Science

Intestinal stem cells are responsible for maintaining the lining of the intestine, which typically renews itself every 5 days. When an injury or infection occurs, stem cells are key to repairing any damage. As we age, the regenerative abilities of our intestinal stem cells decline. According to the findings of …

NASA’s Mars InSight mission successfully launched today at 7:05 a.m. EDT (4:05 a.m. PDT) from Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 rocket. InSight stands for the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. It is …

According to a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, a 35,000-year-old flint flake found at a Middle Paleolithic site in Crimea, Ukraine, was likely engraved symbolically by a skilled hand of a Neanderthal. The engraved flint flake from the Kiik-Koba site, Crimea, Ukraine; the arrow indicates the point of …

The European mistletoe (Viscum album) is a plant steeped in ancient associations with druids and Northern European folklore and since the 18th century, has been synonymous with kissing at Christmas time. This plant is a hemiparasite (a parasitic plant that is capable of some photosynthesis), latching onto trees and extracting …

Middle-aged to elderly men and women who take frequent sauna baths have a substantially reduced risk of new-onset stroke, according to a 15-year follow-up study published in the journal Neurology. In this new study, people taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 61% less likely to suffer a stroke …

We lost one of our greatest scientific minds when the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away several weeks ago. However, he did leave one last idea for the scientific community to mull over in his absence. Just 10 days before his death, Hawking and his colleague Thomas Hertog submitted a …

Most space missions rely on solar power, but a few that demand maximum reliability have a thermal nuclear power system. Human spaceflight and colonization efforts will require a lot of power that works no matter the conditions. That’s why NASA has been developing small-scale nuclear fission reactors. The space agency …

A team of entomologists from the Netherlands and Philippines has discovered three new species of aquatic beetles in the remote Maliau Basin, Malaysian Borneo, and named one of them after American actor and producer Leonardo DiCaprio. Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi. Scale bar – 1 mm. Image credit: Hendrik Freitag / Taxon Expeditions. …

Professor Stephen Hawking’s theory about the Big Bang, which he worked on in collaboration with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven’s Professor Thomas Hertog, has been published this week in the Journal of High-Energy Physics (arXiv.org preprint). Professor Stephen Hawking. Modern theories of the Big Bang predict that our local Universe came into …

Dark chocolate consumption improves the ability to see low- and high-contrast targets, possibly owing to increased blood flow, suggests a small new study from the University of the Incarnate Word Rosenberg School of Optometry in San Antonio, Texas. Rabin et al found slight improvement in vision after eating dark chocolate. …