Blog

The recent discovery of evidence of a giant planet lurking in the outskirts of the solar system made by Caltech astronomers, has re-ignited the discussion about the existence of planets beyond Neptune. We could be really on the verge of confirming the presence of a hypothetical ‘Planet Nine’ and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, our messenger to Pluto and trans Neptunian objects might have the final word in this debate.

Two years ago, Ellen Martinsen, was collecting mosquitoes at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, looking for malaria that might infect birds—when she discovered something strange: a DNA profile, from parasites in the mosquitoes, that she couldn’t identify.

A first-ever interlaboratory study of four versions of a therapeutic protein drug—all manufactured from living cells—reports that an established analytical tool akin to magnetic resonance imaging reliably assessed the atomic structures of the biologically similar products, yielding the equivalent of a fingerprint for each.

Stars are born inside a rotating cloud of interstellar gas and dust, which contracts to stellar densities thanks to its own gravity. Before finding itself on the star, however, most of the cloud lands onto a circumstellar disk forming around the star owing to conservation of angular momentum.The manner in which the material is transported through the disk onto the star, causing the star to grow in mass, has recently become a major research topic in astrophysics.

Actress Patricia Arquette’s comments at the 2015 Oscars award night drew criticism for implicitly framing gender equality as an issue for straight white women. She insisted that, “It’s time for all the women in America and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

A new study has mapped food specialization in hummingbird communities across the Americas, leading to a rare documentation of a large scale ecological pattern. It reveals that communities with high levels of food specializations coincide with a high number of smaller-ranged species.

Not only is Greenland’s melting ice sheet adding huge amounts of water to the oceans, it could also be unleashing 400,000 metric tons of phosphorus every year – as much as the mighty Mississippi River releases into the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study. Phosphorus is a key nutrient that could, if it reaches the open ocean, enrich waters of the Arctic Ocean, potentially stimulating growth of the marine food chain, the study’s authors said.

Conservation efforts are designed to restrict activities in protected areas, but the restrictions can have unintended consequences. A University of Illinois researcher examined the results of a multi-million dollar European Union aid project in West Africa and found that a country’s national governance quality can affect the livelihoods of families who rely on resources from national parks and other protected areas.

(Phys.org)—A team of undergraduates from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at the College of Engineering in Trivandrum, India, has designed and constructed a portable college-level radio telescope for amateur radio astronomers. The students have developed a radio telescope and also data analysis tools that are affordable for schools and colleges, combining low cost and ubiquitous accessibility of resources needed to build these instruments.

The native ferns that form a lush green understory in coastal redwood forests are well adapted to dry summers and periodic droughts, but California’s current prolonged drought has taken a toll on them. A comprehensive study of water relations in native ferns, conducted during one of the worst droughts in California’s recent history, shows that extreme conditions have tested the limits of drought tolerance in these plants.