Category: 7. Science

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Over the decades, astronomers have faced the increasingly tough problem of satellites appearing in their view of the universe. The rapid growth of Starlink, SpaceX’s web-from-space system, isn’t just impacting countless pictures using visible light but also those in other parts of the spectrum. A recent study of 76 million images shows that the satellites are affecting the work of radio astronomers, even at frequencies that the satellites don’t transmit at.

Take a photograph of the night sky, far away from any urban lights, and you stand a good chance of capturing the telltale streak of a satellite passing overhead. For any ground-based telescope capturing the faint photons of visible light from distant stars, it’s an unavoidable problem because the satellites will always reflect the Sun’s light.

When it comes to observing space in the radio spectrum, though, it should be far less of a problem because satellite companies are forbidden to transmit in specific frequency windows. However, a study by Curtin University in Australia (via Space) shows that SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are “significantly interfering with radio astronomy observations, potentially impacting discovery and research”.

Over four months, the research team amassed a total of 76 million radio wave images from a prototype section of the Square Kilometre Array observatory and upon analysis of the data, discovered that “[i]n some datasets … up to 30 per cent of our images showed interference from a Starlink satellite.”

To make matters worse, the Starlink satellites were emitting signals in radio bands that they shouldn’t be. “Some satellites were detected emitting in bands where no signals are supposed to be present at all, such as the 703 satellites we identified at 150.8 MHz, which is meant to be protected for radio astronomy,” said study lead Dylan Grigg.

“Because they may come from components like onboard electronics and they’re not part of an intentional signal, astronomers can’t easily predict them or filter them out.”

Professor Steven Tingay, a co-author of the research paper, points out that SpaceX isn’t doing anything nefarious or the like. “It is important to note that Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong. Discussions we have had with SpaceX on the topic have been constructive.”

Starlink isn’t the only satellite-based internet service provider, nor is it the only satellite company routinely launching new devices into low Earth orbit, but few companies (if any) are launching on the same scale as SpaceX. Grigg notes that during the study period, a total of 477 Starlink satellites were sent into orbit, and another study has shown that the newest Starlink models create 32 times more radio interference than previous designs.

The number of electronic devices whizzing around our planet, transmitting within the permitted windows of the radio spectrum, is well over 10,000, and a significant portion of them are almost certainly going to be unintentionally emitting signals outside of the regulated zones.

As Professor Tingay says, “current International Telecommunication Union regulations focus on intentional transmissions and do not cover this type of unintended emission. We hope this study adds support for international efforts to update policies that regulate the impact of this technology on radio astronomy research, that are currently underway.”

Future launches may well have structures in place to greatly minimise, or even remove, the problem, but the thousands of satellites already in orbit will continue to be a problem for radio astronomers. The incredible benefits of space-based internet and global communications are plain for all to see, though too much so in the field of space research.

In 2021, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab successfully launched the first powered flight on another planet with the Ingenuity drone helicopter, co-developed with AeroVironment, Inc. Now, the two are proposing to do it again, with one big change: They want to launch not one, but six new helicopters, and what’s more, they want to launch them as they’re descending from Mars orbit. Why bother with this pesky “ground” you speak of? Much cheaper to lift off when you’re already in the air.

The mission is called Skyfall, which I guess no one told them was also the name of a James Bond movie. The idea is for a capsule to drop down towards the Martian surface, open up before it impacts, and out will fly the six helicopters. Each drone will then fly a different route, using cameras and radar to scan what’s underneath the surface. This will hopefully detect water, ice, or other resources that would make for a good landing site for an eventual manned mission to the red planet.

It’s even possible that this process could “advance the nation’s quest to discover whether Mars was ever habitable.” Could a robot helicopter dropped from space find aliens on another planet? Probably not, but also, please yes.

Read more: Here’s Every Car Company Volkswagen Owns Right Now

The Importance Of Ingenuity

When it first lifted off from Martian soil, Ingenuity only hoped to traverse 980 feet over the span of a few weeks. Instead, the plucky American aviator covered 10.5 miles over three years. It did finally crash in January 2024, during which it suffered rotor damage too severe to ever get it to fly again. While the cause of the crash remains unknown (kind of hard to do an investigation on Mars), Ingenuity soldiers on, dutifully serving as a static weather station now.

I’d say that was a pretty successful mission, all things considered. Clearly NASA agrees, since the Skyfall mission is effectively a major expansion of Ingenuity; the new helicopter drones will be upgraded versions of that design, made by the same public-private partners, JPL and AeroVision respectively.

