Science Trends

This infographic illustrates key features of the TOI 270 system, located about 73 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor. The three known planets were discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite through periodic dips in starlight caused by each orbiting world. Insets show information about the planets, including their relative sizes, and how they compare to Earth. Temperatures given for TOI 270’s planets are equilibrium temperatures, calculated without the warming effects of any possible atmospheres. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has discovered three new worlds that are among the smallest, nearest exoplanets known to date. The planets orbit a star just 73 light years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes -- planets about half the size of our own icy giant. The sub-Neptune furthest out from the star appears to be within a "temperate" zone, meaning that the very top of the planet...

Autism/puzzle brain abstract concept (stock image). Scientist have identified a link between exposure to high levels of oestrogen sex hormones in the womb and the likelihood of developing autism. The findings are published today in the journal  Molecular Psychiatry . The discovery adds further evidence to support the prenatal sex steroid theory of autism first proposed 20 years ago. In 2015, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge and the State Serum Institute in Denmark measured the levels of four prenatal steroid hormones, including two known as androgens, in the amniotic fluid in the womb and discovered that they were higher in male foetuses who later developed autism. These androgens are produced in higher quantities in male than in female foetuses on average, so might also explain why autism occurs more often in boys. They are also known to masculinise parts of the brain, and to have effects on the number of connections between brain cells. Today, ...

Radiation symbol (stock image). It was the most serious release of radioactive material since Fukushima 2011, but the public took little notice of it: In September 2017, a slightly radioactive cloud moved across Europe. Now, a study has been published, analyzing more than 1300 measurements from all over Europe and other regions of the world to find out the cause of this incident. The result: it was not a reactor accident, but an accident in a nuclear reprocessing plant. The exact origin of the radioactivity is difficult to determine, but the data suggests a release site in the southern Urals. This is where the Russian nuclear facility Majak is located. The incident never caused any kind of health risks for the European population. Among the 70 experts from all over Europe who contributed data and expertise to the current study are Dieter Hainz and Dr. Paul Saey from the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien (Vienna). The data was evaluated by Prof. Georg Steinha...

Detailed analysis of the star's orbit near supermassive black hole gives a look into how gravity behaves Black hole illustration (stock image). Credit: © Andrea Danti /  Adobe Stock More than 100 years after Albert Einstein published his iconic theory of general relativity, it is beginning to fray at the edges, said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. Now, in the most comprehensive test of general relativity near the monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy, Ghez and her research team report July 25 in the journal  Science  that Einstein's theory of general relativity holds up. "Einstein's right, at least for now," said Ghez, a co-lead author of the research. "We can absolutely rule out Newton's law of gravity. Our observations are consistent with Einstein's theory of general relativity. However, his theory is definitely showing vulnerability. It cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole, and at some po...

Computing and biology abstract illustration (stock image). Medicine has a "Goldilocks" problem. Many therapies are safe and effective only when administered at just the right time and in very precise doses -- when given too early or too late, in too large or too small an amount, medicines can be ineffective or even harmful. But in many situations, doctors have no way of knowing when or how much to dispense. Now, a team of bioengineers led by UC San Francisco's Hana El-Samad, PhD, and the University of Washington's David Baker, PhD, have devised a remarkable solution to this problem -- "smart" cells that behave like tiny autonomous robots which, in the future, may be used to detect damage and disease, and deliver help at just the right time and in just the right amount. Amazingly, this can be accomplished without any direct human intervention thanks to a first-of-its-kind artificial protein -- designed on a computer and synthesized in the lab -...

Leaf in sunlight (stock image). Structures inside rare bacteria are similar to those that power photosynthesis in plants today, suggesting the process is older than assumed. The finding could mean the evolution of photosynthesis needs a rethink, turning traditional ideas on their head. Photosynthesis is the ability to use the Sun's energy to produce sugars via chemical reactions. Plants, algae, and some bacteria today perform 'oxygenic' photosynthesis, which splits water into oxygen and hydrogen to power the process, releasing oxygen as a waste product. Some bacteria instead perform 'anoxygenic' photosynthesis, a version that uses molecules other than water to power the process and does not release oxygen. Scientists have always assumed that anoxygenic photosynthesis is more 'primitive', and that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved from it. Under this view, anoxygenic photosynthesis emerged about 3.5 billion years ago and oxygenic photosynthes...

