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 Preliminary study suggests mercury not a risk in dog foods
Researchers recently investigated levels of methylmercury in a small sampling of commercial dog foods and found good news for dog owners. Of the 24 diets tested, only three were positive for low concentrations of total mercury, and only one of those contained detectable methylmercury.
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Researchers use 3D printer to print glass
For the first time, researchers have successfully 3D printed chalcogenide glass, a unique material used to make optical components that operate at mid-infrared wavelengths. The ability to 3D print this glass could make it possible to manufacture complex glass components and optical fibers for new types of low-cost sensors, telecommunications components and biomedical devices.
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Bioengineers program cells as digital signal processors
Synthetic biologists have added high-precision analog-to-digital signal processing to the genetic circuitry of living cells. The research dramatically expands the chemical, physical and environmental cues engineers can use to prompt programmed responses from engineered organisms.
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Antimicrobial paints have a blind spot
Researchers tested bacteria commonly found inside homes on samples of drywall coated with antimicrobial, synthetic latex paints. Within 24 hours, all bacteria died except for Bacillus timonensis, a spore-forming bacterium.
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Growing a cerebral tract in a microscale brain model
An international research team modeled the growth of cerebral tracts. Using neurons derived from stem cells, they grew cortical-like spheroids. In a microdevice, the spheroids extended bundles of axons toward each other, forming a physical and electrical connection. Fascicles grew less efficiently when one spheroid was absent, and when a gene relevant to cerebral tract formation was knocked-down. The study further illuminates brain growth and developmental disorders.
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Important insight on the brain-body connection
A study reveals that neurons in the motor cortex exhibit an unexpected division of labor, a finding that could help scientists understand how the brain controls the body and provide insight on certain neurological disorders.
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 How A 'Snowball Chamber' Might Help Scientists Finally Find Dark Matter
If you enjoy watching videos on the internet, you've likely already witnessed the phenomenon known as supercooling. Basically, the process involves taking ultra-pure water and putting it into a clean, smooth container that lacks any structural defects. If the conditions are right, when you attempt to freeze the water by dropping its temperature below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius), it will surprisingly remain in a liquid state.
This is because in order for ice crystals...
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Hubble celebrates its 29th birthday with unrivaled view of the Southern Crab Nebula
This incredible image of the hourglass-shaped Southern Crab Nebula was taken to mark the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's 29th anniversary in space. The nebula, created by a binary star system, is one of the many objects that Hubble has demystified throughout its productive life. This new image adds to our understanding of the nebula and demonstrates the telescope's continued capabilities.
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Why language technology can't handle Game of Thrones (yet)
Researchers have performed a thorough evaluation of four different name recognition tools on popular 40 novels, including A Game of Thrones. Their analyses highlight types of names and texts that are particularly challenging for these tools to identify as well as solutions for mitigating this.
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Fossils found in museum drawer in Kenya belong to gigantic carnivore
Paleontologists have discovered a new species of meat-eating mammal larger than any big cat stalking the world today. Larger than a polar bear, with a skull as large as that of a rhinoceros and enormous piercing canine teeth, this massive carnivore would have been an intimidating part of the eastern African ecosystems occupied by early apes and monkeys.
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A history of the Crusades, as told by crusaders' DNA
History can tell us a lot about the Crusades, the series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the Near East. But the DNA of nine 13th century Crusaders buried in a pit in Lebanon shows that there's more to learn about who the Crusaders were and their interactions with the populations they encountered.
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Study shows promise in repairing damaged myelin
A new study shows that a synthetic molecule stimulates repair of the protective sheath that covers nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The study demonstrates in mice that a synthetic molecule called sobetirome efficiently repairs damaged myelin without side effects.
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Scientists Discover 1.8 Million Hidden Southern California Earthquakes
Southern California is famous for its sandy beaches, wine country, theme parks and Hollywood glitz. And also its earthquakes. Now, researchers have identified more than 1.8 million previously unknown earthquakes that hit Southern California between 2008 and 2017. The findings suggest these truly tiny earthquakes — as small as just 0.3 magnitude on the Richter scale — happen every 174 seconds, yet they're hardly felt on Earth's surface.