Exactly how public vs how private may be shifting, however. AeroVision says that it will be taking on some of the work that JPL originally did “commercializing” Mars drones this time around. That sounds in line with the Trump administration’s push to move traditionally government-run operations, like retrieving astronauts, to corporations instead. NASA is also under threat of crippling proposed budget cuts, so it might not even be able to do the work it used to do.

I, for one, think the Martian aliens will welcome their new American corporate overlords. Either way, Skyfall won’t be lifting off of Earth’s soil until at least 2028. If all goes well, air traffic will be getting pretty thick underneath red skies by the end of the decade.

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Upon re-examining the cranial musculature of the African coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the authors discovered that only 13% of the previously identified evolutionary muscle novelties for the largest vertebrate lineages were accurate. The study also identified nine new evolutionary transformations related to innovations in feeding and respiration in these groups.

“Ultimately, it’s even more similar to cartilaginous fish [sharks, rays, and chimaeras] and tetrapods [birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles] than previously thought. And even more distinct from ray-finned fish, which make up about half of living vertebrates,” says Aléssio Datovo, a professor at the Museum of Zoology (MZ) at USP supported by FAPESP, who led the study.

Among the evolutionary novelties erroneously identified as present in coelacanths are muscles responsible for actively expanding the buccopharyngeal cavity, which extends from the mouth to the pharynx. This set of muscles is directly related to food capture and respiration. However, the study showed that these supposed muscles in coelacanths were actually ligaments, which are structures incapable of contraction.

Ray-finned fish (actinopterygii) and lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygii) diverged from a common ancestor approximately 420 million years ago. The sarcopterygii include fish such as coelacanths and lungfish, as well as all other tetrapods, because they evolved from an aquatic ancestor. These include mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

In ray-finned fish, such as aquarium carp, it is easy to see how the mouth moves to suck in food. This ability gave actinopterygii a significant evolutionary advantage; today, they comprise about half of all living vertebrates.

This is a fundamental difference from other fish, such as coelacanths and sharks, which primarily feed by biting their prey.

“In previous studies, it was assumed that this set of muscles that would give greater suction capacity was also present in coelacanths and, therefore, would have evolved in the common ancestor of bony vertebrates, which we now show isn’t true. This only appeared at least 30 million years later, in the common ancestor of living ray-finned fish,” points out Datovo.

Behind the scenes

Coelacanths are extremely rare fish that live about 300 meters below the surface of the water and spend their days in underwater caves.

One reason they have changed so little since the extinction of the dinosaurs is that they have few predators and live in a relatively protected environment. This has resulted in slow changes to their genome, as shown by a 2013 study published in the journal Nature.

Coelacanths were first known only from fossils from about 400 million years ago. It was not until 1938 that a living animal was discovered, much to the astonishment of scientists. In 1999, another species (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in Asian waters.

Due to the rarity of specimens in museums, researchers from USP and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History had to persevere to find an institution willing to lend animals for dissection.

The Field Museum in Chicago and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, both in the United States, finally agreed to lend one specimen each. According to Datovo, G. David Johnson, co-author of the article, deserves credit for obtaining the loan.

Johnson, born in 1945, was “probably the greatest fish anatomist of his time,” according to Datovo. He died in November 2024 after a domestic accident while the study was under review.

Contribution

“Contrary to what it may seem, dissecting a specimen does not mean destroying it as long as it’s done properly,” says Datovo.

The researcher, who has been conducting this type of study for over 20 years, spent six months separating all the muscles and skull bones of the coelacanth. These structures are now preserved and can be studied individually by other scientists, eliminating the need to dissect a new animal.

Seeing each muscle and nerve firsthand allowed the authors to identify what was actually in the coelacanth’s head with certainty, point out previously undescribed structures, and correct errors that had been repeated in the scientific literature for over 70 years.

“There were many contradictions in the literature. When we finally got to examine the specimens, we detected more errors than we’d imagined. For example, 11 structures described as muscles were actually ligaments or other types of connective tissue. This has a drastic consequence for the functioning of the mouth and breathing, because muscles perform movement, while ligaments only transmit it,” he explains.

Due to the position of coelacanths in the vertebrate tree of life, the discovery impacts our understanding of cranial evolution in all other large vertebrate groups.

With this information, the researcher used three-dimensional microtomography images of the skulls of other groups of fish, both extinct and living. These images are made available by other researchers who study fish anatomy when they perform 3D scans.

From images of the skull bones of other fish from completely extinct lineages, Datovo and Johnson were able to infer where the muscles found in coelacanths would fit, elucidating the evolution of these muscles in the first jawed vertebrates. In future work, Datovo intends to analyze similarities with the muscles of tetrapods, such as amphibians and reptiles.

