the US got the new SARS-COV-2 virus, she would return to her students. But “There was another plan in life,” she said when she quickly got Covid and never recovered.
Initially, Sweeney developed only muscle pain. By the second week she began having panic attacks, blurry vision, constipation and partial hearing loss. Half of her face freezes “like concrete.” She forgot her phone number and address and stuttered. Within a month of contracting, she lost 30 pounds.
“In two weeks, I was told I would be better,” said Sweeney, now 42. “But my two weeks didn't come.”
Almost five years later, she still suffers from severe whole body pain, insomnia, depression, painful rash and boiling, uncontrollable urination, short-term memory loss and irregular periods.
“I'm a healthy 37-year-old woman and I might have had to pop allergy pills many times, but I took 10-12 medications per day to control almost every system in my body,” Sweeney said.
The World Health Organization characterized Covid as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, so scientists don't fully understand why some people develop chronic diseases and disordered conditions after their first virus infection. The US may have come throughout the winter after the first pandemic without a massive surge in cases, but each infection is at risk of developing a long community. Some scientists are looking for a new type of clinical trial designed for the longest and most debilitating covid patients.
Long covid is known to be the cause Over 200 different symptoms There are no approved tests or recommended treatments in almost 12 organ systems, including those of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes and skin. Research shows long covid It's more common for middle-aged people, especially women and those with weakened immune systems, but anyone who catches the virus can get it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there is one in every 20 adults in the United States, or about 14 million. Living with a long covid. Other data shows that 5.8 million children It may be affected by the condition as well. However, experts say these numbers are likely to be underestimated as there is no official surveillance system in place.
Billion Dollar Research Initiative Called Recover Started by the National Institutes of Health, finding the causes and potential treatments of covid, I've reached that promisesays scientists and patient advocates.
Meanwhile, experts fear that extreme cuts in federal spending by the Trump administration could be possible It undermines long Covid's research effortswhich could further delay the discovery of treatment. Last month, President Donald Trump ended his secretary as a health and welfare secretary Advisory Committee on Long Covid.
This indefinite dye microscope image, available to the US National Institutes of Health in February 2020, shows the novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2, shown in yellow, emerges from the cell surface and is cultured in laboratory culture.niaid-rml via AP file
W. Medical Director, UT Health Austin. Dr. Michael Broad Post-Covid-19 Program In Texas, “We build boats while we're at the sea and we're trying to understand together. [with patients] …But we need to build on the progress we have already made. ”
“We are not offering answers that are worthy of the public health crisis we are facing,” he said.
Causes of long covids
SARS-COV-2, which causes Covid, is not the only virus that causes prolonged symptoms. Another condition called myalgia encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) shares many similarities with the long community; Caused by infection Among other things, Epstein Barr, influenza, and water cell-zoster virus.
Brode said Covid is unique because it is more likely to cause chronic disease than other pathogens. It has not yet been determined why it could lead to long-term symptoms. Experts have come to several theories so far.
One idea is that Virus remains hidden in different tissues Broad said after the infection subsided. These viral particles continue to thrust and stimulate the immune system in ways that cause long covid symptoms.
Another potential cause is Reactivation of other virusessitting in a dormant state of people's bodies, such as EBV and HIV.
Dr. Igor Coralnik, co-director of Northwest Medicine's Comprehensive COVID-19 Centre, said Covid could also trick the immune system into producing antibodies that attack people's own healthy organs and tissues.
Some evidence shows covid It affects the inner layer of blood vesselswhich leads to the formation of small clots and helps explain the symptoms, such as irregular heartbeat and heart failure, that some long-term community patients experience, Koralnik said.
It is unclear whether one or a combination of these factors will cause long covid, experts say. But the evidence suggests that they are all linked to an increase in inflammation in the body, Coralnik said, it's yours The risk of long covid increases with each covid infection.
“It's like a river that's over a dam,” Coralnik said. “The more episodes of Covid, the higher the river levels will go to where it is overflowing, and there will be a long flood of COVID symptoms.”
Diagnosis of long covids can be complicated
There are diagnostic tools to check for long covid symptoms, such as MRI scans for heart abnormalities. There are no tests that can diagnose the condition Or distinguish it from similar diseases, the CDC says.
As a result, people need to stay away from work, school or other responsibilities and endure numerous clinical tests and scans that are not only expensive, but also stressful and time-consuming. This is a broad exclusion process that prevents people from getting the help they need, Broad said.
Eye, intestine, and immune system clue
The current challenge is to find one or more biomarkers of genes, proteins, or other substances associated with a particular condition that will help diagnose long covid.
a Recover your research Released last year, routine lab tests, including 25 standard blood and urine tests, showed little difference in biomarkers, with or without previous symbiotic infections. Researchers concluded that these tests may not be useful in the diagnosis of long-term COVID.
Koralnik and his team recently discovered that people with long covids are reducing blood flow in small blood vessels in the retina. This reduced flow is thought to reduce blood circulation in and around the brain, and the small organelles called mitochondria, which convert oxygen into energy, are described as “toxic.”
This theory can explain why many people with long covid experience cognitive problems, fatigue and exercise intolerance, Coralnik said. Overall, the findings published in the Journal of Imaging in February are The retina can become a long covid biomarker.
Other studies suggest that biomarkers may be present in the gut and immune system, but Brode noted that these early findings are based on small groups of people and should be considered in salt grains.
As useful as diagnostic tests, experts say that for those with prolonged symptoms, some experts should not slow scientists in searching for long covid treatments.
Julia Moore Vogel, senior program director at Scripps Research, and Patient-led research cooperation Regarding long covid, he said that other conditions like migraines do not have reliable biomarkers or tests to confirm the diagnosis. Several drugs have been approved To handle it.
“I think we'll get there,” said Vogel, a long-distance runner before developing the long-time Covid in 2020. “But I personally don't think it should contain anything.”
Unfortunate advances in long covid treatments
The Food and Drug Administration has not approved treatments, particularly for long covids. Experts are not sure if they'll get it anytime soon.
“When I first got sick, I was OK, I had to survive for just three to five years. At least, I think I have options as I have decent symptom management trial data. But we've made little progress in treatment,” Vogel said. “There are currently promising research beginning, but it's not close to the amount that should be burdened by the disease.”