"The goal was to produce a state of the art...
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Investigators incorporate randomized trial within dialysis care delivery
The Time to Reduce Mortality in ESRD (TiME) trial was a large pragmatic trial demonstration project designed to determine the benefits of hemodialysis sessions that are longer than many patients currently receive. The trial was conducted through a partnership between academic investigators and 2 large dialysis provider organizations using a highly centralized implementation approach. Although the trial accomplished most of its demonstration project objectives, uptake of the intervention was insu
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Simbakubwa: Mega Carnivore Hiding In A Museum Drawer
Take a polar bear. Take a lion. Mash them together and chuck them in a time machine, sending them back 22 million years to what's now Kenya and you've got the massive carnivore Simbakubwa kutokaafrika. The enormous bitey mammal was identified only after researchers rediscovered partial fossils of it, forgotten in the backroom of a museum.
To be clear, Simbakubwa is neither a bear nor a member of the extended feline family, even though its name is Swahili for "big lion." Instead, the mas
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 Engineers tap DNA to create 'lifelike' machines
Ithaca NY (SPX) Apr 15, 2019
Tapping into the unique nature of DNA, Cornell engineers have created simple machines constructed of biomaterials with properties of living things.
Using what they call DASH (DNA-based Assembly and Synthesis of Hierarchical) materials, engineers constructed a DNA material with capabilities of metabolism, in addition to self-assembly and organization - three key traits of life.
"We ar
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The Quest For the Roots of Autism — and What It Says About Us All
As alarm grew over autism prevalence at the turn of this century, there was much public talk of a growing "epidemic." That language has since softened, and it is now clear that many autistic people were there all along, their condition unrecognized until relatively recently.
But what is the cause? The emerging narrative today is that there is no single cause — rather, multiple factors, roughly sorted into the categories of genetics and environment, work together in complex ways....
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New immune pathway involved in resistance to parasite worms found in undercooked pork
Scientists have discovered that immune responses originally found to prevent fungal infections are also important in eliminating Trichinella spiralis, a round worm and the causative agent of Trichinosis. People acquire trichinellosis by consuming raw or undercooked meat infected with the Trichinella parasite, particularly wild game meat or pork.
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Electric skyrmions charge ahead for next-generation data storage
A team of researchers has observed chirality for the first time in polar skyrmions, in a material with reversible electrical properties -- a combination that could lead to more powerful data storage devices that continue to hold information, even after they've been turned off.
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Can science writing be automated?
A team of researchers has developed a neural network, a form of artificial intelligence, that can read scientific papers and render a plain-English summary in a sentence or two.
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Explosion on Jupiter-sized star 10 times more powerful than ever seen on our sun
Warwick UK (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
A stellar flare ten times more powerful than anything seen on our sun has burst from an ultracool star almost the same size as Jupiter.
The star is the coolest and smallest to give off a rare white-light superflare, and by some definitions could be too small be considered a star.
The discovery, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, is published in the Monthly Notic
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Adding human touch to unchatty chatbots may lead to bigger letdown
Sorry, Siri, but just giving a chatbot a human name or adding humanlike features to its avatar might not be enough to win over a user if the device fails to maintain a conversational back-and-forth with that person, according to researchers. In fact, those humanlike features might create a backlash against less responsive humanlike chatbots.
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Giant tortoises migrate unpredictably in the face of climate change
Researchers use GPS to track the timing and patterns of giant tortoise migration over multiple years. The tortoises often take the same migration routes over many years in order to find optimal food quality and temperatures. The timing of this migration is essential for keeping their energy levels high, and climate change could disrupt a tortoise's ability to migrate at the right time.
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We Might All Have Synesthesia, New Study Suggests
Oh, to be a synesthete, those rare people with access to an extra layer of perception. Sounds have colors. Words have taste. Colors play music. The list goes on. The phenomenon isn't totally understood by scientists, but the general idea is that those with synesthesia experience sensory inputs differently than the rest of us.
