Lifeboat Foundation

X-ray diffraction measurements under laser-driven dynamic compression allow researchers to investigate the atomic structure of matter at hundreds of thousands of atmospheres of pressure and temperatures of thousands of degrees, with broad implications for condensed matter physics, planetary science and astronomy.

Pressure determination in these experiments often relies on velocimetry measurements coupled with modeling that requires accurate knowledge of the optical and thermomechanical properties of a window material, resulting in significant systematic uncertainty.

In new research published in Physical Review B, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists report on a series of X-ray diffraction experiments on five metals dynamically compressed to 600 GPa (6,000,000 atmospheres of pressure). In addition to collecting atomic structure information for multiple compressed samples, the team demonstrated a different approach for pressure determination applicable to X-ray diffraction experiments under quasi-isentropic ramp compression.

The intercontinental Square Kilometer Array will comprise thousands of dishes to image vast swathes of the sky.

Growing miniature organ-like tissues in the lab is already within our reach. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a new approach that enables intestinal mini-organs to be grown more easily and efficiently in the lab. This holds immense promise for regenerative medicine.

In a study published in November in Cell Reports Methods, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) reveal that applying a few specialized lab techniques yields intestine-like tissues of predictable size and composition.

Organoids are organ-like balls of cells that are grown in the lab from spheroids (even smaller balls) of human cells and mimic the properties of the organ from which the “seed” cell was taken. Organoids are used for studying organ function in a lab setting and are also promising tools in the field of regenerative medicine.

Ruins of an ancient forest have been identified at a quarry near Cairo, New York, USA. The fossils have been dated to 386 million years old, making them the oldest known fossils.

Scientists have failed to detect a key signal from space – and used it to explain some of the earliest parts of the universe.

The inability to pick up the signal has allowed researchers to better understand the first galaxies to exist. It is one of the first times they have been able to study the period known as the “cosmic dawn”, when the first stars and galaxies came into being.

Scientists are now able to place limits on the mass and energy coming out of those first stars and galaxies – using a counterintuitive method.

According to a recent study conducted by geneticists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health in collaboration with several other organizations, including the University of Otago and the Samoan health research community, the discovery of a genetic variant that is relatively common among individuals of Polynesian descent but very rare in most other populations is providing clues to the genetic underpinnings of high cholesterol in all people.

In the opening scenes of the new film “Good Night Oppy,” the Opportunity rover rolls along through Perseverance Valley on Mars in June 2018, as “Roam” by The B-52s fills the room at mission control.

The peppy tune was the rover’s wake-up song, played at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In the same way NASA has used a song to wake up astronauts each day they spend in space since the 1960s, the Opportunity rover team began their daily shifts with a song that set the mood for “Oppy’s” journey.

But a storm brewing on the horizon changed everything.

Researchers around the world are on a mission to relieve a bottleneck in the clean energy revolution: batteries. From electric vehicles to renewable grid-scale energy storage, batteries are at the heart of society’s most crucial green innovations—but they need to pack more energy to make these technologies widespread and practical.

Now, a team of scientists led by chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has unraveled the complex chemical mechanisms of a battery component that is crucial for boosting energy density: the interphase. Their work published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

It’s not only the gravity from galaxies in a cluster that reveal dark matter, but the ejected, intracluster stars actually trace it out.