Science

A team of researchers from Japan, Germany and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has identified an alkaloid compound in a Congolese species of liana that inhibits the survival of pancreatic cancer cells under nutrient-deprived conditions. Ancistrocladus sp. Image credit: Eigenes Werk / CC BY-SA 3.0. Human pancreatic cancer cells …

 NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission consists of four identical spacecraft that orbit around Earth through the dynamic magnetic system surrounding the planet to study a type of space explosion called magnetic reconnection, a common event throughout the Universe that occurs when magnetic fields change by connecting and then breaking apart. …

SpaceX has already made spaceflight shorty many times, but it’s skipping today’s record-setting launch. The company had been scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 64 small satellites into orbit (known as SSO-A), but that wasn’t the historic part. It would have been the third launch for this particular …

An international team of scientists, led by University of Texas and Karolinska Institutet researchers, has created a small anti-inflammatory molecule with a new mechanism of action. Model of TH5487-mediated inhibition of proinflammatory gene expression: inflammation, at its onset and throughout its progress, is associated with generation of reactive oxygen species, …

From studying rock formations from satellite images, planetary researchers know that hundreds of craters across the Martian surface were once filled with water. More than 200 of these paleolakes have outlet canyons tens to hundreds of miles long and several miles wide carved by water flowing from the lakes. A …

Scientists have long expected that we would eventually find an object in our solar system that started out orbiting another star. However, no one expected it to be so weird. The alien comet ‘Oumuamua appeared in the sky last year as it tumbled past the sun. From our limited observation …

In order to make accurate weather predictions, NOAA needs weather satellites in orbit to peer down at Earth. Until recently, the agency was making do with very old hardware from the 1990s, but it has since started launching the much improved GOES-R satellites. GOES-17 launched in March of this year, …

An ancient Egyptian Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days assigns luck with the period of 2.85 days. Previous astronomical, astrophysical and statistical analyses of the calendar support the idea that this was the period of the eclipsing binary star Algol approximately 3,000 years ago. However, next to nothing is known …

Toothed whales — apex predators varying in size from 40-kg porpoises to 50-ton sperm whales — use narrow beams of high intensity sound to echolocate prey, according to a new study. A graphical rendition of a diving sperm whale using its echolocation. Image credit: Chris Johnson. Toothed whales comprise 75 …

A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has found that the more sensitive people are to the bitter taste of caffeine, the more coffee they drink. Ong et al investigated the causal relationship between bitter taste perception and the consumption of coffee, tea and alcohol. Image credit: Tabble. …