Mars north pole illustration (stock image). People have long dreamed of re-shaping the Martian climate to make it livable for humans. Carl Sagan was the first outside of the realm of science fiction to propose terraforming. In a 1971 paper, Sagan suggested that vaporizing the northern polar ice caps would "yield ~10 s g cm-2 of atmosphere over the planet, higher global temperatures through the greenhouse effect, and a greatly increased likelihood of liquid water." Sagan's work inspired other researchers and futurists to take seriously the idea of terraforming. The key question was: are there enough greenhouse gases and water on Mars to increase its atmospheric pressure to Earth-like levels? In 2018, a pair of NASA-funded researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and Northern Arizona University found that processing all the sources available on Mars would only increase atmospheric pressure to about 7 percent that of Earth - far short of what is nee...

Music listening concept (stock image). In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found that our brains are more sensitive to pitch, the harmonic sounds we hear when listening to music, than our evolutionary relative the macaque monkey. The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, highlights the promise of Sound Health, a joint project between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that aims to understand the role of music in health. "We found that a certain region of our brains has a stronger preference for sounds with pitch than macaque monkey brains," said Bevil Conway, Ph.D., investigator in the NIH's Intramural Research Program and a senior author of the study published in Nature Neuroscience. "The results raise the possibility that these sounds, which are embedded in speech and music, may have shaped the basic organization of the human brain." The study started with a fr...

Fruit fly (stock image). Scientists have known insects experience something like pain since 2003, but new research published today from Associate Professor Greg Neely and colleagues at the University of Sydney proves for the first time that insects also experience chronic pain that lasts long after an initial injury has healed. The study in the peer-reviewed journal  Science Advances  offers the first genetic evidence of what causes chronic pain in Drosophila (fruit flies) and there is good evidence that similar changes also drive chronic pain in humans. Ongoing research into these mechanisms could lead to the development of treatments that, for the first time, target the cause and not just the symptoms of chronic pain. "If we can develop drugs or new stem cell therapies that can target and repair the underlying cause, instead of the symptoms, this might help a lot of people," said Associate Professor Neely, whose team of researchers is studying pain at the Cha...

Black hole concept (stock image). As if black holes weren't mysterious enough, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found an unexpected thin disk of material furiously whirling around a supermassive black hole at the heart of the magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away. The conundrum is that the disk shouldn't be there, based on current astronomical theories. However, the unexpected presence of a disk so close to a black hole offers a unique opportunity to test Albert Einstein's theories of relativity. General relativity describes gravity as the curvature of space and special relativity describes the relationship between time and space. "We've never seen the effects of both general and special relativity in visible light with this much clarity," said Marco Chiaberge of the European Space Agency, and the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University, both in Baltimore, Maryland, a m...

Forest (stock image). Around 0.9 billion hectares of land worldwide would be suitable for reforestation, which could ultimately capture two thirds of human-made carbon emissions. The Crowther Lab of ETH Zurich has published a study in the journal  Science  that shows this would be the most effective method to combat climate change. The Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich investigates nature-based solutions to climate change. In their latest study the researchers showed for the first time where in the world new trees could grow and how much carbon they would store. Study lead author and postdoc at the Crowther Lab Jean-François Bastin explains: "One aspect was of particular importance to us as we did the calculations: we ex-cluded cities or agricultural areas from the total restoration potential as these areas are needed for hu-man life." Reforest an area the size of the USA The researchers calculated that under the current climate conditions, Earth's land could suppor...

Carolyn "Lindy" McBride is studying a question that haunts every summer gathering: How and why are mosquitoes attracted to humans? Few animals specialize as thoroughly as the mosquitoes that carry diseases like Zika, malaria and dengue fever. In fact, of the more than 3,000 mosquito species in the world, most are opportunistic, said McBride, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. They may be mammal biters, or bird biters, with a mild preference for various species within those categories, but most mosquitoes are neither totally indiscriminate nor species-specific. But McBride is most interested in the mosquitoes that scientists call "disease vectors" -- carriers of diseases that plague humans -- some of which have evolved to bite humans almost exclusively. She studies several mosquitoes that carry diseases, including  Aedes aegypti , which is the primary vector for dengue fever, Zika and ye...