Most clinical trials test whether medications used to treat other conditions are useful for long-term COVID. For example, researchers at the University of British Columbia Low-dose naltrexone – Approved drugs for opioid and alcohol use disorders. The drug is thought to have anti-inflammatory and pain relief properties and is used off-label in people with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, making it potential as a long-term symbiotic treatment.
Other drugs Barishinibapproved for treating rheumatoid arthritis and acute charlation, and Temelimabuexperimental drugs often administered to people with multiple sclerosis have also been investigated as potential long covid treatments.
Instead of a particular treatment, people with long covids must balance rest and activity in a strategy called pacing and undergo physical and cognitive behavioral therapy for further support. Many people will often rely on several drugs, including antiviral Paxlovid, to treat symptoms.
But realistically, “we may not actually have one silver bullet treatment,” says Alison Cohen, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who coexisted for three years for a long time. Cohen said that long covid will take a “multi-faceted approach” to take a “multi-faceted approach” in a very diverse way.
What will you do in the future for recovery?
As long as SARS-COV-2 continues to spread, everyone is at risk of a long Covid, Cohen said. And now, evidence shows that recovery from the condition is rare. A survey released last month found it Only about 6% of people with long covid recover According to Cohen, two years later. Covid vaccinations were associated with better long-term recovery, especially among those who won booster shots.
People who improve are experiencing many “ups and downs,” Coralnik said. “You need to expect a lot of collisions on the road.”
“Living with a long Covid is tiring,” Cohen said. “So for everyone who doesn't live with it, it's important to think about what we can do to support those who have them.”
In the meantime, clinical trials must be designed to accommodate and include the patients they intend, Vogel said. Many people are tied to their homes and beds and cannot travel due to the risk of multiple in-person visits or flare-ups of symptoms, she added. “There are too many things you can't know until you put them on the table,” she said.
Although we don't know when a long community community finally gets the answers and security they need, Vogel keeps her head high.
“We know we can do that. We are confident that a well-designed and well-tested exam will at least improve the quality of life. “But I can't think of any other way. I can't accept that this is for my life.”
Serhiihudak/ukrinform/future Publishing by Getty Images
Frequent blood donors may be gaining more than a warm, ambiguous feeling from altruism, as giving blood can increase their ability to produce healthy blood cells and potentially reduce the risk of developing blood cancer.
Hector Huerga Encabo The Francis Crick Institute in London and his colleagues analyzed genetic data extracted from blood cells donated from 217 German men aged 60 to 72 years old. They also looked at samples from 212 men of similar age who donated their blood less than 10 times and found that frequent donors were likely to have blood cells with specific mutations in the genes called. dnmt3a.
To understand this difference, the team added genetically engineered human blood stem cells that produce all blood cells in the body along with these mutations, along with unmodified cells, to the lab dish. To mimic the effects of blood donation, they also added a hormone called EPO. This was the body produced it later and added it to part of the dish.
After 1 month, cells with frequent donor mutations grew 50% faster than cells without mutations, but only in dishes containing EPO. Without this hormone, both cell types would have grown at similar rates.
“It suggests that all blood donation, you have a burst of EPO in your system, and this will support the growth of these cells dnmt3a Mutations,” Encabo says.
To investigate whether it would be beneficial to enable more effectiveness of these mutated blood cells, the team mixed with cells with mutations that cause the risk of leukemia, and again discovered that in the presence of EPO, frequent don cells can effectively lay other blood cells. this is, dnmt3a Mutations are beneficial and may inhibit cancer cell growth, Encabo said.
“It appears that blood donations provide selection pressure to improve stem cell fitness and capacity to fill up.” Ash Toy At the University of Bristol, UK. “It may not only save someone’s life, it may also increase fitness in the blood system.”
I say it needs more work to see if this is really true Markman Soor University College London provides a very simplified picture of what happens in the body of a lab experiment. “This should be examined across much larger cohorts, different ethnicities, women and other age groups,” Mansour says. He also points out that there is no donor. dnmt3a Mutations may not see this benefit.
In a new laboratory experiment, scientists at the University of Southern California showed that when mice encountered a social partner familiar with the unconscious state caused by anesthesia, they escalated to powerful behaviors such as biting or pulling their partner’s mouth and tongue, showing clear and consistent behavior.
Mice have their own “first aid” practices to help other mice in need. Image credits: Sun et al. , doi: 10.1126/science.adq2677.
“There are many factors that determine mammals’ empathy and social bonds,” says Professor Li Zhang, a researcher at the University of Southern California.
“However, this is the first time this study has seen first responder-like behavior in mice.”
New research shows that mice tend to help other mice they know to be unconscious.
Their responses range from mild sniffing and grooming to more powerful actions such as mouth and tongue biting, and eventually escalates to pulling the tongue out of the unconscious mouse.
“The behavior was particularly unique because it was similar to how humans behave in emergency responses. Dr. Wenzian Sang, PhD of the University of Southern California, said:
Interestingly, scientists were first witnessed rehabilitation behavior in mice paired together in an unrelated study.
When humans encounter unconscious individuals, emergency response changes, such as assessing the situation, checking for responsiveness, seeking help and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for the individual.
The urgent “helper mice” target the unconscious companion’s mouth and tongue appears to improve their companion’s airways and lead to faster recovery,” said Huizhong Tao, professor at the University of Southern California.
“We learned in this study that tongue pulling between mice cannot be interpreted as an offensive gesture.”
“Social behavior in this study was significantly more pronounced among familiar mouse pairs, and was rarely seen when one of the paired mice was simply sleeping or active.”
“And also, after the unconscious mice regained consciousness, they regularly used their tongues.”
In this study, the authors utilized advanced neuroimaging and optogenetics to investigate the neural mechanisms behind social behavior in helper mice.
“One of the most interesting aspects of our neurologic observations was the discovery of the activation of oxytocin neuropeptides,” Professor Chan said.
“Oxytocin is widely known as a hormone that plays an important role in social bonds.”
“Oxytocin is sometimes called love hormone because it is linked to trust, bonding and affection.”
“This was the first study showing that oxytocin is an important factor in social ties in mice.”
