A new epoxy material is a first-of-its-kind, 3-D printable, stimuli-responsive polymeric material that enable massive reconfigurability in future military platforms, according to a recent paper.

It will have embedded intelligence allowing it to autonomously adapt to its environment without any external control. It is a system of materials to simultaneously provide structure, sensing and response.

A new paper supports the traditional relationship of dromaeosaurid ('raptors') and troodontid theropods as the closest relatives of birds, but also supports the status of the controversial anchiornithine theropods as the earliest birds.

The authors say theirs is the most comprehensive study of feathered dinosaurs and early birds into the evolutionary relationships of dinosaurs at the origin of birds. They used an analytical pipeline to search for evolutionary trees, and estimated how each species may have crossed the stringent thresholds for powered flight.

Sour beer is not a defect. Some people like the tart, tangy brew which results when wild yeast and bacteria are allowed to grow in freshly brewed beer (wort) and then ferment.

It's the opposite of the fresher beer many desire and began as a niche market in in Europe long ago. Now it's taking off in the U.S. the way IPAs did a decade ago. 

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile recently took a census of stellar eggs in the constellation Taurus and their evolution state in order to better understand how and when a stellar embryo transforms to a baby star deep inside a gaseous egg. 

They also found a bipolar outflow, a pair of gas streams - that could be telltale evidence of a truly newborn star.

Life developed when there was no oxygen on earth. It was an anoxic environment dominated by bacteria, who instead of oxidation and reduction, as our mitochondria do to produce energy, probably extracted various substances by means of fermentation.

But there has long been another possibility; a kind of “oxygen-free respiration” hinted at in studies on primordial microbes that are still found in anoxic habitats today. There have been found genes in microbes that perhaps encode for a primordial respiration enzyme.

Yet proving the existence of this respiratory enzyme and isolating it requires time and effort. The complex is fragile and often fell apart during attempts to isolate it from the membrane. 

Compared to cisgender people (gender identity corresponds to their sex), an analysis of over 600,000 adults finds transgender and gender-diverse adults are three to six times more likely to be diagnosed as autistic. 

The findings are simply exploratory and about co-occurrence between gender identity and autism diagnoses, they cannot inform or suggest causal links.  These correlations have confounders.