NASA has released a natural-color image of Saturn from space, the first in which Saturn, its moons and rings, and Earth, Venus and Mars, all are visible. The new panoramic mosaic of the majestic Saturn system taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which shows the view as it would be seen by human eyes, was unveiled at the Newseum in Washington on Tuesday. Cassini’s imaging team processed 141 wide-angle images to create the panorama....
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will sample the ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Wednesday, October 28, when it flies through the moon’s plume of icy spray. Cassini launched in 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Since then, it has been studying the huge planet, its rings and its magnetic field. Here are some things to know about the mission’s upcoming close flyby of Enceladus: Enceladus is an icy moon of Saturn....
Holiday traditions are important for families and children. There are several ways to enjoy holiday traditions and protect your health. Because many generations tend to gather to celebrate holidays, the best way to minimize COVID-19 risk and keep your family and friends safer is to get vaccinated if you’re eligible. Here are safer ways to celebrate the holidays: Generally: Protect those not yet eligible for vaccination such as young children by getting yourself and other eligible people around them vaccinated....
By day, NASA scientists Lawrence Coy and Steven Pawson develop complex data assimilation and reanalysis models of Earth’s atmosphere at Goddard Space Flight Center. But when they need a break, they indulge in an unconventional hobby—searching for ghostly faces swirling in their data. A few of their favorite finds after scouring approximately 40 years of data are shown in the images on this page. They spotted all of these “faces” while examining visualizations of wind and temperature data from a reanalysis called the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2)....
New modeling shows how synonymous mutations — those that change the DNA sequence of a gene but not the sequence of the encoded protein — can still impact protein production and function. A team of researchers led by Penn State chemists modeled how genetic changes that alter the speed of protein synthesis, but not the sequence of amino acids that comprise the protein, can lead to misfolding that changes the protein’s activity level, and then corroborated their models experimentally....
A team of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered a compound that may have been a crucial factor in the origins of life on Earth. The study, reported today in Nature Chemistry, is part of an ongoing effort by scientists around the world to find plausible routes for the epic journey from pre-biological chemistry to cell-based biochemistry. Origins-of-life researchers have hypothesized that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation may have been crucial for the assembly of three key ingredients in early life forms: short strands of nucleotides to store genetic information, short chains of amino acids (peptides) to do the main work of cells, and lipids to form encapsulating structures such as cell walls....
These samples of volcanic rock, which is a type of basalt, are the youngest lunar samples to be directly dated, at around 2 billion years old. Analysis of these basalts reveal how the composition and water content of the Moon changed over time, which may help us to understand the geological and geochemical evolution of the Moon. Their results are presented in three Nature papers on October 19. On 17 December 2020, the Chang’E-5 mission returned around 1....
More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing, and rovering operation as its first mission. Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is “doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do,” while astrophysicist Jonathon McDowell described China’s decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a “very gutsy move.” Where did it land? Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia....
This animation combines a series of views captured with several remote-sensing instruments on Solar Orbiter between May 30 and June 21, 2020, when the spacecraft was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun – closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. The red and yellow images were taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, at wavelengths of 30 and 17 nanometers, respectively....
NASA and DARPA will partner on the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, program. The non-reimbursable agreement designed to benefit both agencies, outlines roles, responsibilities, and processes aimed at speeding up development efforts. “NASA will work with our long-term partner, DARPA, to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology as soon as 2027. With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson....
Rarely do researchers in basic science revisit more than 120-year-old findings that appear to be obsolete. This was even a drive for researchers and phsicians Nikolaos Koutsouleris and Matthias Schroeter. It concerns Emil Kraepelin, who established the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich’s (LMU) mental hospital and the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry (MPI), as well as his 1899 term “dementia praecox.” This was his definition of young individuals who retreat from reality and enter an irreversible, dementia-like condition....
More disturbing, in December the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed the first case of a wild animal infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers found an infected wild mink in Utah near a mink farm with its own COVID-19 outbreak. Are humans transmitting this virus to wildlife? If so, what would this mean for wild animals – and people too? How viruses hop between species We are two scientists who study viruses in wildlife and are currently running a study investigating the potential for SARS-CoV-2 transmission from humans into domestic and wild animals....
In the article entitled “How Common Is Cyberbullying Among Adults? Exploring Gender, Ethnic, and Age Differences in the Prevalence of Cyberbullying” the researchers divided the national sample into age cohorts and compared whether the participants had ever been a target of cyberbullying and whether they had had such an experience within the past month. The study, co-authored by Meng-Jie Wang, MA, Kumar Yogeeswaran, Ph.D., and Nadia Andrews, MS, University of Canterbury (New Zealand), Diala Hawi, Ph....
DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, is an exceptional apparatus designed to improve our understanding of the role of dark energy in the expansion history of the universe; it will do this by measuring the redshifts of more than 30 million galaxies and quasars, with unprecedented precision. The U.S. Department of Energy has announced its approval of Critical Decision 2 (CD–2), authorizing the project’s scientific scope, schedule, and funding profile....
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, presents a new idea of how dark matter was created and how it might be identified during astronomical observations. “The study revealed a new connection between particle physics and astronomy,” says Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in JHU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the study’s author. “If dark matter consists of new particles that were born before the Big Bang, they affect the way galaxies are distributed in the sky in a unique way....
The CDC’s vaccine prioritization strategy performed well compared to other approaches, though with some room for improvement. The four-tiered vaccine prioritization strategy implemented by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), when compared computationally to all possible COVID-19 vaccine roll-out approaches, performed well by many measures but could be improved upon. The results are published this week in a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Md Rafiul Islam and Claus Kadelka of Iowa State University, US, and colleagues....
In order to understand Earth’s earliest history—its formation from Solar System material into the present-day layering of metal core and mantle, and crust—scientists look to meteorites. New research from a team including Carnegie’s Doug Rumble and Liping Qin focuses on one particularly old type of meteorite called diogenites. These samples were examined using an array of techniques, including precise analysis of certain elements for important clues to some of the Solar System’s earliest chemical processing....
Scientists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) have been monitoring air pollution over Europe in the past months using data from the Tropomi instrument from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. The new images show the nitrogen dioxide concentrations from March 13 until April 13, 2020, compared to the March-April averaged concentrations from 2019. Madrid, Milan, and Rome saw decreases of around 45%, while Paris saw a dramatic drop of 54% – coinciding with the strict quarantine measures implemented across Europe....
“Fetal MRI is a highly specialized and safe examination method that allows us to make accurate statements about brain maturation prenatally,” said Gregor Kasprian, M.D., senior study author. He is an associate professor of radiology from the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy of the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are a range of conditions that can affect the fetus if alcohol is consumed while pregnant....
The most dynamic, fragile, and attractive part of the coastal zone is characterized by the aeolian coastal dune landscapes, which extend over a 200 km² (77 mi²) area in Estonia. Their formation is mostly determined by climate, sediments, and vegetation, which affect the movement of sand and the formation of dunes. The author of the dissertation focused her investigation on three regions of Western Estonia: the Tahkuna peninsula on Hiiumaa, the Keibu Bay area, and Ruhnu Island....
