Science

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NASA deployed the Asteria spacecraft, a suitcase-sized satellite termed a CubeSat, from the International Space Station in 2017 with the mission to observe dimming in stars' brightness as evidence of orbiting planets. Asteria successfully finished three missions before losing contact on December 5, 2019, and is thought to be lost.

nasa spacecraft satellite international-space-station planet star asteria cubesat suitcase iss brightness

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A cousin of the starfish, called Ophiocoma wendtii, residing in the coral reefs of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is the second creature known to use extraocular vision to navigate. Due to light sensing cells called photoreceptors covering its body and pigment cells, called chromatophores. Each of these cells act like a pixel on an image, and together give the animal an all-round view of its surroundings.

marine photoreceptors ophiocoma-wendtii chromatophores coral-reefs starfish light-sensing

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Astrophysicist Ron Mallet has said that he has theoretically figured out time travel. He has written an equation that he claims can be used as the foundation of an actual time machine. Although scientists have been aware of theoretical methods of traveling to the future, Mallet claims his equation can be used to travel to the past as well.

science science-fiction time-travel time-machine astrophysics

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In a report published online on Nature, researchers reported that changing the method of delivery of the TB vaccine from a subcutaneous injection to a direct injection into the bloodstream boosted the effectiveness of the vaccine. The TB vaccine is called BCG and is currently the only widely used TB vaccine, being discovered almost a hundred years ago.

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Researchers concluded a 60-year experiment that studied the gradual domestication of silver foxes in Siberia. The study surprisingly found that domestication syndrome, a widely held theory which states that certain animals are genetically pre-disposed to domestication, may not necessarily hold true, and animals may have chosen to self-domesticate themselves instead by adapting to the human world.

research experiment human siberia domestication syndrome self-domesticating silver-fox theory

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He Jiankui, the Chinese researcher who shocked the world by presenting an allegedly successful case of gene-editing babies using CRISPR at an international conference in 2018, has been charged with illegal medical practice and sentenced to 3 years in jail by Chinese courts, along with being fined around 430,000 USD.

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He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist who claimed to have created a kind of AIDs vaccine via gene editing, has been sentenced to three years in prison. He was charged with practicing medicine without having the required qualifications. His experiment drew widespread criticism for its violation of ethical principles and poor reporting.

china science health hiv medicine gene-editing biology

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A research team has recently shown that ants do not navigate using only their surroundings. When walking forwards, ants use a strategy called "Path integration" where they remember the feeling of twists and turns they took as well as the number of steps they are from the nest. While navigating backwards, they would drop their food and turn to look for familiar landmarks, a behavior called peeking.

research ants insects navigation surroundings

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Trump's border wall with Mexico is still under construction and requires the extraction of a large amount of groundwater. The water being taken for the wall is also the source of water that fuels the habitats of the endangered freshwater Río Yaqui fish. The water levels in this arid region are quickly decreasing and may not be enough to sustain these fish.

trump border environment mexico pollution fish water wall spring

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The red supergiant Betelgeuse in the Orion constellation, one of the brightest stars in the Earth's night sky, has been seen to become dimmer than usual, which astronomers suggest might mean that the star is about to go supernova in about 100,000 years. While the explosion has no possibility of reaching Earth, it will be visible in broad daylight and will outshine the moon at night.

red star betelgeuse orion constellation supernova supergiant

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Singapore is currently experiencing a dengue outbreak with 14,400 people infected with the disease just this year. To fight this problem the government is breeding and preparing to release millions of non-dengue mosquitoes that will mate with the dengue mosquitoes and lay eggs that will never hatch. This will lower the total number of mosquitoes in the country next year.

science health singapore dengue mosquito

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Researchers have discovered that insects crave the urine of people, kangaroos and other animals, even more so than sugar water, for its urea content, a compound containing nitrogen which is used to build proteins. This discovery occurred when Sophie Petit, a wildlife ecologist camping on South Australia's Kangaroo Island, noticed some sugar ants scrounging around a spot in the sand where she had urinated a couple of hours earlier.

discovery wildlife ants urine sophie-petit ecologist insects kangaroo-island south-australia urea nutrients

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The Swedish government has launched a study to figure out how to ban the sale of gasoline and diesel cars in the country while also phasing out fossil fuel use as a whole. They intend to exempt electric vehicles from these bans and then eventually spread this policy to the entire European Union.

