Category: 7. Science

Archaeologists from University College London and elsewhere have examined a molar tooth of a female Bos taurus (cow) discovered at Stonehenge.

In 1924, archaeologists recovered the right mandible of an elderly cow from the bottom of the ditch enclosing Stonehenge Stage 1, constructed in 2995-2900 BCE.

Using isotope analysis of one of its teeth, University College London’s Professor Michael Parker Pearson and his colleagues dated it to between 3350 and 2920 BCE and placed its likely origin in Wales.

“This is yet more fascinating evidence for Stonehenge’s link with south-west Wales, where its bluestones come from,” Professor Parker Pearson said.

“It raises the tantalizing possibility that cattle helped to haul the stones.”

The researchers sliced the cow’s third molar tooth, which records chemical signals from the animal’s second year of life, into nine horizontal sections.

They were then able to measure carbon, oxygen, strontium and lead isotopes, which each offer clues about the cow’s diet, environment and movement.

The different concentrations and varieties of elements embedded within the tooth provided insight into the cow’s life.

The oxygen isotopes revealed that the tooth captured roughly six months of growth, from winter to summer, whilst the carbon isotopes showed the animal’s diet changed with the seasons: woodland fodder in winter and open pasture in summer.

Additionally, the strontium isotopes indicated the seasonal food sources came from different geological areas, suggesting that the cow either moved seasonally or that winter fodder was imported.

The lead isotopes revealed composition spikes during the late winter to spring, pointing to a lead source that was older than the lead in the rest of the tooth.

The composition suggests the cow originated from an area with much older Paleozoic rocks, such as around the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where the Stonehenge’s bluestones originated before being transported to Sailsbury Plain.

“This study has revealed unprecedented details of six months in a cow’s life, providing the first evidence of cattle movement from Wales as well as documenting dietary changes and life events that happened around 5,000 years ago,” said Professor Jane Evans, an archaeologist with the National Environmental Isotope Facility at the British Geological Survey.

“A slice of one cow tooth has told us an extraordinary tale and, as new scientific tools emerge, we hope there is still more to learn from her long journey.”

In addition, the scientists also concluded that the unusual lead signal could not be explained by local contamination or movement alone.

Instead, that lead stored in the cow’s bones had been remobilized during the stresses of pregnancy.

If true, this would mean the cow was female and pregnant or nursing during the tooth’s formation.

To test the hypothesis, the authors applied a peptide-based sex determination technique, which showed there was a high probability that the animal was female.

“This research has provided key new insights into the biography of this enigmatic cow whose remains were deposited in such an important location at a Stonehenge entrance,” said Cardiff University’s Professor Richard Madgwick.

“It provides unparalleled new detail on the distant origins of the animal and the arduous journey it was brought on.”

“So often grand narratives dominate research on major archaeological sites, but this detailed biographical approach on a single animal provides a brand-new facet to the story of Stonehenge.”

The team’s results were published on June 17, 2025 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

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J. Evans et al. 2025. Sequential multi-isotope sampling through a Bos taurus tooth from Stonehenge, to assess comparative sources and incorporation times of strontium and lead. Journal of Archaeological Science 180: 106269; doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2025.106269

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface and has been increasing the acidity of Pacific waters since the beginning of the industrial revolution more than 200 years ago. A new study, led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa oceanographers, revealed that the ocean is acidifying even more rapidly below the surface in the open waters of the North Pacific near Hawaiʻi. Their discovery was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.

“Ocean acidification has far‐reaching consequences for ocean biology and the global climate,” said Lucie Knor, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “We expected some indicators of ocean acidification to be changing more rapidly below the surface, because that was what some global studies have previously discovered, but we were very surprised that this was true for every single ocean acidification indicator.”

Knor and co-authors analyzed a 35‐year record of ocean carbon measurements made by the Hawaiʻi Ocean Time-series program throughout the entire water column—from the surface to nearly 3 miles deep—at the open ocean field site 60 miles north of Oʻahu at Station ALOHA.

They found that in all layers, there are increases of carbon from natural decomposition of sinking organisms. In some layers, accelerated acidification is associated with fresher and colder waters.

“Deeper waters are already naturally quite acidic in the North Pacific, so quickly increasing acidity could negatively impact plankton species and other organisms that live below the surface,” said Knor. “In the long run, these changes in ocean chemistry also make it harder for the ocean to keep taking up more CO_₂ from the atmosphere.”

Concern over heat waves, acidity

In the past decade or so, there has been an onslaught of marine heat waves associated with unusual conditions in the ocean and atmosphere and strong, multi‐year El Niño events. Researchers, fisheries managers, and coral conservationists are concerned with the combined impacts of marine heat waves and ocean acidity events.

