Science

SpaceX is usually hyped to tell us all about the payload it’s sending to orbit, but this time it doesn’t have as much to say. The company has just completed its first launch for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which is part of the Department of Defense. The NRO is …

Scientists working in Tanzania have discovered and named two new species of the mole-rat genus Fukomys. The research was published in the journal PeerJ. The Hanang mole-rat (Fukomys hanangensis). Image credit: Chris Faulkes. African mole-rats of the family Bathyergidae are burrowing rodents that occur throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with much of …

An international team of researchers from the United States and Italy has identified new genetic variants associated with extreme survival and reduced risks for cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s diseases. Schematic of the analyses conducted to discover longevity associated variants (LAV), LAV with significant joint effect on extreme longevity (jLAV), and LAV …

Genetic material from 161 modern breeds helped a team of researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health assemble the most comprehensive evolutionary tree of dogs. The results are published in the journal Cell Reports. Representatives from each of the 23 clades of …

NASA finally unfurled the James Webb Space Telescope! The JWST has been undergoing acoustic and vibration testing for months, but it’s been fully opened because now it’s time for the next phase of testing. That will take place at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. There, mission techs and …

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been observing Saturn since 2004, but mission control has been careful not to get too close to the ringed planet for fear of damaging the probe. Now, Cassini is nearly out of fuel, and it’s time to take some risks. Cassini began altering its trajectory early …

Paleontologists have uncovered a fossil species — named Tokummia katalepsis — that sheds light on the origin of Mandibulata (mandibulates), the most diverse and abundant group of animals, to which belong flies, ants, crayfish and centipedes. Reconstruction of Tokummia katalepsis. Image credit: Lars Fields. Tokummia katalepsis — a large bivalved …

New research led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) shows that Pleistocene cave sediments represent a rich source of ancient DNA that often includes traces of hominin DNA, even at sites where no hominin remains have been discovered. Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. …

Amphibian skin is an interesting thing, between the chemicals secreted by the animals themselves and the microbes that thrive on their skin. Poison dart frogs, those neon cuties of the rainforest, are thusly named because their skins secrete a chemical so poisonous that the indigenous people of the Amazon hunt …

When it comes to applied material science, it’s hard to beat NASA. Their solid-state wizards have been working on multiple ambitious projects, including silicon dioxide wafers and about a dozen kinds of ceramic composites. Now some folks at the JPL have debuted a new kind of engineered metallic fabric that …