climate-change global-warming cars oil gasoline sweden fossil-fuels

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Iberdrola, a large Spanish energy company, has announced that it will be investing $500 million in a wind and solar farm in Australia. The company has said that it plans to produce 10 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022 and may even go beyond this target. It has said that Australia is an ideal place for the development of renewable energy.

australia climate-change global-warming enviorment energy clean-energy

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A recently concluded study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has discovered that the toxic gas phosphine might be the key to finding alien life on other planets. Phosphine is highly toxic to life, but the research has proved that the only known way to produce phosphine in a natural environment would necessarily involve anerobic organisms, which can help scientists positively identify earth-like planets supporting alien life.

environment life united-states mit massachusetts toxic-gas phosphine natural anerobic organisms aliens extraterrestrial

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According to a new report, scientists have found a way to create a special sponge that can be used to clean up oil spills. The sponge has been successful in cleaning up oil from water in lab tests and is also very cheap to manufacture. Scientists feel that the sponge could even be used to remove heavy metals from water as well.

science environment oil pollution sponge oil-spill

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According to Amazon scientists, deforestation has reached a tipping point where it could cause the rainforest to disappear entirely if it is not stopped. Illegal logging has caused the rainforest to shrink to the point where it may no longer be able to sustain itself unless immediate action is taken.

amazon climate-change global-warming deforestation rain-forest amazon-rainforest

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Scientists have said that in New York some tree fossils found in an abandoned quarry are around 386 million years old, making them the oldest tree fossils ever found. The trees used to belong to a giant forest that was wiped out by a flood. This discovery has taught scientists some new things about the evolution of trees.

new-york environment fossil

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Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Iowa, recently concluded a study which found that 100,000 years ago, long after the homo erectus species had gone extinct in the rest of the world, a colony of homo erectus that may have been the last of the species existed on the island of Java in Indonesia before homo sapiens arrived almost 40,000 years ago.

indonesia species island russell-ciochon paleoanthropology university-of-iowa homo-erectus homo-sapiens java colony

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In a presentation made to a joint meeting of American and European societies for cell biology, researcher Tai Chaiamarit revealed hitherto unknown mechanisms by which the incurable prion disease affects the brain. Chaiamarit reported that prions, which are chains of misfolded proteins, cause traffic jams in axons, the neural pathways that connect various parts of the brain, and thus cause severe neurodegenerative diseases.

research prions prion-disease tai-chaiamarit cell-biology proteins misfolded axons brain-cells neural-pathway neurodegenerative

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Using a pioneering new mapping technique, called BedMachine Antarctica, which analyzes ice flow and volume, researchers have identified the deepest canyon on Earth under the Denman Glacier in East Antarctica. The canyon runs as deep as 3.5 km, almost half the height of Mount Everest. The new technique will allow researchers to probe deeper into the historically inaccessible continent and make better climate change predictions.

climate-change ice antarctica canyon deepest mount-everest denman-glacier bedmachine-antarctica mapping

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According to a new study published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, adolescents who use social media regularly experience an increase in anxiety and depression symptoms. The study surveyed children from the 7th to the 10th grade over the course of four years and found that video games had no real link to these mental disorders but social media did.

facebook instagram social-media study depression mental-health

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The oldest known work of human storytelling is a recently found cave painting in Indonesia, located on the Sulawesi island, with scientists estimating it was made almost 44,000 years ago. The painting features a group of half-human, half-animal hunting a wild boar species native to Indonesia. Several other paintings have been found near the location of the first and are in the process of being dated.

indonesia hunting cave-painting sulawesi storytelling half-human boar island oldest

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David Bellamy graduated with a degree in Botany from Durham University, UK, in the 1960s and became a renowned TV personality known for his enthusiastic voice and outspoken support for environmental conservation. Bellamy's TV career declined after he expressed his views denying climate change science, but his documentaries remained an inspiration for conservationists and environmental activists alike. He died aged 86.

environment climate-change nature television death celebrity david-bellamy conservation botany

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A recent survey of the impact of fishing on populations of marine life founds that modern fishing techniques, i.e. the use of large nets, are mainly to blame for the endangered status of 13 small cetacean species, along with a dozen species of small whales and dolphins, who may be headed for extinction, with the Chinese baiji river dolphin already believed extinct.

chinese endangered extinction fishing industry nets cetacean whales dolphins baiji river-dolphin