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Apr 3, 2019

Today Chandra is studying a white dwarf star in Coma Berenices

Posted by in category: cosmology

Nearby in the sky is galaxy NGC 4725, roughly 41 million light years from Earth. Over 100,000 light years across, at least 4 supernovae have been observed in this galaxy since 1940!

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Apr 3, 2019

A Drug Shows an Astonishing Ability to Regenerate Damaged Hearts and Other Body Parts

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A once abandoned drug compound shows an ability to rebuild organs damaged by illness and injury.

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Apr 3, 2019

Check Out These Adorable, Tiny Frog Species Just Discovered in Madagascar

Posted by in category: futurism

Miniaturised frogs form a fascinating but poorly understood group of amphibians. They have been exceptionally prone to taxonomic underestimation because when frogs evolve small body size they start to look remarkably similar – so it is easy to underestimate how diverse they really are.

As part of my PhD I have been studying frogs and reptiles on Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean that’s a little larger than mainland France. It has more than 350 frog species, giving it possibly the highest frog diversity per square kilometre of any country in the world. And many of these frogs are very small.

We have added to the knowledge of these tiny species by describing five new species as belonging to the group of frogs commonly referred to as “narrow-mouthed” frogs. The largest of them could sit happily on your thumbnail. The smallest is just longer than a grain of rice.

Continue reading “Check Out These Adorable, Tiny Frog Species Just Discovered in Madagascar” »

Apr 3, 2019

What Existed Before The Big Bang? Astronomers Have Found a Test to Narrow It Down

Posted by in categories: cosmology, evolution, physics

Today our middle-aged Universe looks eerily smooth. Too smooth, in fact.

While a rapid growth spurt in space-time would explain what we see, science needs more than nice ideas. It needs evidence that whittles away contending arguments. We might finally know where to look for some.

A team of physicists from the Centre for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and Harvard University went back to the drawing board on the early Universe’s evolution to give us a way to help those inflation models stand out from the crowd.

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Apr 3, 2019

By Far the Strangest Scientific Discovery of 2018: Your Memories Are a Viral Infection

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

Agree or Disagree?


According to two papers published in Cell on January 11, 2018, the making of memories and the processes of learning resemble, of all things, a viral infection. It works like this: The shells that transport information between neurons are assembled by a gene called Arc. Experiments conducted by two research teams revealed that the Arc protein that forms a shell, functions much like a Gag, a gene that transports a virus’s genetic material between cells during an infection. For example, the retrovirus HIV uses a Gag in exactly this manner.

Scientific American:

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Apr 3, 2019

A Mathematician Just Solved a Deceptively Simple Puzzle That Has Boggled Minds for 64 Years

Posted by in category: information science

A mathematician in England just solved a decades-old Diophantine equation for the number 33. Now, only 42 remains.

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Apr 3, 2019

Israeli Company’s New Cutting-Edge Cancer Treatment

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, evolution

DAILY DOSE | A new cutting-edge cancer treatment has been developed in one of the innovation capitals of the world — Israel. How does it work and why is some of the medical community eagerly awaiting to use it? Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies CEO Ilan Morad discusses with host Ayman Sikseck.

Story:

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Apr 3, 2019

Scientists discover first organism with chlorophyll genes that doesn’t photosynthesize

Posted by in categories: futurism, space

For the first time scientists have found an organism that can produce chlorophyll but does not engage in photosynthesis.

The peculiar organism is dubbed ‘corallicolid’ because it is found in 70 per cent of corals around the world and may provide clues as to how to protect in the future.

“This is the second most abundant cohabitant of coral on the planet and it hasn’t been seen until now,” says Patrick Keeling, a University of British Columbia botanist and senior researcher overseeing the study published in Nature. “This organism poses completely new biochemical questions. It looks like a parasite, and it’s definitely not photosynthetic. But it still makes chlorophyll.”

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Apr 3, 2019

Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us — and he doesn’t care what his colleagues think

Posted by in category: alien life

Ever since Avi Loeb’s controversial paper about the object, dubbed ‘Oumuamua, he’s become a spokesman for the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

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Apr 3, 2019

‘Something no human has seen before’: The first-ever photograph of a black hole will likely be unveiled next week

Posted by in category: cosmology

They’ve captured our imaginations for decades, but we’ve never actually photographed a black hole before – until now.

Next Wednesday, at several press briefings around the world, scientists will apparently unveil humanity’s first-ever photo of a black hole, the European Space Agency said in a statement. Specifically, the photo will be of “Sagittarius A,” the supermassive black hole that’s at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

But aren’t black holes, well, black, and thus invisible, so none of our telescopes can “see” them? Yes – therefore the image we’re likely to see will be of the “event horizon,” the edge of the black hole where light can’t escape.

Continue reading “‘Something no human has seen before’: The first-ever photograph of a black hole will likely be unveiled next week” »