“Our findings not only enhance our understanding of animal behavior, they also highlight the important role of the oxytocin system.
result It will be displayed in the journal Science.
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Wenjian Sang et al. 2025. Prosocial behaviors like resurrection in response to the unconscious or dead homologue of rodents. Science 387 (6736); doi:10.1126/science.adq2677
The ARP 105 features star and gas tide tails that exceed 362,000 light years.
The elliptical galaxy NGC 3561B (top left) and the Spiral Galaxy NGC 3561A (bottom right) form the ongoing merger-sparking guitar shapes known comprehensively as ARP.
ARP 105 It is located approximately 400 million light years from Earth, in the constellation of Ursa major.
Also known as NGC 3561, it was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel on March 30, 1827.
It consists of two huge galaxies, the elliptical galaxy NGC 3561B and the Spiral Galaxy NGC 3561A.
“The ARP 105 is one of the brightest objects in the busy Galaxy Cluster Abell 1185,” Hubble Astronomers said in a statement.
“Abell 1185 is a chaotic cluster of at least 82 galaxies, many of which are not only interacting, but many wandering spherical clusters that are not gravity attached to a particular galaxy.”
The gravity dance between the NGC 3561B and NGC 3561A creates the features of an attractive collision galaxy.
“The giant tail is drawn from two galaxies by gravity interaction, embedding a cluster of stars and a galaxy of d star,” the astronomer said.
“The uniquely shaped arrangement of the galaxy and tail gives the grouping the nickname: guitar.”
“The long lanes of dark dust emerging from the NGC 3561b oval galaxy may be ingesting the bright blue region of star-forming at the bottom of the guitar known as Ambartsumian's Knot.”
“Ambartsumian's Knot is a tidal star galaxy. It is a type of star-forming system that develops from fragments of the tidal arms of interacting galaxies.”
“The two bright blue regions of star formation are evident in Hubble images at the edge of a distorted helical galaxy.”
“The region on the left of the spiral galaxy may be very similar to the knot of Ambartumian, the knot of intense star-forming knot caused by the merger.”
“The area on the right is still under investigation. It may be part of the collision, but its velocity and spectral data are different from the rest of the system, so it could be a galaxy in the foreground.”
“The thin, faint gas tips are barely visible that stretch between two galaxies.”
“These tendrils are of particular interest to astronomers as they may help define the timescale of this collision evolution.”
Paleontologists working in northern Patagonia, Argentina, have excavated fossils of a small Rinconsaurus titanosaurus, a previously unknown species.
Chadititan Kalboy. Image credit: Gabriel Rio.
The newly discovered dinosaurs roamed the globe during the late Cretaceous period, about 78 million years ago.
It has been named Chadititan Kalboythe ancient species belong to the Argentine Titanosaurus group Rinconsora.
“Rinconsen Auria was first established in 2007 with the aim of incorporating the genus. Rinconsaurus and Muirensaur“The “Bernardino Rivadavia” of Argentino de Ciencias Natures and the “Felix de Azara” of Fandacion de Historia Natural, said Dr. Federico Agnolin, a fellow paleontologist.
“This clade contains a tiny Titanosaurus, elongated, lightly constructed – less than 11 m in length.
According to researchers, Chadititan Kalboy It was a very small, Rinconsaurus Titanosaurus constructed of gracyl.
“Compared to the length of the femur Bonatitanestimated body length Chadititan It could be estimated to be about 7 m in length,” they said.
“The new Titanosaurus shows that the Rinconsau factions are characterized by a different physique than other Titanosaurus.
Fossilized bones from several individuals Chadititan Kalboy Fossils found in new areas of Analecto Layer Near General Roca City in the Rio Negro province of Argentina.
“The new area is located within Marine Family Farm, close to the Pasocordoba area, 10km southwest of the city of Loca,” the scientist said.
“The area consists of scattered bad lands and low hills separating the eastern edge of the lowlands of “Salinity Moreno.” ”
“They produced numerous fossil specimens despite their relatively small outcrop size.”
“It's worth mentioning that there is no single osteoderm from Chadititan Kalboy It was discovered in this area,” they added.
“We can assume that these Titanosaurs are absent because no osteoderms were found in connection with other Rinconsenserurs.”
In addition to Chadititan Kalboythe authors unearthed new assemblages of invertebrates and vertebrate fossils.
The collection includes gulfish, lungfish, turtles, crocodile parents, dinosaurs, snails and beetles deposited in small ponds surrounded by dunes and palm trees.
The team revealed the first fossil record of Neocyclotidae (a family of tropical land snails) and the first incontroversial record of Sabrinid genus Reptinariaa kind of small tropical air-breathing land snail.
“In addition to ” Chadititan KalboyFossils identifying mollusks, fish and turtles enrich our understanding of this ancient ecosystem and expand our knowledge of life in Patagonia near the end of the dinosaur era.”
“Just looking at the presence or absence of species in the area can suggest what makes the environment unique.”
“In this case, the rarity of turtle-rich turtles and crocodiles compared to regions in Europe and North America during this period further emphasizes how Patagonia's ecosystems differ when the continent drifted during the Cretaceous period.”
“One of the most prominent aspects of the discovered fauna is its overwhelming freshwater turtle abundance, accounting for more than 90% of the recovered fossils.”
“This high proportion is very rare. Turtles rarely make up more than 50% of fauna, like in joint locales in North America and Europe,” added Dr. Agnolin.
Team's paper Published in the journal Revista Del Museo Argentino Ciencias Naturales.
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Federico L. Agnoline et al. 2024. A description of a new fossil region from the Anagre Formation (Late Cretaceous, Campanian) from northern Patagonia, a new Titanosaurus. Pastor Argentina cienc. nut 26(2): 217-259; doi: 10.22179/revmacn.26.885
Physicists have long known that electrons can form vortices from quantum materials. What's new is evidence that these small particles create tornado-like structures in momentum space.
In quantum materials called Tantalum harsenide (TAAS), electrons form vortices in momentum space. Image credits: Think-Design / Jochen Thamm.
Momentum space is a fundamental physics concept that explains electron motion in terms of energy and orientation rather than precise physical location.
The counterpart, the position space, is an area where familiar phenomena such as water vortices and hurricanes occur.
