Science Trends

Abell S1063, a galaxy cluster, was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Frontier Fields program. The huge mass of the cluster -- containing both baryonic matter and dark matter -- acts as cosmic magnification glass and deforms objects behind it. In the past astronomers used this gravitational lensing effect to calculate the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters. Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have employed a revolutionary method to detect dark matter in galaxy clusters. The method allows astronomers to "see" the distribution of dark matter more accurately than any other method used to date and it could possibly be used to explore the ultimate nature of dark matter. The results were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In recent decades astronomers have tried to understand the true nature of the mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the Universe...

In their article, the scientists propose a new model with dark energy and our Universe riding on an expanding bubble in an extra dimension. The whole Universe is accommodated on the edge of this expanding bubble. Uppsala University researchers have devised a new model for the Universe -- one that may solve the enigma of dark energy. Their new article, published in Physical Review Letters, proposes a new structural concept, including dark energy, for a universe that rides on an expanding bubble in an additional dimension. We have known for the past 20 years that the Universe is expanding at an ever accelerating rate. The explanation is the "dark energy" that permeates it throughout, pushing it to expand. Understanding the nature of this dark energy is one of the paramount enigmas of fundamental physics. It has long been hoped that string theory will provide the answer. According to string theory, all matter consists of tiny, vibrating "stringlike" entit...

NEW DELHI:  Three Indian astronauts will be sent to space for up to seven days by 2022, as part of India's ambitious Gaganyaan project by ISRO, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced this evening. The Union cabinet has approved a budget of Rs. 10,000 crore for the programme. ISRO's Gaganyaan will help India become the fourth nation to independently send humans to space. The announcement of the Gaganyaan project was first made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on India's 72nd Independence Day - his fifth and final address ahead of the next general elections.

      Women with slim hips may develop diabetes, heart attacks While putting on weight is dangerous for health, women who have slim hips could be at risk of diabetes and heart attacks, finds a new research.  The study showed that putting on weight around the hips is actually safer than accumulation around the belly or around other major organs such as the liver or pancreas.  The reason could be because some women are genetically less able to store fat at the hips, which puts them at risk of Type-2 diabetes and heart disease. Also, putting on fat is more likely to circulate in the blood.  "This means that individuals with this genetic make-up preferentially store their excess fat in the liver, muscles or pancreas, or in their blood in the form of circulating fats and sugar, any of which can lead to a higher disease risk," said Luca Lotta, lead researcher from the University of Cambridge.  "It may seem counter-intuitive to think that some people wi...

Billionaire Elon Musk has revealed plans for a spaceship that could ferry up to 100 people to Mars. The SpaceX  boss posted images on Twitter of the “test hopper” prototype that is currently under construction in Texas.   He also responded to a flurry of questions from his followers about the spaceship and its   rocket engine   which is designed to carry a 150 ton payload into space. Following speculation from one user that the space craft will make use of stainless steal, Musk confirmed that it would use similar materials to the Atlas rockets first produced in the 1950s.  The entrepreneur shared the details following the successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, which lifted off from Texas on a separate mission to deliver a spy satellite into orbit.   He continued: “Actually, the only significant design element in common with early Atlas is stainless steel and we’re using a different alloy mix.” The SpaceX boss also said the Raptor roc...

                                                                                                                                                       A wound covered by an electric bandage on a rat's skin (top left) healed faster than a wound under a control bandage (right). Skin has a remarkable ability to heal itself. But in some cases, wounds heal very slowly or not at all, putting a person at risk for chronic pain, infection and scarring. Now, researchers have developed a self-powered bandage that generates an electric field over an injury, dramatically reducing the healing time for skin wounds in ...

Their ultrathin, conductive, and transparent hybrid NMs can be applied to the fabrication of skin-attachable NM loudspeakers and voice-recognition microphones, which would be unobtrusive in appearance due to their excellent transparency and conformal contact capability. An international team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has presented an innovative wearable technology that will turn your skin into a loudspeaker. This breakthrough has been led by Professor Hyunhyub Ko in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. Created in part to help the hearing and speech impaired, the new technology can be further explored for various potential applications, such as wearable IoT sensors and conformal health care devices. In the study, the research team has developed ultrathin, transparent, and conductive hybrid nanomembranes with nanoscale thickness, consisting of an orthogonal silver nanowire array embedded in a polymer matrix. They, then, demonstrated their na...

Robot hand playing the piano. Scientists have developed a 3D-printed robotic hand which can play simple musical phrases on the piano by just moving its wrist. And while the robot is no virtuoso, it demonstrates just how challenging it is to replicate all the abilities of a human hand, and how much complex movement can still be achieved through design. The robot hand, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, was made by 3D-printing soft and rigid materials together to replicate of all the bones and ligaments -- but not the muscles or tendons -- in a human hand. Even though this limited the robot hand's range of motion compared to a human hand, the researchers found that a surprisingly wide range of movement was still possible by relying on the hand's mechanical design. Using this 'passive' movement -- in which the fingers cannot move independently -- the robot was able to mimic different styles of piano playing without changing the material or me...

