Science

Short-term and intermittent fasting reduces chronic inflammation and improves chronic inflammatory diseases without affecting the immune system’s response to acute infections, according to a new study led by Mount Sinai researchers. Jordan et al identified a drastic effect of short-term and intermittent fasting on the blood and tissue monocyte pool …

A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Texas Austin has used a new technique to analyze tiny amounts of gas trapped inside 215-million-year-old rocks from the Colorado Plateau and the Newark Basin. Their results show that oxygen levels in these rocks leapt by nearly a …

Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) form social bonds and actively choose their social partners, according to a study by researchers from the Marine Megafauna Foundation, Macquarie University, the University of Papua, and the University of York. The reef manta ray (Manta alfredi) at Dharavandhoo Thila, Maldives. Image credit: Shiyam Elk …

Paleontologists in Morocco have found fossil fragments from a new genus and species of stegosaur that walked the Earth about 168 million years ago (Jurassic period). Adratiklit boulahfa is closely related to the European stegosaurs Dacentrurus and Miragaia (seen here). Image credit: Nobu Tamura, spinops.blogspot.com / CC BY 3.0. Stegosaurs …

  Most of the spacecraft in science fiction are ridiculously spacious, but real life is much less luxurious. The International Space Station (ISS) has just 388 cubic meters of habitable space, and future deep-space assignments could have astronauts serving much longer tours of duty. NASA has partnered with Sierra Nevada …

  Scientists around the world celebrated the first confirmed detection of gravitational waves several years ago, a discovery that resulted in Nobel prizes for Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish in 2017. Since then, The American LIGO and Italian Virgo instruments have spotted many more waves from the collision …

Each spring and fall, millions of birds switch to migrating at night. Most of these are small songbirds migrating long distances that need to alternate their migratory flights with refueling stopovers, which can account for up to 80% of the total migratory period. After a long nocturnal flight, these birds …

  The universe is rife with mysteries, but few are as perplexing as fast radio bursts (FRBs). These distant, highly energetic radio-frequency flashes were only discovered in 2007, and most observations have come from non-repeating sources. That makes it hard to study the phenomenon in detail. Astronomers knew of just …

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is moving toward completion of its final design, followed by the construction and testing of the solar-powered spacecraft and science payload. A 2016 artist’s concept of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. The design is changing as the spacecraft is developed. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech. “We are …

Methanoliparia, a species of archaea from deep-sea oil seeps of the Gulf of Mexico, splits long-chain hydrocarbons into methane and carbon dioxide, according to a new paper published in the journal mBio. Methanoliparia is an important methanogenic alkane degrader in subsurface environments, producing methane by alkane disproportionation as a single …