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There’s only a few days left before our second conference in New York City takes place, and June has brought a lot of exciting news, such as the results of UNITY’s senolytic human trial, as well as a number of episodes of LifeXtenShow, our new YouTube show that is now a little over a month old already. Let’s dig into the details!

LEAF News

The Hubble Space Telescope recently spotted a gorgeous “in bloom” spiral galaxy and it shows vibrant star formation pockets that look like red flowers.

The spiral galaxy, which is named NGC 972, was shared by the Hubble Space Telescope on Monday, July 1. NGC 972’s orange-pink glow comes from hydrogen gas reacting to intense light beaming outwards from neighboring newborn stars, said a Hubble Space Telescope press release. These bright patches, which are scattered near various cosmic dust streams, are “blooming” like roses in NGC 972.

DARPA-funded chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have devised a way to rapidly synthesize and screen millions of novel proteins that could be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses. The team supports DARPA’s Fold F(x) synthetic chemistry program.

MIT News Office • Building 11–400 Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Cambridge, MA 02139–4307.

Certain plants, insects, crustaceans and fish possess the uncanny ability to change the sex of their offspring before they are born. Mammals have never before demonstrated this genetic skill, until now.

A new Tel Aviv University study reveals a genetic system in mammals that enables two animals to mate and produce only females. A similar system based on identical principles would produce only males.

Research for the breakthrough study was led by Prof. Udi Qimron, Dr. Ido Yosef and Dr. Motti Gerlic and conducted by Dr. Liat Edry-Botzer, Rea Globus, Inbar Shlomovitz and Prof. Ariel Munitz, all of the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at TAU’s Sackler School of Medicine. The research was published on July 1 in EMBO Reports.

At three o’clock in the afternoon on September 4, 1882, the electrical age began. The Edison Illuminating Company switched on its Pearl Street power plant, and a network of copper wires came alive, delivering current to a few dozen buildings in the surrounding neighborhood.

Electroactive bacteria were running current through “wires” long before humans learned the trick.

Humanity first went to the moon to make a point. Now it’s time to overcome rivalries and pitch in together.

• By Clara Moskowitz

The former NASA astronaut has told of a conversation he had with the renowned scientist.

The hospital technology, typically used to identify human ailments, captured perhaps the world’s smallest magnetic resonance image.