Solar system distances to scale showing the newly discovered 2018 VG18, nicknamed "Farout," compared to other known solar system objects. A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the Sun. The new object was announced on Monday, December 17, 2018, by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center and has been given the provisional designation 2018 VG18. The discovery was made by Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii's David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University's Chad Trujillo. 2018 VG18, nicknamed "Farout" by the discovery team for its extremely distant location, is at about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The second-most-distant observed Solar System ob...

The technology could be used to develop more sophisticated nanomachines with reconfigurable parts. An artist's rendering of a game of tic-tac-toe played with DNA tiles. Move over Mona Lisa, here comes tic-tac-toe. It was just about a year ago that Caltech scientists in the laboratory of Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering, announced they had used a technique known as DNA origami to create tiles that could be designed to self-assemble into larger nanostructures that carry predesigned patterns. They chose to make the world's smallest version of the iconic Mona Lisa. The feat was impressive, but the technique had a limitation similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci's oil paints: Once the image was created, it could not easily be changed. Now, the Caltech team has made another leap forward with the technology. They have created new tiles that are more dynamic, allowing the researchers to reshape already-built DNA structures. When Caltech's Paul Rot...

-Researchers use 3D computer modeling to simulate heat exchange in dinosaurs. Heat exchange through the highly convoluted nasal passages of the Cretaceous ankylosaurian dinosaur Euoplocephalus not only efficiently warmed and humidified the inspired air on its way to the lungs but also cooled the blood running through the nasal veins, much of which was destined for the brain. In this way, the brain was protected from the high temperatures of the hot arterial blood coming from the body core. Being a gigantic dinosaur presented some challenges, such as overheating in the Cretaceous sun and frying your brain. Researchers from Ohio University and NYITCOM at Arkansas State show in a new article in PLOS ONE that the heavily armored, club-tailed ankylosaurs had a built-in air conditioner in their snouts. "The huge bodies that we see in most dinosaurs must have gotten really hot in warm Mesozoic climates," said Jason Bourke, Assistant Professor at the New York Institute o...

Within the gas in the (blue) filaments connecting the (orange) galaxies lurk rare pockets of pristine gas -- vestiges of the Big Bang that have somehow been orphaned from the explosive, polluting deaths of stars, seen here as circular shock waves around some orange points. A relic cloud of gas, orphaned after the Big Bang, has been discovered in the distant universe by astronomers using the world's most powerful optical telescope, the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii. The discovery of such a rare fossil, led by PhD student Fred Robert and Professor Michael Murphy at Swinburne University of Technology, offers new information about how the first galaxies in the universe formed. "Everywhere we look, the gas in the universe is polluted by waste heavy elements from exploding stars," says Robert. "But this particular cloud seems pristine, unpolluted by stars even 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang." "If it has any heavy elements at all, i...

An artist's impression of how Saturn may look in the next hundred million years. The innermost rings disappear as they rain onto the planet first, very slowly followed by the outer rings. New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field. "We estimate that this 'ring rain' drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn's rings in half an hour," said James O'Donoghue of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn's equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live....

These E. coli bacteria harbor proteins from the eavesdropping virus. One of the viral proteins has been tagged with a red marker. When the virus is in the 'stay' mode (left), the bacteria grow and the red protein is spread throughout each cell. When the virus overhears that its hosts have achieved a quorum (right), the kill-stay decision protein is flipped to 'kill' mode. A second viral protein binds the red protein and sends it to the cell poles (yellow dots). All the cells in the right panel will soon die. Princeton molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler and graduate student Justin Silpe have identified a virus, VP882, that can listen in on bacterial conversations -- and then, in a twist like something out of a spy novel, they found a way to use that to make it attack bacterial diseases like E. coli and cholera. "The idea that a virus is detecting a molecule that bacteria use for communication -- that is brand-new," said Bassler, the Squibb Professor o...

Currently, uterus donation is only available for women with family members who are willing to donate. With live donors in short supply, the new technique might help to increase availability and give more women the option of pregnancy. The first baby has been born following a uterus transplantation from a deceased donor, according to a case study from Brazil published in The Lancet. The study is also the first uterine transplantation in Latin America. The new findings demonstrate that uterus transplants from deceased donors are feasible and may open access for all women with uterine infertility, without the need for live donors. However, the outcomes and effects of donations from live and deceased donors are yet to be compared, and the surgical and immunosuppression techniques will be optimised in the future. The recipient of the transplant was a patient with uterine infertility. Previously, there have been 10 other uterus transplants from deceased donors attempted in t...