108 articles from FRIDAY 4.10.2019

Sun science has a bright future on the moon

There are many reasons NASA is pursuing the Artemis mission to land astronauts on the moon by 2024: It's a crucial way to study the moon itself and to pave a safe path to Mars. But it's also a great place to learn more about protecting Earth, which is just one part of the larger Sun-Earth system.

Scientists find way to quantify how well cutting-edge microscopy technique works

In 2017, Salk scientists reported that tilting a frozen protein sample as it sat under an electron microscope was an effective approach to acquiring better information about its structure and helping researchers understand a host of diseases ranging from HIV to cancer. Now, they have developed a mathematical framework that underlies some of those initial observations.

Molecular hydrogen becomes semimetallic at pressures above 350 GPa

According to condensed matter physics predictions, at a high enough pressure, hydrogen should dissociate and transform into an atomic metal. However, the exact pressure range at which this occurs has not yet been ascertained, and the process through which hydrogen becomes a metal is still somewhat unclear.

New research into Tasmanian Aboriginal history will help care for the land

American farmer and poet Wendell Berry said of the first Europeans in North America that they came with vision, but not with sight. They came with vision of former places but not the sight to see what was before them. Instead of adapting their vision to suit the place, they changed the landscape to fit their vision.

A Dusty Lab in the Sky

Portal origin URL: A Dusty Lab in the SkyPortal origin nid: 452867Published: Friday, October 4, 2019 - 09:29Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: The DUST sounding rocket will fly into space to make dust in a rocket-borne lab. Measuring the dust grains as they grow and aggregate, the team will study how nanoscale structures affect the fates of stars and...

The mass inflow and outflow rates of the Milky Way

According to the most widely accepted cosmological models, the first galaxies began to form between 13 and 14 billion years ago. Over the course of the next billion years, the cosmic structures now observed first emerged. These include things like galaxy clusters, superclusters and filaments, but also galactic features like globular clusters, galactic bulges, and supermassive black holes (SMBHs).

Hurricane Sandy may have worsened gentrification in Brooklyn and Queens

In New York City alone, Superstorm Sandy killed 44 people, flooded 17 percent of the city's land, uprooted trees, collapsed houses, ran ships aground, deluged subway stations, and blew up power lines. And the impact it has had on the city's housing may go beyond the $19 billion in property damage it caused; the 2012 storm may have exacerbated gentrification's potency in some of the neighborhoods...

Triggering morel fruiting

Morels are economically, culturally, and ecologically important fungi, widely prized as a culinary delicacy, but also because they influence geochemical cycling in forest ecosystems. By deciphering the fruiting-related decomposition mechanisms of morel with multi-omic approaches, the results revealed a striking capability of morel mycelium to acquire carbon from lignocellulosic-abundant matters...

Ocean-Monitoring Satellite Mission Ends After 11 Successful Years

Portal origin URL: Ocean-Monitoring Satellite Mission Ends After 11 Successful YearsPortal origin nid: 452879Published: Friday, October 4, 2019 - 09:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: The Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM), the third in a U.S.-European series of satellite missions designed to measure sea surface height, successfully ended...

Scientists create brain-mimicking environment to grow 3D tissue models of brain tumors

Researchers have developed 3-dimensional human tissue culture models of pediatric and adult brain cancers in a brain-mimicking microenvironment, that includes brain-derived extracellular matrix (ECM) -- the complex network of proteins and amino acids with bound sugars that not only provides support for surrounding neural tissue, but also helps to guide cell growth and development. The development...

Scientists ID new targets to treat fibrosis, a feature of many chronic diseases

When it comes to repairing injured tissue, specialized cells in the body known as fibroblasts are called into action. Fibroblasts give rise to healing cells called myofibroblasts, which generally is good in the short term -- but bad when myofibroblast activation gets out of hand. Now, researchers show how fibroblast activation and myofibroblast formation occurs, providing clues for how to target...

A new way to corrosion-proof thin atomic sheets

A variety of two-dimensional materials that have promising properties for optical, electronic, or optoelectronic applications have been held back by the fact that they quickly degrade when exposed to oxygen and water vapor. The protective coatings developed thus far have proven to be expensive and toxic, and cannot be taken off.

Artificial gut aims to expose the elusive microbiome

The microbiome is a collection of trillions of bacteria that reside in and on our bodies. Each person's microbiome is unique—just like a fingerprint—and researchers are finding more and more ways in which it impacts our health and daily lives. One example involves an apparent link between the brain and the bacteria in the gut. This brain-gut "axis" is believed to influence conditions such as...