Scientists studying a hard-to-treat form of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have found that a type of treatment – immunotherapy – may help change the environment where cancer cells live, possibly helping the immune system respond more effectively.

In a new study published in July in Science Advances, a team of researchers – including scientists with Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C. – examined bone marrow samples from adult patients with relapsed or refractory AML, a serious and often aggressive form of the disease that is difficult to treat and associated with poor outcomes.

In these patients, the cancer had either returned or failed to respond to earlier treatment. 

The subjects in the study were treated with two drugs: pembrolizumab, which helps the immune system attack cancer cells, and decitabine, which affects how certain genes are switched on or off. 

While the treatment didn’t work for everyone, some patients showed signs that immune cells were mobilizing in the bone marrow – and researchers wanted to understand why.

To explore this, a large team of scientists from multiple institutions used high-powered tools to examine the patients’ bone marrow, including an analytical technique called single-cell spatial transcriptomics to understand where and how genes were active in the bone marrow. 

This method, combined with advanced computer analysis, can examine individual cells in a biopsy sample and identify which RNA molecules are present in each cell, while keeping track of exactly where each cell is located. 

This gave researchers a much clearer picture of how the immune system was responding to treatment and how it was interacting with leukemia cells. With this approach, the team found that certain immune cells moved closer to leukemia cells after treatment for some patients. 

This change in cellular neighborhoods could reflect an immune system trying to fight back. The researchers also noticed changes in how cells were communicating – possibly a clue about how the treatment affects cancer’s ability to hide from the immune system.

“Our findings show how immunotherapy may shift the types of cells found in the neighborhood around leukemia cells,” said Gege Gui, the study’s first author and a research scientist with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C., who was also a doctoral student with the Johns Hopkins University when the research was conducted. 

“That gives us clues about how the immune system and cancer interact – and how we might help patients by advancing our understanding of underlying biological mechanisms.”

Christopher Hourigan, director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C. and one of the senior authors of this work, said this kind of detailed, cell-by-cell analysis can reveal patterns that aren’t visible through traditional methods.

I am impressed by the potential of the careful work Dr. Gui has done integrating powerful computational approaches with these novel genomic tools.Too often cancer therapy doesn’t work as well as we would like for patients with AML, but research like this is getting us to a stage where we can start understanding why that may be so that we can hopefully design better treatments in the future.”

Christopher Hourigan, Director,  Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center

Hourigan, a professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, is an oncologist and physician-scientist who focuses on research in translational medicine and precision oncology. Laura Dillon, a research associate professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C. also contributed to this work.

The study was a collaborative effort across several major research centers. 

Corresponding authors, Kasper Hansen, from Johns Hopkins University, contributed expertise in statistical genomics and computational analysis of high-throughput genomic data; Chen Zhao, from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, provided insights into tumor immunology and advanced tissue imaging techniques, including spatial transcriptomics.

Scientists have discovered that jewel wasps can slow down their biological rate of ageing.

A study of jewel wasps, known for their distinctive metallic colours, has shown that they can undergo a kind of natural ‘time-out’ as larvae before emerging into adulthood with this surprising advantage.

The groundbreaking study by scientists at the University of Leicester, has now been published in the journal, PNAS . It reveals that this pause in development within the wasp dramatically extends lifespan and decelerates the ticking of the so-called “epigenetic clock” that marks molecular ageing.

Ageing isn’t just about counting birthdays, it’s also a biological process that leaves molecular fingerprints on our DNA. One of the most accurate markers of this process is the epigenetic clock, which tracks chemical changes in DNA, known as methylation, that accumulate with age. But what happens if we alter the course of development itself?

To find out, a team at the University of Leicester including first author PhD student Erin Foley, Dr Christian Thomas, Professor Charalambos Kyriacou, and Professor Eamonn Mallon, from the department of Genetics, Genomics and Cancer Sciences , turned to Nasonia Vitripennis, also known as the jewel wasp.

This tiny insect is becoming a powerful model for ageing research because, unlike many other invertebrates, it has a functioning DNA methylation system, just like humans, and a short lifespan that makes it ideal to study.

The researchers exposed jewel wasp mothers to cold and darkness, triggering a hibernation-like state in their babies called diapause. This natural “pause button” extended the offsprings’ adult lifespan by over a third. Even more remarkably, the wasps that had gone through diapause aged 29% more slowly at the molecular level than their counterparts. Their epigenetic clocks ticked more leisurely, offering the first direct evidence that the pace of biological ageing can be developmentally tuned in an invertebrate.

“It’s like the wasps who took a break early in life came back with extra time in the bank,” said Evolutionary Biology Professor Eamonn Mallon, senior author on the study.