It's no wonder that synesthesia is common among artists. But for those of us that just see letters as letters and can't taste a song, synesthesia is more apt to ...
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How superstitions spread
Superstitious beliefs may seem irrational, but they can nevertheless catch on in a society. Using an evolutionary approach to studying the emergence of coordinated behaviors, biologists showed how a jumble of individual beliefs, including superstitions, can coalesce into an accepted social norm.
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Taming the genome's 'jumping' sequences
Scientists have discovered how a family of proteins that regulates the activity of transposable elements in the genome allows them to make inheritable changes to the growing fetus.
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Does time of day affect the body's response to exercise?
New research confirms that the circadian clock is an important factor in how the body responds to physical exertion. Based on this work alone, it's too early to say when the best time is for you to go for a jog. But at least in the lab, exercise in the evening seems to be more productive, although human lifestyles are much more complicated.
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The discrete-time physics hiding inside our continuous-time world
Santa Fe NM (SPX) Apr 16, 2019
Scientists believe that time is continuous, not discrete - roughly speaking, they believe that it does not progress in "chunks," but rather "flows," smoothly and continuously. So they often model the dynamics of physical systems as continuous-time "Markov processes," named after mathematician Andrey Markov. Indeed, scientists have used these processes to investigate a range of real-world process
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Understanding the Sacrificial Puppies Found in Shang Dynasty Graves
During the last centuries of China's Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1600 B.C. to 1050 B.C., ritual sacrifice was a well-oiled cultural phenomenon, rich and varied in its manifestations. Rulers and elites sacrificed animals and humans to appease spirits or the ancestors. Just as humans met their ends, dogs were often right beside them.
Now a study in Archaeological Research in Asia, published in March, shows that people from the Shang dynasty relied heavily on sacrificial puppies to ac...
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Flies smell through a Gore-Tex system
Scientists have gained important insights into how the nanopores that allow the fruit fly to detect chemicals in the air, and has identified the gene responsible for their development.
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NASA Invites You to 'Picture Earth' for Earth Day
Pasadena CA (JPL) Apr 15, 2019
Our magnificent planet is always ready for its close-up. On Earth Day, April 22, NASA wants to see your take.
NASA invites you to celebrate the planet we call home with our #PictureEarth social media event. Post a close-up photo on social media of your favorite natural features, such as crashing waves, ancient trees, blooming flowers or stunning sunsets. Use the hashtag #PictureEarth and u
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A small step for China: Mars base for teens opens in desert
Jinchang, China (AFP) April 17, 2019
In the middle of China's Gobi desert sits a Mars base simulator, but instead of housing astronauts training to live on the Red Planet, the facility is full of teenagers on a school trip.
Surrounded by barren hills in northwestern Gansu province, "Mars Base 1" opened on Wednesday with the aim of exposing teens - and soon tourists - to what life could be like on the planet.
The facility'
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First launch of Soyuz MS on new Soyuz-2 rocket planned for 2020
Moscow (Sputnik) Apr 18, 2019
A manned Soyuz MS spaceship will be launched to the International Space Station using a new Soyuz-2 launch vehicle in the first six months of 2020, Dmitry Baranov, the director general of Russia's Progress Rocket Space Center, told Sputnik.
"The first launch of the manned transport spacecraft Soyuz MS using the Soyuz-2 launch vehicle with a crew on board will take place in the first half o
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Gobihadros: New Member of Duck-billed Dinosaur Dynasty
Toothy tyrannosaurs and enormous titanosaurs may be the most dramatic dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, but plant-eating hadrosaurs had the numbers. These widely-distributed animals, often called duck-billed dinosaurs, are among the most commonly found fossils from the period that stretched 66 million-100 million years ago. Yet the hadrosaur origin story remains a bit of a mystery. Today, a magnificent new find from Mongolia fills in some of the gaps.
Paleontologists unearthed multip...
