A closed carbonized papyrus scroll from Herculaneum being scanned. Credit: EduceLab/University of Kentucky It’s the last day of August, which means that in the Northern Hemisphere, tomorrow will be 50 degrees and cloudy; conditions are expected to be hot and humid south of the equator. In science news this week, we reported on nanoplastic contamination, … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Have you been to the beach this summer? I took my daughter there the other day and got her a pasty for lunch. She was happily munching it while staring out to sea, back turned to the café where we bought the pasty. Suddenly, there was a flapping of wings behind … Read more
Mario Yanez, another biologist from Inabio, said his current work revolves around finding ‘windows of opportunity’ to continue researching despite the violence. Biologist Cesar Garzon was searching for a small, endangered parakeet in southern Ecuador when he was warned he may be kidnapped, highlighting the danger for scientists in the biodiverse country engulfed in narco … Read more
Shown here is a longwing butterfly with one wing (right) altered by CRISPR gene editing, resulting in a dramatic change to its normal color pattern. Credit: Luca Livraghi A team of international researchers has uncovered a surprising genetic mechanism that influences the vibrant and complex patterns on butterfly wings. In a study published in the … Read more
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain US regulators on Friday cleared SpaceX to restart launching its stalwart Falcon 9 rocket, as a probe continues into a rare mishap this week during a first-stage booster landing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday after a first-stage booster tipped over and exploded while attempting … Read more
The overall principle of the new connectivity enhanced Structure Activity Relation (ceSAR) approach that ranks candidate molecules by their similarity to LINCS analogs with signatures concordant to those of the target gene KDs (left panel), and can be subsequently combined with docking simulations to assess the shape complementarity with specific protein targets (right panel). Credit: … Read more
Jay Austin and members of his research team on R/V Blue Heron prep a meteorological buoy for deployment in western Lake Superior. Image credit: Cait Dettmann/MNSG. Credit: Minnesota Sea Grant For over 11 years Jay Austin and his research team at the University of Minnesota Duluth have carefully tended to a crop of bright-yellow meteorological … Read more
Ray path of K* feature, schematic of the OC heterogeneity, and absolute PKIKP travel time residuals. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn5562 A doughnut-shaped region thousands of kilometers beneath our feet within Earth’s liquid core has been discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), providing new clues about the dynamics of our planet’s … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Since at least Aristotle, writers and scholars have debated what makes for a great story. One of them is Samsun Knight, a novelist who is also an economist and assistant professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. With a scientist’s tools, he’s done what previous theorizers … Read more
Cumulative occurrence of four extreme heat measures, 2007–2016. Borough abbreviations: BX—The Bronx; BK—Brooklyn; MN—Manhattan; QN—Queens; SI—Staten Island. Credit: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2024.103014 In a revealing piece of research coauthored by a Singapore Management University academic, public policies to ease urban heat in one of the largest first world cities have … Read more
