News Articles

Dark galaxies, theorized but unobserved, may have been spotted. Dark galaxies are essentially gas-rich galaxies in the early Universe that are very inefficient at forming stars and astronomers think they have detected these elusive objects by observing them glowing as they are illuminated by a quasar. They are predicted by theories of galaxy formation and are thought to be the building blocks of today’s bright, star-filled galaxies. They may have fed large galaxies with much of the gas that later formed into the stars that exist today.

Following successful open release trials in Brazil, Moscamed are now gearing up for the next phase of development in combating the mosquitoes which spread dengue fever, with the launch of their new mosquito production facility.

Why do some extremely faint galaxies in our backyard contain so few stars? An international team of astronomers has helped solve the mystery of why these galaxies are starved of stars - and why so few of them have been found.Hercules, Leo IV and Ursa Major dwarf galaxies all started forming stars more than 13 billion years ago - and then abruptly stopped shortly after the Big Bang.The extreme age of their stars is similar to Messier 92, the oldest known globular cluster in the Milky Way.

Over the last half century, it has been established that fish and migratory birds use the planet's magnetic field to help find their way, an interesting zoological mystery. Researchers have now identified cells with internal compass needles for the perception of the field, and that can explain why high-tension cables perturb their magnetic orientation. Although many animal species can sense the geomagnetic field and exploit it for spatial orientation, efforts to pinpoint the cells that detect the field and convert the information into nerve impulses had not been successful.

A novel anticancer drug is designed to travel, undetected by normal cells, through the bloodstream until it becomes activated by specific cancer proteins.  It's basically a sleeper cell for tumors.The drug, called G202, is chemically derived from a common Mediterranean weed called Thapsia garganica, and has been shown to destroy cancers and their direct blood supplies, acting like a 'molecular grenade' but sparing healthy blood vessels and tissues.

When you think of the northern lights (aurora borealis) you don't think of sounds. The famous blues, greens and reds rippling in the sky have been described by visitors and also handed down in stories as long as people have been visiting. Astronomers of King Nebuchadnezzar II  documented it in 568 B.C.But later travelers described sounds to go with the light show. The lights happen when gas from the sun reaches earth's magnetic field; the charged particles flow along the planet's magnetic lines, but that is too far away for people to hear anything.

A new study has assessed the effectiveness of two somatostatin vaccinations, JH17 and JH18, in reducing weight gain and increasing weight loss in mice.Somatostatin is a peptide hormone which inhibits the action of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), both of which increase metabolism and result in weight loss. Vaccination with modified somatostatin caused the body to generate antibodies to somatostatin, effectively removing this inhibition without directly interfering with the growth hormones and subsequently increasing energy expenditure and weight loss.

In America, the last few years saw young females and males achieve math parity for the first time ever.  But girls are still anxious about math, and that has nothing to do with teachers or outreach or the oppression of a liberal democracy.Mathematics anxiety is a state of discomfort associated with performing mathematics tasks and is believed to affect both children and adults, having a negative impact on their mathematics performance.   That makes sense.  Math is difficult and difficult subjects make people nervous.

On July 11, NASA scientists will launch into space the highest resolution solar telescope ever to observe the solar corona, the million degree outer solar atmosphere. But it will only last 10 minutes. 

In Basque, all you have to do is look at the verb to see whether the sentence has a direct object. Why not use that to learn the syntax of Spanish? If you already know how to form conditional sentences in Basque and in Spanish, why start from scratch to learn the same thing in English? Basically, because languages are screwy. But they don't have to be. The DREAM group (Donostia Research group on Education And Multilingualism) is seeking to revolutionize language education using synergy: taking advantage of the features that languages share in order to educate truly multilingual students in schools. 

The Chinese are determined to be number one in the world at everything - including things that are not very healthy.China has experienced unprecedented economic growth in the past two decades and with that have come equally dramatic changes in the weight, diets and physical activity levels of its people. A new analysis used data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), the longest ongoing study of its kind in China. Between 1989 and 2011, the study followed more than 29,000 people in 300 communities throughout China, with surveys conducted in 1989, 1991, 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2011. 

Dark matter and dark energy is thought to account for up to 80% of the matter in the universe. Does it exist? Well, it has to, we just can't see it. So what is it? We better know what it isn't.