Science

The BepiColombo Mercury probe is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The probe is intended to study Mercury’s magnetic field, magnetosphere, interior, and surface structures. It consists of two vehicles — the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetosphere Orbiter …

A team of researchers has discovered a new species of salamander living in Alabama and the Panhandle region of Florida, the United States. A reticulated siren (Siren reticulata) from the waters of northwestern Florida (Okaloosa County) rests on an aquarium floor. Image credit: Pierson Hill. The newly-discovered salamander species belongs …

A team of scientists from the United States and Brazil has successfully sequenced the genome of the turquoise-fronted Amazon parrot (Amazona aestiva) and compared it with those of 30 other bird species, including 4 additional parrots. The turquoise-fronted Amazon parrot (Amazona aestiva). Image credit: Charles J. Sharp, www.sharpphotography.co.uk / CC …

Paleontologists in Australia have found a fossil fragment from a new species of ornithopod dinosaur that walked the Earth approximately 100 million years ago (Cretaceous period). An artist’s impression of Weewarrasaurus pobeni. Image credit: James Kuether. The new Australian dinosaur, named Weewarrasaurus pobeni, was about the size of a large …

Adult cardiac stem cells don’t exist, according to a new study in mice by researchers from the Hubrecht Institute, the Amsterdam University Medical Center, the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and the Francis Crick Institute London. Part of the heart wall of the murine heart after myocardial infarction; visible are …

A mammalian protein similar in structure to the active component of royal jelly — the queen-maker for the honeybee (Apis mellifera) — functions as kind of a fountain of youth for embryonic stem cells, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. The structure of royalactin (left) …

A team of researchers from the United States and Germany has sequenced and analyzed the genome of the moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). The results show that early jellyfish repurposed an existing set of genes to transition between polyp and swimming life stages. The moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita). Image credit: Alexander …

A team of scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of California, Santa Cruz, has found evidence that an evolutionary phenomenon at work in complex organisms is at play in archaea, a group of single-celled microorganisms famous for their love of living in extreme environments. Microscopy image of …

The standard cosmological model known as LambdaCDM can only explain 5% of the observable Universe. The remaining 95% is famously made up almost entirely of two invisible components called dark matter and dark energy. Yet the physical nature of these two components remains a mystery. A new study by University …

Lyme disease, which is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, is the most common vector borne-disease in the United States with about 300,000 cases a year. While the majority of the Lyme disease patients can be cured with the standard 2–4 weeks antibiotic monotherapy with doxycycline or amoxicillin or cefuroxime, about …