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Life on Mars? NASA discovers potential biosignatures in Martian mudstones

Data and images from NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover reveals that recently discovered rocks in Jezero crater are organic carbon bearing mudstones. The findings, detailed in a paper published in Nature, indicate that these mudstones experienced chemical processes that left behind colorful, enigmatic textures in the rock that represent potential biosignatures.

The paper, led by Joel Hurowitz, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, builds upon ongoing research conducted with the rover since it landed in 2021 – work aimed at characterizing early Martian geological processes and collecting samples that may someday be returned to Earth.

Upon entering the Jezero crater’s western edge, Perseverance investigated distinctive mudstone outcrops of the Bright Angel formation. There, the Mars 2020 science team conducted a detailed geological, petrographic, and geochemical survey of these rocks and found traces of carbon matter along with minerals, namely ferrous iron phosphate and iron sulfide.

Should We Sleep Outside? Turns Out There Are Some Benefits

A 2018 review became the first meta-analysis to quantify the impact of what they termed “greenspace exposure”. It sifted through five online databases leading up to January 2017 to look at the health outcomes of exposure to the great outdoors and found that “green prescriptions” could have substantial benefits to human health.

Perks mentioned included decreased salivary cortisol (the “stress hormone”), lower heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol, among others.

“Incidence of stroke, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, asthma, and coronary heart disease were reduced,” wrote the authors. “For several non-pooled health outcomes, between 66.7% and 100% of studies showed health-denoting associations with increased greenspace exposure, including neurological and cancer-related outcomes, and respiratory mortality.”

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Mixing neutrinos of colliding neutron stars changes how merger unfolds, simulations reveal

The collision and merger of two neutron stars—the incredibly dense remnants of collapsed stars—are some of the most energetic events in the universe, producing a variety of signals that can be observed on Earth.

New simulations of neutron star mergers by a team from Penn State and the University of Tennessee Knoxville reveal that the mixing and changing of tiny particles called that can travel astronomical distances undisturbed impacts how the merger unfolds, as well as the resulting emissions. The findings have implications for longstanding questions about the origins of metals and as well as understanding physics in , the researchers said.

The paper, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, is the first to simulate the transformation of neutrino “flavors” in neutron star mergers. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that interact weakly with other matter, and come in three flavors, named for the other particles they associate with: electron, muon and tau. Under specific conditions, including the inside of a neutron star, neutrinos can theoretically change flavors, which can change the types of particles with which they interact.

Impact of sleep duration on executive function and brain structure

Tai et al. examine sleep, cognitive and brain imaging data from middle-to-late life healthy individuals from the UK Biobank. They show that between six and eight hours of sleep duration is associated with the highest cognitive performance and larger grey matter volume in several areas of the brain.

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