Until now, even quantum vortices of materials have been observed only in positional space.
Eight years ago, Dr. Roderrich Mossner of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and the Excellence ct.qmat of the Würzburg Denden cluster theorized that quantum tornadoes could also form in momentum spaces.
At the time, he described this phenomenon as a smoke ring. Because, like a ring of smoke, it is made up of vortices.
But up until now, no one knew how to measure them.
To detect quantum tornadoes in momentum space, Dr. Moessner and colleagues have enhanced a well-known technique called ARPES (angle-resolved light emission spectroscopy).
“ARPES is a fundamental tool in experimental solid-state physics,” explained Dr. Maximilian ünzelmann, researcher at the University of Werzburg, the experimental Physik VII and the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence Cluster.
“It involves shining light on a material sample, extracting electrons, and measuring energy and outlet angles.”
“This allows us to see the electronic structure of the material directly in the momentum space.”
“By skillfully adapting this method, we were able to measure orbital angular momentum.”
Team's work It will be displayed in the journal Physics Review x.
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T. figgemeier et al. 2025. Imaging of orbital vortex lines in three-dimensional momentum space. Phys. Rev. X 15, 011032; doi:10.1103/physrevx.15.011032
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced the epic image of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 4900.
This Hubble image shows the NGC 4900, a spiral galaxy about 45 million light years away in the Virgo constellations. Image credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble/SJ Smartt/C. Kilpatrick.
NGC 4900 It is about 45 million light years away from the Virgo constellations.
Also known as the Leda 44797 or IRAS 12580+0246, this Spiral Galaxy has 66,000 light years.
The NGC 4900 was discovered by German and British astronomer William Herschel on April 30, 1786.
Galaxy is a member of the NGC 4753 group and a member of the Virgo II group.
“The data are more than 20 years apart in two different observational programs. This is a true testament to Hubble's long scientific life,” said the Hubble astronomer.
“Both programs aimed to understand the end of a giant star.”
“For one, researchers were aiming to study the locations of past supernovaes, estimate the masses of the exploded stars, and investigate how the supernova interacts with their surroundings.”
“NGC 4900 was selected for research because it hosted a named supernova SN 1999BR. ”
“In other programs, researchers have laid the foundation for studying future supernovaes by collecting images of more than 150 nearby galaxies.”
“After a supernova is detected in any of these galaxies, researchers can look up these images and search for stars at the supernova location.”
“Identifying supernova progenitor stars in pre-explosion images gives valuable information about how, when, and why supernovae occur.”
But since then, the tech giant has been increasingly burning from researchers who say it’s not doing something of a kind. “My impression is that the response of the expert physics community is overwhelmingly negative. Personally, people are just furious.” Sergei Frolov at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Microsoft’s claim is based on an elusive, exotic quasiparticle called Majorana Zero Modes (MZMS). These can theoretically be used to create topological kibits, new types of qubits, i.e. components of information processing within quantum computers. Due to their unique properties, such qubits can be excellent at reducing errors and can address the major drawbacks of all quantum computers used today.
MZM is theorized to emerge from the collective behavior of electrons at the edges of thin superconducting wires. Microsoft’s new Majorana 1 chip contains some such wires, and according to the company it contains enough MZM to create eight topological maize. A Microsoft spokesperson said New Scientist Chip was a “big breakthrough for us and the industry.”
However, researchers say Microsoft does not provide sufficient evidence to support these claims. In addition to the press release, the company published its paper in the journal Nature He said the results confirmed the results. ” Nature The papermark shows a peer-reviewed confirmation that not only did Microsoft have been able to create majorana particles, but it also helps protect quantum information from random interference, but also allows for reliable measurement of information from that information. A Microsoft press release said.
But the editor Nature It explicitly made it clear that this statement was incorrect. A published report on the Peer-Review process states, “The editorial team wants to point out that the results of this manuscript do not represent evidence of the existence of Majorana Zero Mode in the device on which it was reported.”
In other words, Microsoft and Nature They are directly contradictory to each other. “The press release says something completely different [than the Nature paper]” I say Henry Legg At St Andrews University, UK.
This is not just an unorthodox aspect of Microsoft’s papers. Legg points out that two of the four peer reviewers initially gave rather critical and negative feedback. The peer review report shows that by the final round of editing, one reviewer still opposed the publication of the paper, and three others registered with it. spokesman for Nature I said New Scientist The ultimate decision to publish it came down to the possibilities we saw for future experiments with MZM on Microsoft devices.
Also, one of the reviewers is rare. Hao Chang Legg says that at China’s University of Tsingea, previously collaborated on MICSOFT and MZM research. The work published in Nature In 2018, it was later withdrawn, and the team apologized, “.” Scientific rigor is insufficient” After other researchers have identified inconsistencies in the results. “That’s very shocking Nature You can choose the judge who retracted the paper just a few years ago,” says Legg.
Chang says there was no conflict of interest. “I wasn’t an employee at Microsoft either. [the firm]. Of the more than 100 authors of Microsoft Paper recently, I have worked with three before,” he says. “It was seven years ago, but back then they were Tu Delft students. [in the Netherlands]not an employee of Microsoft. “
Microsoft says the team wasn’t involved in the selection of reviewers and was not aware of Zhang’s participation until the review process was completed. Nature The decision was based on a spokesman who said, “The quality of the advice received can be seen from the reviewer’s comments.”
Looking at the issue, both Leg and Frolov are making more fundamental challenges to Microsoft’s methodology. Experiments using MZM have proven extremely difficult to perform over the past decades. This is because imperfections and obstacles within the device can produce false signals that mimic quasiparticles even if they are not present. This was a challenge for researchers related to Microsoft, including the withdrawn 2018 paper. The withdrawal notice explicitly refers to new insights into the impact of the failure. To address this, Microsoft has been working on 2023. The procedure has been published in the journal Physical Review b It was called the “Topology Gap Protocol” and claimed to tease these differences.
“The whole idea of this protocol was that it was a binary test of whether Mallorna is there,” says Legg. His Unique analysis of code and data However, Microsoft implemented the protocol in 2023, which showed that it was less reliable than expected and changing the format of the data is sufficient to turn the failure into a path. Legg says he raised these issues with Microsoft before its publication. Nature Paper, yet the company was using protocols in new research.