“It shows that ageing isn’t set in stone, it can be slowed by the environment, even before adulthood begins.”

While some animals can slow ageing in dormant states, this study is the first to show that the benefits can persist after development resumes. What’s more, the molecular slowdown wasn’t just a random effect, it was linked to changes in key biological pathways that are conserved across species, including those involved in insulin and nutrient sensing. These same pathways are being targeted by anti-ageing interventions in humans.

What makes this study novel and surprising is that it demonstrates a long-lasting, environmentally triggered slowdown of ageing in a system that’s both simple and relevant to human biology. It offers compelling evidence that early life events can leave lasting marks not just on health, but on the pace of biological ageing itself.

Professor Mallon added: “Understanding how and why ageing happens is a major scientific challenge. This study opens up new avenues for research, not just into the biology of wasps, but into the broader question of whether we might one day design interventions to slow ageing at its molecular roots. With its genetic tools, measurable ageing markers, and clear link between development and lifespan, Nasonia vitripennis is now a rising star in ageing research.

“In short, this tiny wasp may hold big answers to how we can press pause on ageing.”

Funding for the study was provided by The Leverhulme Trust and The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

A team led by Yingjie Zhang, a professor of materials science and engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has completed the first investigation into a widely acknowledged but often overlooked aspect of electrochemical cells: the nonuniformity of the liquid at the solid-liquid interfaces in the cells. As the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, microscopic imaging revealed that these interfacial structures, called electrical double layers (EDLs), tend to organize into specific configurations in response to chemical deposition on the surface of the solid.

“There’s a tendency to think of electrochemical cells just for their technological utility as batteries, but there is still plenty of science to do on them that will inform the technological applications,” said Qian Ai, a graduate student in Zhang’s research group and the study’s lead author. “In our work, we carefully examined EDLs with 3D atomic force microscopy, a technique designed to sense small forces. We observed the molecular structure of inhomogeneous EDLs surrounding surface clusters for the first time.”

Electrochemical cells take advantage of mobile charges inside liquid electrolytes to maintain an electrical imbalance that gives rise to a voltage difference between two terminals. The earliest investigations of these systems over 100 years ago revealed the existence of EDLs at the interface between the liquid electrolyte and solid conductor mediating the voltage difference. They consist of electrolytes self-organized into nanometer-thick layers at the interface.

Past work has shown that solid-liquid interfaces in batteries are heterogeneous, exhibiting spatially varying chemical compositions and morphologies, sometimes forming surface clusters. However, these attempts to study and model electrochemical cells focused only on model systems with flat and uniform surfaces. The result is a knowledge gap that impedes our understanding of electrochemical cells and battery technology.

To investigate the heterogeneous interfaces, the team used 3D atomic force microscopy, a technique designed to sense small forces. This method allowed them to correlate the inhomogeneity in EDLs with the surface clusters, structures that nucleate at the initial stages of battery charging. Based on the data, the researchers proposed three primary responses in the EDLs: “bending,” in which the layers appear to curve around the cluster; “breaking,” in which parts of the layers detach to form new intermediate layers; and “reconnecting,” in which the EDL layer above the cluster connects to a nearby layer with an offset in the layer number.

“These three patterns are quite universal,” Ai said. “Those structures are mainly due to the finite size of the liquid molecules, not their specific chemistry. We should be able to predict the liquid structure based on the solid’s surface morphology for other systems.”

Going forward, the researchers look forward to expanding their findings.

“This is groundbreaking,” Zhang said. “We have resolved the EDLs in realistic, heterogeneous electrochemical systems, which is a holy grain in electrochemistry. Besides the practical implications in technology, we are starting to develop new chapters in electrochemistry textbooks.”

Lalith Bonagiri, Kaustubh Panse, Jaehyeon Kim and Shan Zhou also contributed to this work.

Support was provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Yingjie Zhang is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is a faculty affiliate of the Materials Research Laboratory and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

NASA astronaut and microbiologist Kate Rubins retired Monday after 16 years with the agency. During her time with NASA, Rubins completed two long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station, logging 300 days in space and conducting four spacewalks.
 
“I want to extend my sincere gratitude to Kate for her dedication to the advancement of human spaceflight,” said Steve Koerner, acting director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “She is leaving behind a legacy of excellence and inspiration, not only to our agency, but to the research and medical communities as well. Congratulations, Kate, on an extraordinary career.”
 
