Science

A new study published in the journal Nature Medicine shows that a protein found in the blood can be used to precisely monitor Alzheimer’s disease progression long before first clinical signs appear. Cortical neuron stained with antibody to neurofilament subunit NF-L in green. Image credit: Gerry Shaw / CC BY-SA …

The perovskite-related metal oxide TbInO3 exhibits an exotic state of matter called quantum spin liquid, according to a team of researchers from the University of Liverpool and McMaster University. Due to the local terbium environment in TbInO3, a honeycomb lattice of terbium spins emerges in the crystal structure upon cooling. …

  SpaceX is working on the initial prototype of the Starship rocket (formerly BFR) that could eventually carry people to the moon and Mars. However, CEO Elon Musk recently announced a significant design revision that seems counterintuitive at first. Instead of aluminum and carbon fiber, the company has decided to …

The newly-discovered ‘trans-cortical vessels’ connect the bone marrow with the periosteal circulation, according to new research published in the journal Nature Metabolism. Closed circulatory systems underlie the function of vertebrate organs, but in long bones their structure is unclear although they constitute the exit route for bone marrow leukocytes. To …

Freak waves are so called because of their unexpectedly large size relative to the population of smaller waves in which they occur. The 84-foot- (25.6 m) high Draupner wave, observed in the North Sea on the 1st of January 1995, was one of the first confirmed field measurements of a …

Bodypainting is widespread in African, Australian and Papua New Guinean indigenous communities. Many bodypaintings use white or bright stripes on brown skin. A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science shows that these stripes protect skin from insect bites. Reflection-polarization characteristics of the sunlit sticky white-striped brown …

  Humans haven’t set foot on the moon in decades, but that could change soon. The first step in that process is to learn more about so-called “in-situ” resource management. Mining materials on the moon could aid future manned missions, and the European Space Agency (ESA) aims to begin testing …

A new species of freshwater shark that lived about 67 million years ago (Cretaceous period) has been identified from fossilized teeth found in South Dakota. An illustration showing what Galagadon nordquistae would have looked like in life, swimming along the river floor. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski, Field Museum. Named Galagadon …

  Our image of the outer solar system in decades past was much simpler than it is today. Pluto was the ninth planet, and that was the end of it except for some scattered asteroids and comets. Now, science doesn’t consider Pluto a planet, but some believe there’s a still-undiscovered …

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft observed Saturn’s ring system in unprecedented detail, and a team of planetary researchers from the University of California Santa Cruz and NASA’s Ames Research Center has now used those observations to revise the gas giant’s rotation period. According to their calculations, the length of a day on …