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Tiny Star Flares 10 Times Brighter Than the Sun
On August 13, 2017, the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescope spotted an intense solar flare from a tiny star barely bigger than Jupiter. But despite this sun's diminutive size, the flare gave off as much energy as 80 billion megatons of TNT. That's 10 times as powerful as the strongest flare ever observed on our own sun. It's also the coolest star ever observed to give off such a hot flare, and the spectacular outburst is teaching astronomers the power of small stars.
Light it ...
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Five Planets Revealed After 20 Years of Observation
Geneva, Switzerland (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
Over 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered since the first one in 1995, but the vast majority of them orbit their stars with relatively short periods of revolution. Indeed, to confirm the presence of a planet, it is necessary to wait until it has made one or more revolutions around its star. This can take from a few days for the closest to the star to decades for the furthest away: Jupiter for e
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Scientists find evidence Mercury has a solid inner core
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
Scientists have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Like Earth, Mercury's outer core is composed of liquid metal, but there have only been hints that Mercury's innermost core is solid. Now, in a new study, scientists report evidence that Mercury's inner core is indeed solid and that it is very nearly the same size as Earth's solid inner core.
Some scientists compare Merc
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Earliest life may have arisen in ponds, not oceans
Boston MA (SPX) Apr 15, 2019
Primitive ponds may have provided a suitable environment for brewing up Earth's first life forms, more so than oceans, a new MIT study finds.
Researchers report that shallow bodies of water, on the order of 10 centimeters deep, could have held high concentrations of what many scientists believe to be a key ingredient for jump-starting life on Earth: nitrogen.
In shallow ponds, nitrog
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Turducken Space Rock: Antarctic Meteorite Hid Comet Inside Asteroid Remains
Our solar system is a whopping 4.5 billion years old. And those earliest days were some of the most interesting for astronomers. That's when the planets formed, building from dust grains into the whole worlds that now populate our space neighborhood. But most of this material has been drastically changed since its early days - incorporated into planets, or baked by the sun and weathered by time. However, if we could find material that hasn't been changed in some way it would help...
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Global Challenge Launched to Build Exoplanet Data Solutions
London, UK (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
ARIEL, a mission to make the first large-scale survey of exoplanet atmospheres, has launched a global competition series to find innovative solutions for the interpretation and analysis of exoplanet data. The first ARIEL Data Challenge invites professional and amateur data scientists around the world to use machine learning (ML) to remove noise from exoplanet observations caused by starspots and
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What is North Korea's New Weapon?
Sydney, Australia (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
North Korea has made a very public statement on the test of a new form of "tactical guided" weapon, which was conducted recently under the watchful eye of leader Kim Jong-Un.
Exactly how the world will react to this is unclear at the time of writing, and the North Koreans themselves could have more than one objective. A test like this could have been conducted discreetly, but North Korea d
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Novel antibody may suppress HIV for up to four months
Regular infusions of an antibody that blocks the HIV binding site on human immune cells may have suppressed levels of HIV for up to four months in people undergoing a short-term pause in their antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens. Results of the Phase 2, open-label study indicate the antibody, known as UB-421, was safe and did not induce the production of antibody-resistant HIV.
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TESS finds its first Earth-sized planet
Pasadena, CA (SPX) Apr 16, 2019
A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world, according to a new paper from a team of astronomers that includes Carnegie's Johanna Teske, Paul Butler, Steve Shectman, Jeff Crane, and Sharon Wang.
Their work is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"It's so exciting t
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China to enhance international space cooperation
Beijing (XNA) Apr 18, 2019
China will promote aerospace development, strengthen international cooperation and contribute Chinese wisdom, plans and strength in man's peaceful utilization of outer space, said an official with China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday.
Zhao Jian, deputy director of the Department of System Engineering of CNSA, said at a press conference that the "Forum on Space Solutions:
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Researchers Resuscitate Pig Brains Hours After Death
Researchers say they've rebooted pigs' brains four hours after the animals died. The scientists managed to restore some blood flow and brain cell activity to the dead animals' brains by pumping a protective solution through the tissue using a proprietary technology they call BrainEx. The brain was never alert and researchers did not restore consciousness, but the work could lead to new ways to aid recovery after trauma like heart attacks and strokes, the researchers say.
