News Articles

The orbital motion of two distinct populations of stars in an ancient globular star cluster, 47 Tucanae, have offered proof they formed at different times and it provides a rare look back into the Milky Way galaxy's early days.
The researchers combined recent Hubble observations with eight years' worth of data from the telescope's archive to determine the motions of the stars in 47 Tucanae, located about 16,700 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. The analysis enabled researchers, for the first time, to link the movement of stars in the clusters with the stars' ages. The two populations in 47 Tucanae differ in age by less than 100 million years.

Neural tube defects affect more than 300,000 babies born around the world each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Neural tube defects, including anencephaly and spina bifida, are caused by the incomplete closure or development of the spine and skull. 
Using dogs as a model, researchers recently found that a gene related to neural tube defects in man's best friend may be an important risk factor for human neural tube defects. The cause of neural tube defects is poorly understood but has long been thought to be associated with genetic, nutritional and environmental factors. 

Bacteriorhodopsin found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms in desert salt flats have been used generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory.

Cancer occurs most often in adults because it often takes decades of accumulating genetic errors for a tumor to develop - pediatric tumors are another issue.
Recently, researchers may have found a missing piece of the pediatric cancer puzzle; a mechanism behind the early development of some pediatric solid tumors.
In healthy cells, a checkpoint prompts the cell to repair damaged DNA before it replicates. Many researchers believe that cancer cells flourish when these checkpoints are skipped or inhibited, as the mutated cells can survive and rapidly reproduce. A growing collection of damaged cells can lead to the solid tumors of many childhood cancers, such as those of rhabdomyosarcoma, neuroblastoma and osteosarcoma.

The largest known submarine landslide has been identified in the Gulf of Mexico, generated by the Chicxulub extraterrestrial impact which also caused the mass-extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, providing new evidence for widespread Chicxulub-induced slope failure. The landslide, the single largest-known mass wasting deposit, was triggered when seismic shock waves and tsunamis caused sediments on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor deposited during the prior 10 million years to be eroded and lifted up into the water column. 

Gingivae is soft tissue that serves as a biological barrier to cover the oral cavity side of the maxilla and mandible. Recently, the gingivae were identified as containing mesenchymal stem cells (GMSCs). However, it is unknown whether the GMSCs are derived from cranial neural crest cells (CNCC) or the mesoderm. 

Oceans cover 70 percent of the earth's surface and compared to terrestrial ecosystems, the animal and plant species concealed under water have been researched relatively little.  
An international collaborative project recorded the times, places and concentrations of oceanic plankton occurrences worldwide and the data have been collected in a global atlas that covers organisms from bacteria to krill.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has captured the first ever image of the snow line in an infant solar system.
Say what?
On our planet, snow lines form at high altitudes where falling temperatures turn the moisture in the air into snow. This line is clearly visible on a mountain, where the snow-capped summit ends and the rocky face begins. The snow lines around young stars form in a similar way, in the distant, colder reaches of the dusty discs from which solar systems form.

Rapid coastal subsidence in the central Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta (Bangladesh) since the 17th century has been deduced from submerged salt-producing kilns.

NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars, which first landed inside the Gale Crater on Aug. 6th, 2012, may provide clues as to how the red planet lost its original atmosphere, which scientists believe was much thicker than the one left today.

Heart tissue sustains irreparable damage in the wake of a heart attack but because cells in the heart cannot multiply and the cardiac muscle contains few stem cells, the tissue is unable to repair itself — it becomes fibrotic and cannot contract properly.
The search is on for innovative methods to restore heart function and so scientists have been exploring cardiac "patches" that could be transplanted into the body to replace damaged heart tissue. 

If a physics department has no women, does that mean there is hiring discrimination?
Only if your job in sociology is to find discrimination. Simple statistics shows that is not true or there would be claims of discrimination in psychology, where lots of departments have no men. Yet when it comes to gender equality advocates, physics is always mentioned and psychology never is.
A new analysis by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center debunks the claim that the existence of all-male departments is evidence of hiring bias. Labor statistics have backed that up; not only are women hired equally for faculty and tenure jobs in science academia, they are over-hired based on their representation.