"We cannot speculate on why it has taken so long to get clearance or what the issues are," said Jayant Murthy, a senior Indian astrophysicist and manager of a project dubbed the first-ever space technology collaboration between China and India. It was expected to be the first international payload to go to the China Space […]
Beyond the small mining town of Newman in Western Australia lie the first fairy circles scientists have described outside of Africa. These patches of bare soil dot outback grasslands in almost regular polka-dot patterns, just like the puzzling circle landscapes known from Namibia, says ecologist Stephan Getzin of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research-UFZ in […]
A DNA-damaging protein in typhoid bacteria might keep infected animals alive and provide a safe haven for the microbes. Typhoid toxin, a protein produced by the typhoid fever-causing bacterium Salmonella enterica Typhi, tears DNA molecules apart. But the protein actually prolonged survival and reduced gut inflammation in mice infected with S. enterica, an international team […]
Physicists may soon know if a potential new subatomic particle is something beyond their wildest dreams — or if it exists at all. Hints of the new particle emerged last December at the Large Hadron Collider. Theorists have churned out hundreds of papers attempting to explain the existence of the particle —assuming it’s not a […]
Good gut bacteria might not help people with Crohn’s disease. Protective microbial messages go unread in mice and in human immune cells with certain defective genes, researchers report online May 5 in Science. The findings are the first to tie together the roles of genes and beneficial microbes in the inflammatory bowel disease, says biologist […]
Sure, mosquitoes spread Zika virus. Scientists have already identified the yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) as a major spreader in the Americas of Zika and its risk of birth defects and possible paralysis. But Ae. aegypti may not be the only culprit. Recent evidence raises concerns that a relative, the Asian tiger mosquito (Ae. albopictus), […]
In at least one part of Stone Age Europe, Neandertals were lords of the rings. Humankind’s close evolutionary cousins built large, circular structures out of stalagmites in a French cave around 176,500 years ago, researchers say. Neandertal groups explored the cave’s dark recesses, where they assembled stalagmite pieces into complex configurations, archaeologist Jacques Jaubert of […]
In a feat that demonstrates the feasibility of using satellites to transmit uncrackable quantum messages, scientists have measured the quantum properties of photons sent to space and back again. Physicists beamed the blips of light up to a satellite that reflected them back to Earth. Upon the photons’ return, the team, led by Paolo Villoresi […]
More clues about where to search for a possible ninth planet lurking in the fringes of our solar system are emerging from the Kuiper belt, the icy debris field beyond Neptune. And new calculations suggest that the putative planet might be brighter — and a bit easier to find — than once thought. Evidence for […]
The cradle of agricultural civilization was culturally diverse. Two societies lived side-by-side 10,000 years ago in the rich Near Eastern valleys of the Fertile Crescent, where humans first learned to farm, a new study finds. Over time, one group expanded west, carrying agriculture into Europe. The other spread east, taking their traditions into South Asia, […]