NatureA spokesman for the journal’s editorial team “are aware that some people are questioning the effectiveness of the topology gap protocol used.” Nature Paper and other publications. This was an issue that we were also aware of during the peer review process. “Through the process, the reviewer determined that this was not an important issue at the end of the day, the spokesman said.
Microsoft says it will respond to leg analysis of the 2023 paper. Physics Review B. “Criticism can be summarised as a leg that will build a false strooger for our paper and attack it,” said Microsoft’s Chetan Nayak. He challenged some points to Legg’s work, saying that the 2023 paper “showed that we can confidently create topology phases and Mayorana Zero modes,” and the new paper only strengthens those claims.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: Nature The paper was submitted for review and the company built on its confidence and not only created multi-kut chips, but also tested how to operate these kitz as needed for a working topological quantum computer. The company will release more details at the American Physics Society’s Global Physics Summit in March, the spokesman said. “We look forward to sharing our results and transforming our 20+ year vision of quantum computing into a concrete reality, along with the additional data behind science.”
But for Frolov, the assertion that incomplete results from the past can be ignored as the company is trying to build a more sophisticated device lies in false logic. Legg shares this view. “The fundamental issues of obstacles and materials science don’t go away just because we start manufacturing more fancy devices,” he says.
A traditional traction elevator operates using cables to move the cabin up and down within the building shaft. An attached counterweight at the opposite end of the cable helps facilitate the movement of the cabin. Simply enter the cabin, select a floor, press a button, and let the electric motor transport you to your desired level. As the cabin ascends, the counterweight descends, and vice versa.
Enter the concept of space elevators, a more ambitious take on this idea. The system relies on cables, spanning several thousand meters, extending from space to Earth. Instead of launching rockets into space, the cabin travels along these cables. By utilizing some of the energy from rocket launches, the cable eliminates pollution.
Although it may seem far-fetched, the idea of space elevators has been under serious consideration for many years. The concept was first proposed in 1895 by Russian scientist and space exploration pioneer Konstantin Ziolkovsky, who introduced the concept of the Sky Ladder.
The primary challenge lies in establishing the connection point of the cable to space. Geostationary orbit satellites provide a solution. Positioned at a specific distance from Earth, geostationary orbit satellites remain fixed in one spot above the Earth, creating an ideal anchor point approximately 36,000km (22,200 miles) above the equator.
The process involves dropping lengthy cables from the satellite, causing the satellite to rise and counteract the weight of the cable to maintain its position. To counteract gravity’s effect on the cable under geostationary orbit, the centrifugal effect also contributes to stabilization.
The cables must be anchored and secured to the ground. Some proposals suggest securing anchors on mountaintops or towers to reduce the length of cables required. Another innovative concept suggests utilizing a mobile base on marine aviation vessels or platforms in international waters, allowing for flexibility in avoiding inclement weather or mitigating potential failures at the top.
Currently, a space elevator prototype, known as the “Climber,” is used to transport payloads up the cable. However, experts propose the idea of pulling the entire system into space once payloads reach orbit. Calculations indicate that payloads representing up to 1% of the cable’s mass can be accommodated. Despite the challenges, such as developing a cable 50 times stronger than steel, advancements in materials like carbon nanotubes or graphene offer promising solutions.
With predictions suggesting that space elevators could become a reality in the near future, ongoing research continues to explore innovative approaches to overcome the remaining obstacles.
This article addresses the question posed by Thomas Bletso, “Can we really build a space elevator?”
To submit a question, please email Questions@sciencefocus.com or message us on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram Page (be sure to include your name and location).
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Many people around the world now associate Tuesday’s Shrove – the day before Christian Lent that marks the traditional East Feast – with pancakes.
Pancakes are enjoyed by cultures worldwide in various shapes and sizes. French crepes, American griddle cakes, and Indian dosas are just a few examples of these versatile fried batter circles that offer endless sweet and tasty possibilities.
To ensure pancake day success, a bit of science can make a big difference. Materials chemists and food scientists Professor Matt Harting and Professor of Fluid Mechanics Ian Eames have shared their insights to enhance your favorite pancake recipes.
1. Replace regular milk with buttermilk
To achieve the perfect stack of fluffy American pancakes, consider substituting regular milk with buttermilk. Buttermilk adds a unique flavor profile to the pancakes and contains key molecules like diacetyl, aldehydes, ketones, amino acids, and lactic acid that enhance both taste and texture.
If you don’t have buttermilk at home, adding lemon juice to the batter can mimic the acidic effect of buttermilk.
2. Add melted butter to the batter
Melted butter in the pancake batter helps achieve a golden brown color and rich flavor due to the Maillard reaction. Butter ensures consistent thermal contact with the hot pan and contributes to the browning process.
Pro-tip: If using buttermilk, consider adding more baking soda to balance the acidic environment.
3. Use the Golden Ratio
The perfect pancake balance depends on the baker’s ratio, which determines the thickness and texture of the pancakes. For British pancakes, a ratio of 100g flour to 200ml milk is recommended.
4. Let the batter rest!
Allowing the pancake batter to rest for about 30 minutes helps relax the gluten in the flour, resulting in lighter pancakes with a smoother texture.
About our experts
Matt Harting is an associate professor of chemistry at the American University of Washington with expertise in food chemistry.
Ian Eames is a professor of fluid mechanics at the University of London and has conducted scientific studies on pancake-making.
The first researchers in science created mice that exhibit properties similar to extinct woolly mammoths.
Colossal Biosciences, an American Biotechnology Company, utilized CRISPR genome editing technology to develop the “Colossal Woolly Mouse.”
These mice are not miniature mammoths but have DNA designed to express mammoth-like properties, making them well-suited for cold environments.
An unpublished study published on Biorxiv explains how researchers modified seven mouse genes to give them a woolly coat.
This marks the first instance of a “living model” of animals with mammoth-like attributes.
Two “woolly mice” created by scientists
“Observing these mice is akin to peering into the past through a specialized lens,” said Dr. Louise Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading not involved in the study. “This technology provides an exciting avenue to test our theories about extinct organisms.”
She added, “Researchers successfully adjusted the mouse genome towards the mammoth genome for the first time.”