Subsurface waters at Station ALOHA are formed farther north in the Pacific. Changes in seawater properties impacted by evolving environmental conditions in other areas of the North Pacific are then transported by ocean currents into the deeper layers of the ocean around Hawaiʻi.

“We illustrate that regional-scale changes in source water chemistry and circulation are substantial drivers of the subsurface intensification of ocean acidification around Hawaiʻi,” said Christopher Sabine, co-author of the article and SOEST oceanography professor.

Currently, the research team is investigating the carbon specifically from human-made sources in the water column at Station ALOHA and how that is changing over time in different layers.

Researchers found that acoustic emission dose-an acoustic signal from microbubbles-could predict how to adjust ultrasound power and open the blood brain barrier for delivering drugs in patients with glioblastoma.

The blood-brain barrier-a feature of blood vessels that protects the brain from harmful substances-is so good at its job that it poses a serious obstacle to treating brain cancer. To deliver therapeutic treatments across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), researchers at Mass General Brigham have been working for decades on a technique known as focused ultrasound, which uses low-power ultrasound technology combined with microbubbles. In a new study, researchers at Mass General Brigham collaborated with colleagues at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) to analyze results from ultrasound treatments delivered to 23 patients. Results published in Device identify a key metric-known as acoustic emission dose-which can predict how well the BBB opened, identifying a sweet spot that the team used for treating patients.

Our study builds on seminal work that began back in the 1990s in the Focused Ultrasound Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital when focused ultrasound combined with microbubbles was first used to open the blood-brain barrier. Our work builds upon these discoveries, translating pre-clinical work into humans, and showing the promise of using this technique in patients with glioblastoma.”

Alexandra J. Golby, MD, senior author of the Departments of Neurosurgery and Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital

The research team analyzed 972 individual applications of focused ultrasound sonications over the course of 58 treatments for the 23 patients. They assessed acoustic emission dose (AED)-acoustic signals from bubbles-which can be adjusted to open the BBB. The team found that the sweet spot for treatment was an AED of 0.5 to 1.6-a window that can be used to reliably open the BBB to deliver treatment directly to a targeted site in the brain, while minimizing damage.

“Acoustic emissions monitoring and acoustic emissions dose offer an opportunity for a unifying concept in focused ultrasound,” said lead author Graeme Woodworth, MD, professor and chair of Neurosurgery at UMSOM and director of the Brain Tumor Treatment and Research Program at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC). “The data and analysis provided in this study serve to advance this methodological paradigm and the focused ultrasound field.”

The team will report separately on the safety and effectiveness of focused-ultrasound treatment in the 23 patients who were a part of the study, but the current work identifies an important therapeutic window for opening the blood-brain barrier for treatment.

“Our study shows that we can successfully and repeatedly open the blood-brain barrier for treatments,” said Golby. “This represents an important advancement for a patient population that often has few treatment options.”

Organoid scaffolds populated with spinal neural progenitor cells result in significant functional recovery in lab rats.

Few injuries can be as devastating as those involving the spinal cord. Despite tens of thousands of persons in the United States alone suffering spinal cord injuries, there is no established procedure for completely reversing the damage and paralysis that can result.

However, thanks to the work of a group of engineers and neuroscientists, there may be a way to address one of the biggest challenges in addressing spinal cord injuries: regrowing nerve fibers. A research team at the University of Minnesota recently published their latest work on combining 3D printing with stem cell biology and lab grown tissues to tackle this issue.

Their approach involves creating a 3D printed framework for lab-grown organs, called an organoid scaffold, with microscopic channels populated with regionally specific spinal neural progenitor cells.

“We use the 3D printed channels of the scaffold to direct the growth of the stem cells, which ensures the new nerve fibers grow in the desired way,” said Guebum Han in a University of Minnesota press release. “This method creates a relay system that when placed in the spinal cord bypasses the damaged area.” Han is a former mechanical engineering postdoctoral researcher and first author on the published research. 

When the researchers transplanted these scaffolds into rats with surgically severed spinal cords, the cells inside them differentiated into neurons and extended their nerve fibers toward the rats’ heads and tails, forming new connections with existing nerves. According to the researchers, these new cells integrated seamlessly into the hosts’ spinal cord tissue over time, resulting in significant functional recoveries.

“Regenerative medicine has brought about a new era in spinal cord injury research,” said Ann Parr, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota in the same release. “Our laboratory is excited to explore the future potential of our ‘mini spinal cords’ for clinical translation.”

The team hopes to scale up production and continue developing this combination of technologies for future clinical applications. The results are published via open access in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

The shimmering northern lights that streak across Alaska’s skies have wilder cousins on Jupiter — they’re bigger, stranger, and now tied to a discovery helping scientists better understand space weather.

