COVER STORIES
Category Archives: Research
Science: Galaxies Without Dark Matter, High Helium Levels, Solar Energy Jump
Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the Universe, and is thought to be needed for galaxies to form. But four years ago, astronomers made a perplexing, and controversial discovery: two galaxies seemingly devoid of dark matter.
This week the team suggests that a cosmic collision may explain how these, and a string of other dark-matter-free galaxies, could have formed.
Research article: van Dokkum et al
News and Views: Giant collision created galaxies devoid of dark matter
08:39 Research Highlights
How fossil fuel burning has caused levels of helium to rise, and a high-efficiency, hybrid solar-energy system.
Research Highlight: Helium levels in the atmosphere are ballooning
Research Highlight: Flower power: ‘Sunflower’ system churns out useful energy
10:49 Researchers experiences of the war in Ukraine
We hear the stories of scientists whose lives have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including researchers who have become refugees, soldiers and activists in the face of a horrifying conflict.
Nature Feature: How three Ukrainian scientists are surviving Russia’s brutal war
20:46 Imaging the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
Last week, a team of researchers released an image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive blackhole at the centre of our galaxy. We hear how they took the image and what it is revealing about these enormous objects.
Nature News: Black hole at the centre of our Galaxy imaged for the first time
Brain Health: The Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting
Although intermittent fasting is most widely known as a weight-loss strategy, emerging research suggests that it could have benefits for brain health and cognition. But does it actually work, are there any drawbacks and how long would you have to fast to see benefits? WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down what’s known and what’s not about the neuroscience of intermittent fasting.
Timeline: 0:00 Could intermittent fasting help our brains work better and longer? 0:31 How long would you have to fast to see any potential cognitive benefits? 1:04 How intermittent fasting could affect your ability to focus 2:27 Potential mood-related benefits of intermittent fasting 2:48 How intermittent fasting can affect brain health 4:03 Potential drawbacks of intermittent fasting
Cover Preview: Science Magazine – May 13, 2022
A survey of cell types across tissues as part of the Human Cell Atlas, mapped with single-cell transcriptomics in three papers in this issue, lays the foundation for understanding how cellular composition and gene expression vary across the human body in health, and for understanding how genes act in disease.
Nutrigenomics: How Diet Can Reprogram Our DNA
The burgeoning field of “nutrigenomics” claims that the food we eat can alter our genetics. Dietitians, scientists and lifestyle companies have all hopped on the bandwagon.
Nutrigenomics (also known as nutritional genomics) is broadly defined as the relationship between nutrients, diet, and gene expression. The launch of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and the subsequent mapping of human DNA sequencing ushered in the ‘era of big science’, jump-starting the field of nutrigenomics that we know today.
Cover Previews: Nature Magazine – May 12, 2022
Nova explosions occur when a runaway thermonuclear reaction is triggered in a white dwarf that is accreting hydrogen from a companion star. The massive amount of energy released ultimately creates the bright light source that can be seen with a naked eye as a nova. But some of the energy has been predicted to be lost during the initial stages of the reaction as a flash of intense luminosity — a fireball phase — detectable as low-energy X-rays. In this week’s issue, Ole König and his colleagues present observations that corroborate this prediction. Using scans taken by the instrument eROSITA, the researchers identified a short, bright X-ray flash from the nova YZ Reticuli a few hours before it became visible in the optical spectrum. The cover shows an artist’s impression of the nova in the fireball phase.
Previews: New Scientist Magazine – May 14, 2022
New Scientist Magazine, May 14, 2022
COVER STORIES
- FEATURES Fascia: The long-overlooked tissue that shapes your health
- FEATURES The grand plan to create a periodic table of all animal intelligence
- FEATURES Have we been measuring the expansion of the universe wrong all along?
- NEWS Simple webcam test could show whether you lack a mind’s eye
- NEWS How quickly can you catch covid-19 again if you have already had it?
Science: Reviving Retinas, Floral Chocolates, First Life From RNA + Proteins
Reviving retinas to understand eyes
Research efforts to learn more about diseases of the human eye have been hampered as these organs degrade rapidly after death, and animal eyes are quite different to those from humans.
To address this, a team have developed a new method to revive retinas taken from donors shortly after their death. They hope this will provide tissue for new studies looking into the workings of the human eye and nervous system.
Research article: Abbas et al.
8:05 Research Highlights
A technique that simplifies chocolate making yields fragrant flavours, and 3D imaging reveals some of the largest-known Native American cave art.
Research Highlight: How to make a fruitier, more floral chocolate
Research Highlight: Cramped chamber hides some of North America’s biggest cave art
10:54 Did life emerge in an ‘RNA world’?
How did the earliest biochemical process evolve from Earth’s primordial soup? One popular theory is that life began in an ‘RNA world’ from which proteins and DNA evolved. However, this week a new paper suggests that a world composed of RNA alone is unlikely, and that life is more likely to have begun with molecules that were part RNA and part protein.
Research article: Müller et al.
News and Views: A possible path towards encoded protein synthesis on ancient Earth
17:52 Briefing Chat
We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, the ‘polarised sunglasses’ that helped astronomers identify an ultra-bright pulsar, and how a chemical in sunscreen becomes toxic to coral.
Nature: A ‘galaxy’ is unmasked as a pulsar — the brightest outside the Milky Way
Cover Preview: Science Magazine – May 6, 2022
IN DEPTH
Bids for Anthropocene’s ‘golden spike’ emerge
Download PDF – Sites compete to mark global changes of the 1950s and define new geological age
Census aims for better U.S. statistical portrait
Download PDF – Agency wants to retool its surveys and decennial census to improve efficiency and generate better data
Doubt cast on inflammation’s stop signals
Download PDF – Critics challenge data underpinning “resolution immunology,” triggering university probes
Germany weighs whether culling excess lab animals is a crime
Download PDF – As prosecutors evaluate complaints from animal rights groups, labs try to reduce surplus
Balloon detects first signs of ‘sound tunnel’ in the sky
Download PDF – Atmospheric analog to ocean’s acoustic channel could be used to monitor eruptions and bombs
Emergency Medicine: Use Of Flying Intervention Teams In Ischemic Stroke
In a nonrandomized controlled intervention study published in JAMA, researchers in Germany assessed whether deployment of a flying interventional team, consisting of a neurointerventional radiologist and an angiography assistant, was associated with a shorter time to endovascular thrombectomy for patients in rural or intermediate population areas in Southeast Bavaria.
This video explains the study design. Click https://ja.ma/FIT for full details.
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