Through extensive computer analysis, researchers studied mammoth and African elephant genomes from 1.2 million years ago, modifying mouse genes related to hair growth and cold tolerance to create the final edited seven-gene combination. However, these mice do not possess an exact replica of mammoth genes, leading researchers to doubt the genes responsible for mammoth properties.
The Significance of this Discovery
According to Colossal Biosciences, this development is a groundbreaking step in addressing extinction. The company aims to reintroduce other extinct species with the goal of rebuilding ecosystems to maintain Earth’s balance. Founder Ben Lam envisions reviving species like dodos, giant ice age bears, and extinct Tasmanian marsupials known as thylacines.
Not all scientists are convinced of the immediate impact of this discovery.
While genetic manipulation has been used to create various models, including humans and extinct species, some remain skeptical. Professor Dusko Ilic, a stem cell science professor at King’s College London, acknowledges the milestone but warns of potential risks and ethical implications of such experiments.
While comparing mammoth and elephant genomes offers insights into adaptation and genetic traits, transforming mice into mammoth-like creatures may not directly translate to creating woolly elephants adapted for Arctic environments.
Many scientists doubt the feasibility of replicating mammoths through genetic manipulation alone without a complete understanding of their genetic makeup.
Colossal Biosciences, a US biotech startup, has announced the birth of what is called the “wool mouse.”
The company says gorgeous hair rodents are living evidence that their mission to restore wool mammoths from extinction within a few years is progressing.
To make mice, scientists have introduced eight simultaneous editing into the genome of experimental mice using modern genetic techniques. These include the addition of genes that make fur grow up to three times longer than usual, as well as other genes that make hair wavy and golden.
Other editing targets target genes associated with fat metabolism, which are thought to help increase mammoth size.
Mice are the result of years of hard work by scientists to reconstruct important parts of the mammoth genome. The last wool mammoth is believed to have died about 3,000 years ago, and scientists are stitching together mammoth DNA, which has been decomposed from relics that range from 35 to 1.2 million years ago.
This is the first time that some of the important genes identified throughout the study have been expressed in living animals.
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Mammoth 2.0
Colossal's ambitious long-term plan is to add many of these mammoth genes to modern elephant embryos to create a mammoth-like hybrid.
Despite claiming to be revived wool mammoth, the original Mammuthus Primigeniuswith all the original genetic complexity and population diversity, it has not been brought back to life. Creatures are more accurately referred to as “cold-resistant elephants.”
Scientists designed a “wool mouse” with the mammoth gene, giving it a very long, wavy golden fur. – Photo Credit: Colossal Biosciences
The Mammoth's return was repeated by various groups and dates back to 2011. The group is generally privately funded, and the exact details of their work are rather opaque.
However, these lifestyle, breathing, and rather cute wool mice show that scientists have made impressive advances in reconstructing some of the key genes that have made mammoths unique. Colossal's Chief Scientist Dr. Beth Shapiro The mouse says it is a “critical step in examining an approach to revive the properties lost to extinction.”
A huge task
There's still a lot to do before you see mammoth-like creatures crossing the tundra or walking through the zoo.
Initially, it is much easier to create gene-edited mice than elephants. Mice have been a staple of genetic experiments for decades and can be quickly raised in a huge number.
Elephants, on the other hand, are rarely used in laboratory experiments, and live mammals happen to have longer gestation periods of over 18 months.
Colossal has made impressive advances by manipulating elephant cells into stem cells.
However, even if Colossal could create a viable elephant mammoth embryo, it would not be able to be used as a large number of surrogates, if any, because both Asian and African elephants are at risk of extinction.
This means that Colossal must develop its own artificial uterus to develop experimental embryos until birth. This has never been done before. Such a system should not only replicate all the complexity of the placenta, but also support calves that are as heavy as Asian elephant calves, exceeding at least 100 kg (220 lbs).
But perhaps the biggest question remaining is simply, why? Colossal says other similar tasks to revive mammoths and revive dodos and tylacine will lead to biotechnology that will help save other species from environmental changes.
The company claims to stimulate interest and investment so that they can't do anything else, starting with these iconic extinct creatures.
Certainly, the project has attracted a lot of media attention and has attracted more than $200 million (£157 million) of investments that probably wouldn't have made it to a traditional conservation project.
And there are already examples of the technology being used to support species facing extinction today. For example, in Australia, gene editing is used to provide resistance to the poison of cane toads, an invasive species that kill many animals in the region (adorable, endangered marsupials).
In the US, scientists used similar biotechnology to increase the genetic diversity of ferrets with black feet, but it had dipped to a population size that was essentially involved.
More broadly, Colossal's research could help scientists produce eggs, sperm and embryos of a variety of endangered species, including Asian and African elephants, which help to increase numbers.
We can ask questions
But do these lofty ambitions justify? Jurassic Park– Blatant use of genetic engineering? Many people are particularly intelligent social animals like elephants, and feel uneasy about corrections, not to mention a complete overhaul of the genome.
And what is the life of the first artificial wool elephant like? Where do they live and are they introduced to herds and families?
Are they healthy or tired of genetic problems? And shouldn't we focus our efforts on saving habitats and ecosystems, not individual species?
Giant wool mouse showing the properties of an extinct wool mammoth – Photo credit: Giant bioscience
In recent years, genetic engineering has gained greater acceptance among the public, and is generally considered an important way to produce new drugs and disease-resistant crops.
Does the creation of a large, shaggy elephant make people feel that biotechnology is going too far? Or, as a huge hope, will it serve as an inspiring symbol of how technology can save thousands of species that are at risk of extinction each year?
This is a question that biologists, ethicists and biotechnology regulators need to carefully consider the work of scaling up from mice to mammoths.
Are you looking to keep your mind sharp as you age? One secret could be as simple as regularly exercising your brain with mathematics and reading comprehension, whether it’s at work, at home, or even while reading this article.
A groundbreaking new study led by Professor Eric Hanushek of Stanford University suggests that engaging in mathematics and reading can help prevent age-related cognitive decline. The research shows that individuals who regularly practice these skills do not experience significant declines in cognitive abilities over time, whether they are reading emails, doing calculations, or reading articles like this one. This challenges the notion that cognitive decline is inevitable with age.