Rubins’ first mission to the orbiting laboratory began in July 2016, aboard the first test flight of the new Soyuz MS spacecraft. As part of Expedition 48/49, she contributed to more than 275 scientific experiments, including molecular and cellular biology research, and she was the first person to sequence DNA in space. Her work enabled significant advances with in-flight molecular diagnostics, long-duration cell culture, and the development of molecular biology tools and processes, such as handling and transferring small amounts of liquids in microgravity. Rubins also led the integration and deployment of biomedical hardware aboard the space station, supporting crew health and scientific research in space and on Earth.
 
She again launched in October 2020, aboard a Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, taking part in Expedition 63/64. Alongside her crewmates, Rubins spent hundreds of hours working on new experiments and furthering research investigations conducted during her mission, including heart research and multiple microbiology studies. She also advanced her work on DNA sequencing in space, which could allow future astronauts to diagnose illness or identify microbes growing aboard the station or during future exploration missions.
 
“From her groundbreaking work in space to her leadership on the ground, Kate has brought passion and excellence to everything she’s done,” said Joe Acaba, chief of the Astronaut Office at NASA Johnson. “She’s been an incredible teammate and role model. We will miss her deeply, but her impact will continue to inspire.”
 
In addition to her flight assignments, Rubins served as acting deputy director of NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate, where she helped guide strategy for crew health and biomedical research. More recently, she contributed to developing next-generation lunar spacesuits, helping prepare for future Artemis missions to the Moon.
 
 
Before her selection as an astronaut in 2009, Rubins received a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University Medical School’s Biochemistry Department and Microbiology and Immunology Department. After returning from her second space mission, Rubins commissioned as a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, serving as a microbiologist in the Medical Service Corps. She currently holds the role of innovation officer with the 75th U.S. Army Reserve Innovation Command’s MedBio Detachment, headquartered in Boston. 

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Raegan Scharfetter

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-910-4989

raegan.r.scharfetter@nasa.gov

Baryons are subatomic particles made up of an odd number of quarks. Protons and neutrons found at the center of atoms are a type of baryon, but there is a whole menagerie of other baryons made of rarer and more unstable quarks. Because of that, these baryons decay into other particles, and the rarest known decay of all was the Σ⁺ turning into a proton, a muon, and an antimuon.

Researchers with the LHCb experiment, one of the four main experiments running on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, have studied this decay. Out of 100 trillion Σ⁺ particles produced in the collisions from the experiment, the team found around 237 events consistent with this decay.

“This is the rarest baryon decay ever observed so far,” Gabriele Martelli, a member of the LHCb collaboration, told IFLScience.  

This decay happens only once every 100 million Σ⁺ particles produced in the lab. Its first discovery at Fermilab was quite a shock because it looked like the decay was undergoing something peculiar. They had three clear signals that the decay was happening, but it appeared that the Σ⁺ particles were decaying into a proton and an unknown particle, before the particle decayed into a muon, a heavy cousin of the electron, and an antimuon.

“That was certainly not foreseen by anyone at that time. After that experiment, there were dozens of theories proposed to explain this new particle. It was also searched in other experiments in different modes. But there was no other experiment before the LHCb that could really search for the Σ⁺ decay to confirm it,” Francesco Dettori, also a member of the LHCb collaboration, told IFLScience.

The unknown particle was a prime place to look for physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, which is the crucial theory of how reality works at the smallest scale. The LHCb data instead show that the three offspring particles form together, without the need for anything special before.

“It really seems that everything is in agreement, unfortunately if you want, with the current understanding of particle physics, which we call the standard model,” Dr Dettori continued.

LHCb was not exactly designed to study this decay; it is an experiment studying the processes that might have led to matter being more abundant than antimatter. However, some of the properties made the experiment well suited to capture details of this process among the background data, especially due to the particle being a little bit more stable than many other processes.

“The Σ⁺ can live a little bit longer, so it can fly for some meters. And after these meters, the sigma actually decays rapidly into a proton and a couple of muons,” Dr Martelli explained.

“It has a lower momentum compared to the particle that we typically study, so it was actually a background for our experiment. But since we were able to record it anyway, at the end of the day, after the run was taken, we looked back at the data and we could do this analysis. I think this demonstrates that there is room to study very, very rare processes,” Dr Dettori added.

The research, supported by the Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, shows that even an experiment with a clear mission in particle physics can often find something unplanned. This was also demonstrated by a dark matter detector spotting an incredibly rare atomic decay, dubbed the rarest event ever recorded.

The study has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. 

Mitochondria have primarily been known as the energy-producing components of cells. But scientists are increasingly discovering that these small organelles do much more than just power cells. They are also involved in immune functions such as controlling inflammation, regulating cell death and responding to infections.

Research from my colleagues and I revealed that mitochondria play another key role in your immune response: sensing bacterial activity and helping neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, trap and kill them.