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sciencehabit writes:
Some galaxies are so distant, they appear only as featureless points of light to observers on Earth. But thanks to another closer galaxy acting as a magnifying lens, astronomers have been able to see star-forming regions in one such distant galaxy—known as SDP.81—dating to 2.4 billion years after the big bang. This is the most detailed image obtained of a galaxy that far back in the universe’s history.
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sciencehabit writes:
Can’t remember every viral infection you’ve ever had? Don’t worry, your blood can. A new test surveys the antibodies present in a person’s bloodstream to reveal a history of the viruses they’ve been infected with throughout their life. The method could be useful not only for diagnosing current and past illnesses, but for developing vaccines and studying links between viruses and chronic disease.
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sciencehabit writes:
Comets striking the moon may have left more than craters: Their tenuous atmospheres may have scoured away loose soil, thus brightening the lunar surface when viewed from certain angles, a new study suggests. So-called “lunar swirls” of lighter-than-average terrain, some of them thousands of kilometers long, have mystified astronomers for decades. Many of these sinuous swaths don't seem to be linked to craters or other obvious features of the moon’s landscape, but in the 1970s, some were found to be associated with unusually strong spots in the moon’s magnetic field. Some researchers at the time proposed that those fields somehow protected the surface from the solar wind (the influx of charged particles streaming from the sun), rendering it brighter. But now, an analysis suggests that the pale swirls result when the gaseous shroud of a comet washes across the lunar surface. While the nucleus of the comet leaves a crater, the atmosphere that surrounds it blasts—and, in essence, airbrushes—fine dust away. This process may even help explain the oddities in the moon's magnetic field associated with the swirls.
73349293
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sciencehabit writes:
Of the handful of startup companies trying to achieve fusion energy via nontraditional methods, Tri Alpha Energy Inc. has always been the enigma. Publishing little and with no website, but apparently sitting on a cash pile in the hundreds of millions, the Foothill Ranch, California-based company has been the subject of intense curiosity and speculation. But last month Tri Alpha lifted the veil slightly with two papers revealing that its device, dubbed the colliding beam fusion reactor, has shown a 10-fold improvement in its ability to contain the hot particles needed for fusion over earlier devices at U.S. universities and national labs. “They’ve improved things greatly and are moving in a direction that is quite promising,” says plasma physicist John Santarius of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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sciencehabit writes:
Close your eyes and imagine a scientist: peering into a telescope, flicking a glass vial in a lab, or sitting at a computer typing out a grant proposal. Did you picture a man or a woman? The answer depends on where you live, according to a new study. Researchers have found that people in some countries are much more likely to view science as a male profession, with the Netherlands coming in at the top of the list. Regardless of location, though, the stereotype persists that science is for men.
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sciencehabit writes:
The gates at American prisons can seem like revolving doors. People come in, do their time, and—within 3 years—half are back behind bars, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. Now, a scientist says he has nailed down one potential risk factor. An intriguing natural experiment that followed ex-cons displaced by Hurricane Katrina suggests that when former prisoners wind up moving to the same neighborhood, they are more likely to return to a life of crime.
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sciencehabit writes:
A small piece of wolf bone found on a remote Siberian peninsula is helping to confirm the idea that dogs have been with us a long, long time. When researchers dated the bone, they found that it belonged to a male wolf that lived 35,000 years ago. Genetic analysis reveals that the wolf existed at a critical time in canine history: when the ancestors of modern dogs and wolves split off from an ancient wolf population. The find suggests that dogs may have been domesticated as long as 40,000 years ago. If that's true, it means dogs would have lived with us for almost 30,000 years before we gave up our hunter-gatherer ways and began to settle down and take up farming.
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sciencehabit writes:
Yeast and humans have been evolving along separate paths for 1 billion years, but there’s still a strong family resemblance, a new study demonstrates. After inserting more than 400 human genes into yeast cells one at a time, researchers found that almost 50% of the genes functioned and enabled the fungi to survive. “It’s quite amazing,” says evolutionary biologist Matthew Hahn of Indiana University, Bloomington, who wasn’t connected to the study. “It means that the same genes can carry out the same functions after 1 billion years of divergence.”
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers have identified a gene that turns female mosquitoes into males. That's important, because female mosquitoes are the primary carriers of diseases like yellow fever. So the approach could lead to a new way to combat tropical diseases.
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sciencehabit writes:
Once upon a time in the Bronze Age, a girl was born to a family of sun worshipers living in the Black Forest of what is today Germany. When she was young she became a priestess in the local sun cult, and soon attracted the eye of a tribal chief who lived far to the north. The girl’s family married her off, and she went to live with the chief in what is now Denmark. She often traveled back and forth between Denmark and her ancestral home and eventually gave birth to a child while she was away. Sometime before her 18th birthday, she and the child died. They were buried together in an oak coffin, the young woman wearing a bronze belt buckle in the shape of the sun.
How do we know? A new study of the 3400-year-old girl’s chemical isotopes, along with more conventional archaeological evidence, tells us so. At least, these are the conclusions of scientists who recently analyzed the teeth, fingernails, hair, and clothes of the Egtved Girl, so named for the Danish village where archaeologists first discovered her in 1921.
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sciencehabit writes:
Astronomers have long believed that Mars snatched its two moons--Phobos and Deimos--from the asteroid belt. That would explain why the objects look like asteroids—dark, crater-pocked, and potato-shaped. But computer simulations by two independent teams of astronomers indicated that Mars's moons formed much like ours did, after a giant space rock smashed into the planet and kicked up debris.
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sciencehabit writes:
Using a computer to predict an infectious disease outbreak before it starts may sound like a bit of Philip K. Dick sci-fi, but scientists are coming close. In a new study, researchers have used machine learning — teaching computers to recognize patterns in large data sets—to make accurate forecasts about which animals might harbor dangerous viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Better predictions could help experts improve how they prevent and respond to disease outbreaks.
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sciencehabit writes:
The Department of Defense (DOD) will start collecting data on the gender of its grant applicants and award recipients to help determine whether women in science and engineering face any discrimination in the grantsmaking process. Last year, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives asked a congressional watchdog agency to analyze the issue at the six biggest federal research agencies. But the Government Accountability Office found that three of them—DOD, NASA, and the Department of Energy (DOE)—don’t have the information needed to answer that question. Last week, DOD’s head of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, Frank Kendall, wrote to the legislators saying that the department “has found no legal hurdles that would prevent the Department from collecting this data.” Kendall said DOD would work with agencies that already do so, notably the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, “to determine best practices before beginning data collection.”
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sciencehabit writes:
The opium poppy may soon meet its match. Researchers in the United States and Canada report today that they are closing in on a long-standing goal of engineering a complex suite of genes into yeast that would allow the microbes to synthesize morphine, codeine, and other medicines that have been harvested from poppies since before written history began. The new work holds out the prospect of being able to cheaply and easily produce widely used medicines with new capabilities and fewer side effects. At the same time, policy specialists worry that the new yeast strains could allow narcotics dealers to convert sugar to morphine or heroin as easily as beer enthusiasts create homebrews today.
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers have discovered the first fish that can keep its entire body warm, much like mammals and birds. The opah, or moonfish, lives in deep, cold water, but it generates heat from its massive pectoral muscles. And it conserves that warmth thanks to body fat and the special structure of blood vessels in its gills. Having a warm heart and brain likely allows the little-known fish to be a vigorous predator, the researchers suspect.