These “alien auroras” on our solar system’s largest planet have revealed a previously unknown type of plasma wave, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. The finding could help scientists better understand auroras on other worlds and how magnetic fields shield planets, including Earth, from harmful radiation streaming from their stars.

By Stephen Beech

Robotic space rovers keep getting stuck because the surface of the moon is “fluffier” than on Earth, suggests a new study.

Researchers reckon they’ve finally worked out why the multi-million dollar extraterrestrial vehicles get bogged down in soft sand or gravel on the lunar surface and Mars.

They say it’s because gravity on Earth, where the rovers are tested, pulls down on sand much more strongly than the gravity on the red planet or the moon does.

When a space rover gets stuck in soft sand or gravel – such as the Mars rover Spirit in 2009 — engineers issue a series of commands that move its wheels or reverse its course in a delicate, time-consuming effort to free it and continue its exploratory mission.

While Spirit remained permanently stuck, it is now hoped that better pre-mission terrain testing on Earth could help avert future problems.

Using computer simulations, mechanical engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States uncovered a flaw in how rovers are currently tested on Earth.

They say that error leads to “overly optimistic” conclusions about how rovers will behave once they’re deployed on extraterrestrial missions.

An important element in preparing for these missions is an accurate understanding of how a rover will traverse extraterrestrial surfaces in low gravity to prevent it from getting stuck in soft terrain or rocky areas.

On the moon, the gravitational pull is six times weaker than on Earth.

For decades, researchers testing rovers have accounted for that difference in gravity by creating a prototype that is a sixth of the mass of the actual rover.

They test the lightweight rovers in deserts, observing how it moves across sand to gain insights into how it would perform on the moon.

But it turns out that the standard testing approach “overlooked” a seemingly inconsequential detail: the pull of Earth’s gravity on the desert sand.

Through simulation, Wisconsin–Madison Professor Dan Negrut and his team determined that Earth’s gravity pulls down on sand much more strongly than the gravity on Mars or the moon does.

He explained that, on Earth, sand is more rigid and supportive – reducing the likelihood it will shift under a vehicle’s wheels.

But Negrut says the moon’s surface is “fluffier” and therefore shifts more easily – meaning rovers have less traction, which can hinder their mobility.

He said: “In retrospect, the idea is simple: we need to consider not only the gravitational pull on the rover but also the effect of gravity on the sand to get a better picture of how the rover will perform on the moon.

“Our findings underscore the value of using physics-based simulation to analyse rover mobility on granular soil.”

The researchers’ discovery resulted from their work on a NASA-funded project to simulate the VIPER rover, which had been planned for a lunar mission.

The team utilised Project Chrono, an open-source physics simulation engine developed at UW–Madison in collaboration with scientists from Italy.

The software allows researchers to quickly and accurately model complex mechanical systems – such as full-size rovers operating on “squishy” sand or soil surfaces.

While simulating the VIPER rover, they noticed “discrepancies” between the Earth-based test results and their simulations of the rover’s mobility on the moon.

Digging deeper with Chrono simulations revealed the testing flaw.

The benefits of the research, published in the Journal of Field Robotics, also extend beyond NASA and space travel.

For applications on Earth, Chrono has been used by hundreds of organisations to better understand complex mechanical systems – from precision mechanical watches to US Army trucks and tanks operating in off-road conditions.

Negrut said, “It’s rewarding that our research is highly relevant in helping to solve many real-world engineering challenges.

“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. It’s very difficult as a university lab to put out industrial-strength software that is used by NASA.

“It’s very unusual in academia to produce a software product at this level.

“There are certain types of applications relevant to NASA and planetary exploration where our simulator can solve problems that no other tool can solve, including simulators from huge tech companies, and that’s exciting.”

Negrut says he and his team are focused on continually innovating and enhancing the software to stay relevant.

He added, “All our ideas are in the public domain and the competition can adopt them quickly, which drives us to keep moving forward.

“We have been fortunate over the last decade to receive support from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Research Office and NASA.

“This funding has really made a difference, since we do not charge anyone for the use of our software.”

For years, cosmologists have been struggling with the “Hubble tension,” a disagreement between measurements of the present-day expansion rate of the universe. One promising solution to this predicament is the loss of mass as black holes merge. However, new research suggests this is unlikely to work, so the mystery remains.

In 2022, astronomers began to notice something strange with measurements of the Hubble constant, the unit of measurement used to describe the expansion rate of the universe. Values of the constant derived from observations of the early universe, like the cosmic microwave background, were significantly lower than measurements taken in the nearby, modern-day universe.