Science

A team of professional and amateur archaeologists from the Temple Mount Sifting Project has found a tiny gold bead from the First Temple period in Jerusalem, Israel. The 3,000-year-old gold bead found in Jerusalem, Israel. Image credit: Temple Mount Sifting Project. “Pieces of gold jewelry are rarely found among archaeological …

A giant sauropod dinosaur that lived 85.2 million years ago (Cretaceous period) in what is now Brazil had an aggressive case of osteomyelitis in its leg and soft-bodied parasitical microorganisms in its vascular canals. Life reconstruction of the titanosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Adamantina Formation in São Paulo backcountry, southeastern …

A gene called GATA6 (GATA binding protein 6) regulates aging of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs), according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) age, the transcription factor GATA6 is increasingly produced in the cell to induce aging response; by transcription factor-based cellular reprogramming, …

The active Martian water cycle, i.e., the presence of shallow water and soluble perchlorate salts in the Martian soil, enables the production of hydrogen fuel and life-support oxygen on Mars through electrolysis of perchlorate brines. A team of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis has demonstrated an approach to …

  Humanity launched the first satellite in 1957, and since then we’ve put thousands of objects in orbit with little regard for the future. Along with about 3,000 active satellites, we now have 900,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters. The results could be catastrophic if even a …

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe, a duo of astrophysicists has uncovered intriguing signs of new physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles and fields. As the CMB light (left image) …

Paleontologists in Argentina have identified a new species of eusauropod (true sauropod) dinosaur that lived 179 million years ago, just after the mysterious disappearance of non-eusauropod sauropodomorphs. Life reconstruction of Bagualia alba. Image credit: Jorge González. The newly-identified dinosaur lived in what is now Patagonia, Argentina during the Early Jurassic …

Paleontologists in Madagascar have identified a new genus and species of enantiornithine bird that had a long and deep beak, a morphology that was previously unknown among Mesozoic birds. Falcatakely forsterae amidst non-avian dinosaurs and other animals from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Image credit: Mark Witton. The newly-identified bird …

A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Smithsonian Institution has discovered a dense layer of biogenic high-magnesium calcite in the exoskeletons of major workers of the leaf-cutter ant Acromyrmex echinatior; they’ve also found that this armor accumulates rapidly as ant workers mature and that the biomineral …

For most of their existence, stars are fuelled by the fusion of hydrogen into helium. Fusion proceeds via two processes that are well understood theoretically: the proton-proton (p-p) chain and the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle. Neutrinos that are emitted along such processes in the solar core are the only direct probe …