The study reveals that cognitive skills typically peak in a person’s 40s before slowly declining. However, those who consistently engage in mathematics and reading, whether at work or in their daily activities, show no decline at all.
“Our findings indicate a significant increase in average skills in literacy and numeracy until the 40s. After this point, there is a slight decrease in literacy skills and a more noticeable decline in numeracy,” the study notes.
This study may inspire you to tackle your taxes – Credit: Skynesher
These findings challenge previous studies that suggested cognitive decline begins in early adulthood. Unlike past research that compared different age groups at one point in time, this study followed the same individuals over several years, providing a more accurate understanding of how cognitive abilities change with age.
Hanushek and his team propose that what was previously thought to be age-related cognitive decline might actually be due to differences in skill levels between generations rather than the natural effects of aging itself.
By analyzing data from language and mathematics assessments in the German population aged 16-65 and retesting the same group 3.5 years later, researchers found that women’s math skills declined significantly over time, indicating potential gender disparities. Further exploration of these differences is planned for future studies.
Have you ever wondered why some dogs look naturally rounded, no matter how much they run around? After all, the same genes that contribute to human obesity are also found in our dogs.
in New genome researchscientists have identified several genes associated with obesity in dogs. This is a gene that we humans share. This means that our favorite furry friends (sorry, cats) will actually help researchers unlock new insights into weight gain, health and complex diseases.
Environmental factors such as Inexpensive availability of ultra-processed foods Scientists, commonly chosen for increased rates of obesity, emphasize that it is a complex condition with a large number of biological root causes. The main factor is hereditary Research from 2007 People estimate that there is 40-70% of people who develop obesity due to genes they inherit from their parents.
As Dr. Eleanor Rafansaid he will lead the academics with new research. BBC Science Focus, “If you're unlucky enough to get the genes that are prone to obesity, it manifests as a bigger appetite and makes it difficult to resist those drives. Slim people aren't morally good. You don't need to show that much willpower to maintain a healthy weight.”
To see if obesity in dogs is also hereditary, researcher Natalie Wallis and her team looked at the genes of a 241 pet Labrador retriever.
Oscar and Isla, and the Labrador used in this study. Photo credit: Natalie Wallis
Using a heterologous approach, they identified multiple obesity-inducing genes shared by dogs and humans. Among these, the gene dennd1b plays an important role in the way our cells process energy – has emerged as a particularly strong genetic association between human and dog obesity.
“By looking at just a few hundred Labrador retrievers, we discovered new biology about the associations of the whole species. We hope that more people will consider using dog genetic models for more scientific discoveries in the future, especially for complex diseases,” Wallis said. BBC Science Focus.
Not only does it provide scientists with new models to understand human diseases, but this study also helps to care for dogs. Pet obesity is on the rise, and at Royal Veterinary College in London Recently, we have reported 1 in 14 dogs It is recorded as overweight every year in the UK.
In the US, 2022 Pet Obesity Association (APOP) Survey It is found that 59% of dogs are overweight, indicating a wide range of issues in pet health. However, up until now, the genetic basis of dog obesity has not been extensively studied.
Dr. Eleanor Lafan takes chocolate Labrador retrievers. Photo credit: Dr. Eleanor Rafan
Understanding pet genetics may be a game changer for their care. “Our results underscore the importance of encouraging exercise and limiting food intake for pet dogs,” says Dr. Rafan.
“Many people still blame the owners of fat dogs, saying they are lazy or extravagant, and the same stereotypes are reflected on obese people. Our data shows that controlling food intake in high-risk dogs is much more difficult. It should actually change the way dogs deal with obesity. They should target high-risk dog owners and support effective management (rather than criticizing them).”
As the sun returns and the winter blues float away, it’s almost time to adjust the American clock. Daylight Saving Time (DST), a practice of changing your clock twice a year, has a long history full of controversy, diplomacy, and some unique quirks depending on where you live.
Despite its routine nature, DST means longer evenings to enjoy the sun in the end. So, as the date approaches, we’ve gathered all the information you need to know, including when to change the clocks, why it happens, and why some want to do away with DST altogether.
When will the clocks change in March 2025?
For Americans, the time changes on Sunday, March 9th. It will happen at 2 am local time, moving forward by one hour.
This marks the start of DST, but the transition may vary depending on your location. Here’s how it looks in major cities:
Los Angeles: Along with other West Coast cities like Seattle and San Francisco, will shift from standard Pacific time to daylight Pacific time. The sunrise will move from 6:15 am to 7:15 am, and the sunset from 5:54 pm to 6:54 pm.
Chicago: Will transition from Central Standard Time to Central Daylight Time. The sunrise will change from 6:17 am to 7:17 am, and the sunset from 5:47 pm to 6:47 pm.
New York and Washington DC: Will switch from Eastern Standard Time to Eastern Daylight Time. This will shift the sunrise from 6:22 am to 7:22 am, and the sunset from 5:53 pm to 6:53 pm.
How does daylight saving time work?
The concept of Daylight Saving Time is fairly simple. Every year, we adjust our clocks by adding or subtracting an hour. This occurs twice a year and alternates between the two.
These time changes are known as Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time. DST begins in March, moving us forward an hour, ends in November, and then moves back an hour.
On the surface, this may seem strange, but it serves a purpose. DST aims to make better use of sunlight and save energy by providing more daylight in the evening, allowing for more time to enjoy the sun and reducing electricity demands at home.
What is the history of daylight saving time?
The history of Daylight Saving Time dates back quite a long time. While often attributed to Benjamin Franklin in 1784, the actual origins can be traced back before 1907.
William Willett, an advocate for more daylight hours, proposed changing how we view time. This proposal, involving moving the clock forward by 80 minutes in four increments of 20 minutes each Sunday at 2 am, eventually led to the establishment of Daylight Saving Time.
Since then, the system has been refined and simplified. Despite initial resistance, DST eventually became a standard practice in 1966.
Why do some people want to abolish daylight saving time?
Aside from the inconvenience of changing the clock annually, there are reasons why some advocate for the abolishment of DST.
Studies suggest that clock changes can have a negative impact on health, with an increased risk of heart attacks following the spring time change. Additionally, the economic cost of DST changes is estimated to be significant, affecting productivity.