"BrainExâ...
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Aphid Suicide Squads Save Colonies With Body Ooze
Don't you just hate it when a moth larva busts in through the wall of your house like some squirmy lepidopteran Kool-Aid man? If you're a colony of aphids living in a gall, this is a real threat. But luckily there's a team of heroes ready to spring to action, even sacrifice themselves, to repair that wall and save the rest of the clan.
A team of Japanese researchers has been studying this phenomenon for over 15 years. Their latest work, out this week in PNAS, breaks down the interes...
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Astronomers Find Oldest Type of Molecule in Space
Everything has a beginning. That's true for stories, for people, for the universe and even for chemistry. The Big Bang itself produced just a handful of elements (variations of hydrogen, helium and lithium nuclei), so researchers have a pretty good sense of what the first atoms and molecules might have been. But the very first molecular bond to form, linking together atoms of different elements in a single molecule, has long been missing in action.
Known as a helium hydride ion (HeH+), ...
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Disappearing bumblebee species under threat of extinction
The American Bumblebee - a species once more commonly seen buzzing around Southern Ontario - is critically endangered, according to a new study. The finding found the native North American species, Bombus pensylvanicus, is facing imminent extinction from Canada, considered the highest and most at-risk classification before extinction.
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 What Chickens Can Teach Hearing Researchers
At an event honoring Nobel and Kavli Prize winners, neuroscientists James Hudspeth and Robert Fettiplace talked about the physiology of hearing and the possibility of restoring hearing loss.
-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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General anesthesia hijacks sleep circuitry to knock you out
Researchers have found that general anesthesia induces unconsciousness by hijacking the neural circuitry that makes us fall sleep. They traced this neural circuitry back to a cluster of cells at the base of the brain responsible for churning out hormones to regulate bodily functions, mood, and sleep. The finding could lead to better drugs capable of putting people to sleep with fewer side effects.
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Diabetes drug may reverse heart failure
Researchers have demonstrated that the recently developed antidiabetic drug empagliflozin can treat and reverse the progression of heart failure in non-diabetic animal models. Their study also shows that this drug can make the heart produce more energy and function more efficiently.
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How the hepatitis B virus establishes persistent infection
New research sheds light on how a hepatitis B viral protein stimulates the expansion of immune cells that impair antiviral responses. The findings potentially explain how the hepatitis B virus (HBV) establishes and maintains chronic infection, and could lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies.
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NASA, Blue Origin agreement signals growth of commercial space
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 18, 2019
Officials from NASA and the private space company Blue Origin have signed an agreement that grants the company use of a historic test stand as the agency focuses on returning to the Moon and on to Mars, and America's commercial space industry continues to grow.
Under a Commercial Space Launch Act agreement, Blue Origin will upgrade and refurbish Test Stand 4670, at NASA's Marshall Space Fl
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Amazonian soils mapped using indicator species
Understanding the ecology and distributions of species in Amazonia is hampered by lack of information about environmental conditions, such as soils. Plant occurrence data are typically more abundant than soil samples in poorly known areas, and researchers have now developed a method that uses both plant and soil data to produce a map of soil properties.
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Major study finds one in five children have mental health problems
One in five Ontario children and youth suffer from a mental disorder, but less than one-third have had contact with a mental health care provider. A new study included 10,802 children and youth aged four to 17 in 6,537 families. It replicated and expanded on the landmark 1983 Ontario Child Health Study of 3,290 children in 1,869 families.
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Bacterial therapy in a dish
Biomedical engineers have developed a system that can study 10s to 100s of programmed bacteria within mini-tissues in a dish, condensing study time from months to days. The speed and high throughput of their technology allows for stable growth of bacteria within tumor spheroids and can also be used for other bacteria species and cell types. The team says this study is the first to rapidly screen and characterize bacteria therapies in vitro.
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Switch from hunting to herding recorded in ancient urine
A new study begins to resolve the scale and pace of change during the first phases of animal domestication beyond the Fertile Crescent. To reconstruct this history, the authors turned to an unusual source: urine salts left behind by humans and animals.
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