Science

When learning the basics of atomic structure in school, we all pictured electrons as perfectly round. That’s just easier than pondering the ramifications of dark matter on the Standard Model. Scientists have long wondered just how round electrons are, an answer that could affect how we understand subatomic particles. The …

Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) is the major polyphenol in the leaves of green tea (Camellia sinensis). This compound is the subject of increasing research interest because it has demonstrated beneficial effects in studies of diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, stroke, and obesity. Now, a team of scientists in China has found …

An analysis of ancient food proteins preserved in ceramic vessels found at the key early farming site of Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, has revealed that this community processed mixes of cereals, pulses, dairy and meat products, and that particular vessels may have been reserved for …

Physicists from the Advanced Cold Molecule Electron Electric Dipole Moment (ACME) Collaboration have examined the shape of an electron’s charge with unprecedented precision to confirm that it is extremely round. The result, reported in the journal Nature, supports the strength of the Standard Model of particle physics and seems to …

A team of scientists led by University of California, Riverside’s Professor Gordon Love has found the oldest evidence yet of animal life, dating back 100 million years before the famous Cambrian explosion. The yellow pot sponge (Rhabdastrella globostellata), a modern species of demosponge that makes the same 26-mes steroids that …

Physicists from the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) Collaboration at CERN have gained new insights into the properties of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter thought to have existed just after the Big Bang. The findings are published in the journal Physics Letters B. An event from the …

A research team in the United States has developed a nanoparticle-based dual vaccine against Bacillus anthracis and Yersinia pestis — pathogens that cause anthrax and plague, respectively. This scanning electron micrograph shows macrophages infected with Bacillus anthracis. Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology. Vaccines are one of the …

An international team of over 100 scientists from 16 institutions has sequenced the genome of the wild sugarcane (Saccharum spontaneum). The results appear in the journal Nature Genetics. The wild sugarcane (Saccharum spontaneum). Image credit: Joydeep / CC BY-SA 3.0. Domesticated in New Guinea approximately 10,000 years ago, ‘reeds that …

The International Space Station is currently inaccessible after the recent Soyuz launch abort. We’re still looking at the better part of a year before SpaceX or Boeing have any hope of a manned launch, so investigators are anxious to figure out what happened during last week’s incident. According to an …

NASA has been pinging the Opportunity rover for the last several months, but the plucky little robot is still sleeping after its run-in with a massive Martian dust storm. There may still be hope for the mission, too. NASA engineers say that Opportunity has one last chance to save itself …