Another important reason is the impact on pets. It’s recommended to gradually adjust your pet to the time change to avoid disruptions to their routines.
It feels harsh. Being forced to sacrifice valuable sleep is tough. In the United States, Daylight Saving Time (DST) will begin on March 9, 2025. At 2am local time, the clock will spring forward an hour, skipping straight to 3am.
Not only does this make the following day feel a bit groggy, but experts are growing concerned about the potential negative impacts of the DST switch on our health.
“When the clock changes, there is a slight increase in stroke, heart attack, car accidents, and sleep loss,” says Vanderbilt’s Director of Sleep, Dr. Beth Malow to BBC Science Focus.
The effects of this time shift are felt not only by the youth but also by older individuals. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2015 found that teenagers lose approximately 2 hours and 42 minutes of weekday sleep after the time change.
Mallow continues, “It has health repercussions for nearly eight months due to the shift in light exposure from the morning and evening times.”
“Morning light is essential for waking up, regulating our biological clock, and enhancing our mood. We use light therapy in the morning to treat seasonal affective disorders and improve sleep quality. Exposure to morning light supports nighttime sleep, while evening light disrupts it.”
However, all hope is not lost. Here are some simple strategies to alleviate the impact of losing that hour:
1. Back up your bedtime for a few days before the clock change
While it may be too late this time, keep this in mind for the future. Sleep experts recommend gradually shifting your bedtime 15-20 minutes earlier each night leading up to the time change.
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, sudden changes in sleep schedules, such as switching to daylight saving time, can lead to temporary insomnia symptoms affecting about 30-35% of adults.
By easing into it gradually, Malow suggests, “you can adjust to the new time and get a bit more sleep in the process.”
If you’re short on time and feeling drowsy, going to bed earlier on the night of the time change can also be helpful.
2. Expose yourself to bright light in the morning
Daylight Saving Time aims to provide an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. While this is ideal for post-work socializing, it may disrupt natural sleep-wake cycles and circadian rhythms.
To help you wake up in the morning and consequently sleep better at night, exposing yourself to bright light is crucial. Malow recommends natural light for this purpose, especially as the sun rises earlier during the summer months.
“Morning bright light exposure helps synchronize your biological clock,” she explains. “Aligning your clock will improve your nighttime sleep.”
3. Avoid lengthy naps and late-day caffeine. Opt for exercise instead
If you enjoy taking naps (who doesn’t?), this news may be disappointing. However, if you want to maintain good sleep, avoiding long naps is essential.
“Naps and caffeine impair our ‘sleep drive’,” Malow clarifies. Her solution? Engage in physical exercise instead.
“Physical activity in the afternoon energizes us during that afternoon slump, but comes bedtime, it promotes sleepiness. It enhances our sleep drive,” she adds.
But remember, avoid exercising just before bedtime, as it can stimulate endorphins and raise body temperature, both of which can interfere with sleep.
4. Put away your phone before bedtime
You’ve likely heard this advice before, but it remains just as relevant, particularly when the clock springs forward an hour. Bright light at night, especially from screens emitting blue light, can disrupt your sleep.
Blue light, found in LED screens, inhibits the natural release of melatonin in the brain, a hormone that regulates sleep. Additionally, content like news can trigger anxiety before bed.
Perhaps it’s time to eliminate daylight saving time
While the aforementioned strategies can minimize the impact of the time change, many experts are calling for the abolishment of this antiquated practice entirely.
So, should standard time become the new norm?
Alice Gregory, a psychology professor at Goldsmith’s, believes so. She argues that permanent standard time aligns better with our circadian rhythms compared to daylight saving time.
Mallow echoes this sentiment, stating, “Most individuals are quite fatigued by the interaction.”
About our experts:
Dr. Beth Malow is a neurology and pediatrics professor, Director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Division, Chair of Barry Donations for Cognitive Childhood Development, and Vice-Chair of Clinical Research at Vanderbilt University, USA. She is board-certified in Neurology and Sleep Medicine, conducting research on sleep and its medical and genetic implications.
Alice Gregory is a psychology professor at Goldsmith’s. She conducts research on the link between sleep and mental health, behavioral genetics, sleep paralysis, and nightmare disorder. She is also a prolific science communicator, publishing articles in various outlets like Guardian, GQ UK, and Slate fr.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have created a beautiful new image of the Intermediate Spiral Galaxy NGC 5042.
This Hubble image shows NGC 5042, a mid-spiral galaxy, about 48 million light years away in the Hydra constellations. Image credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble/D. Thilker.
NGC 5042 It is located approximately 48 million light years from Earth, the Hydra constellation.
The galaxy has a diameter of 80,000 light years, known as ESO 508-31, LEDA 46126 or IRAS 13127-2343.
That's what NGC 5042 was I discovered it by British astronomer John Herschel on March 25, 1836.
“The NGC 5042 fills this frame of Hubble image nicely, and there is a single milky star marked with cross-shaped diffraction spikes that attempt to blend in with bright stars along the edge of the galaxy,” the Hubble astronomer said in a statement.
The NGC 5042 is packed with ancient stars, and the galaxy's spiral arms are decorated with patches of young blue stars.
“The elongated yellow orange objects scattered around the image are background galaxies that are far more distant than NGC 5042,” the astronomer said.
“Perhaps the most impressive feature of the NGC 5042 is its collection of vibrant pink gas clouds scattered throughout the spiral arm.”
“These flashy clouds are called the H II region and get a unique color from hydrogen atoms ionized by ultraviolet rays.”
“If you look closely at this image, it appears that many of these reddish clouds are associated with a mass of blue stars, often appearing to form shells around the stars.”
“The H II region is generated by vast clouds of hydrogen gas, producing sufficient high energy light to create the HI II region, and only hot, large stars are produced.”
“The stars that can create the H II region only live for millions of years, and therefore the eye blinks from the galaxy's perspective, so this image represents a fleeting snapshot of the life of this galaxy.”
Six filters were used to sample different wavelengths. Colors are attributed to assigning different hue to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“Hubble observed NGC 5042 in six wavelength bands ranging from ultraviolet to infrared and created this multicolored portrait,” the researchers said.
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