Researchers measure the light emitted by a sub-Neptune planet’s atmosphere for the first time

U-M graduate student Isaac Malsky, a co-author of the study, ran three-dimensional models for the planet, testing models with and without clouds and hazes, to see how these aerosols shape the thermal structure of the planet and help interpret the data.
Illustration Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

For more than a decade, astronomers have been trying to get a closer look at GJ 1214b, an exoplanet 40 light-years away from Earth.

Their biggest obstacle is a thick layer of haze that blankets the planet, shielding it from the probing eyes of space telescopes and stymying efforts to study its atmosphere. But now, NASA’s new JWST has solved that issue. The telescope’s infrared technology allows it to see planetary objects and features that were previously obscured by hazes, clouds or space dust, aiding astronomers in their search for habitable planets and early galaxies.

A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Maryland used JWST to observe GJ 1214b’s atmosphere by measuring the heat it emits while orbiting its host star. Their results, published in the journal Nature, represent the first time anyone has directly detected the light emitted by a sub-Neptune exoplanet—a category of planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

Entangled quantum circuits

Par­tial sec­tion of the 30-​meter-long quantum con­nec­tion between two su­per­con­duct­ing cir­cuits. The va­cuum tube (center) con­tains a mi­crowave wave­guide that is cooled to around –273°C and con­nects the two quantum cir­cuits.
Pho­to Credit: ETH Zurich / Daniel Wink­ler

A group of researchers led by Andreas Wallraff, Professor of Solid State Physics at ETH Zurich, has performed a loophole-free Bell test to disprove the concept of “local causality” formulated by Albert Einstein in response to quantum mechanics. By showing that quantum mechanical objects that are far apart can be much more strongly correlated with each other than is possible in conventional systems, the researchers have provided further confirmation for quantum mechanics. What’s special about this experiment is that the researchers were able for the first time to perform it using superconducting circuits, which are considered to be promising candidates for building powerful quantum computers.

Researchers Track Endangered Nassau Grouper Eggs with Underwater Microscope

Nassau grouper spawning aggregation off Little Cayman, Cayman Islands. Credit: Jason Belport
 Photo Credit: Grouper Moon Project

Scripps Oceanography researchers show fertilized eggs stayed local, but in some years drifted to nearby islands.

Each winter off the western tip of the Caribbean island of Little Cayman, thousands of endangered Nassau grouper gather to spawn under the light of the full moon. The fish pack the coral reef and when the ritual begins individual females dash out of the fray straight up towards the surface with multiple males in pursuit. During these vertical bursts, females release their eggs and the males jostle to fertilize them, leaving milky plumes drifting in the moonlit sea.  

These precious fertilized eggs are the engine that powers the still-limited recovery of this critically endangered species that is a key reef predator and was once the target of an important fishery in the Caribbean. But where do these eggs end up after they’re cast adrift? 

Scientists at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Oregon State University (OSU), and the conservation organization Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) teamed up with the Cayman Islands Department of the Environment to address this question by physically tracking clouds of tiny, transparent Nassau grouper eggs through the night with an underwater microscope developed by Scripps Oceanography Marine Physical Laboratory scientist Jules Jaffe. 

Physicists discover ‘stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism’

Physicists at Rice University and Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University discovered “stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism” that arise in some helical magnets due to changes in the arrangement of magnetic dipoles when the material warms. At very low temperatures (bottom panel), the orderly arrangement of dipoles leads to magnetism. At high temperature (top panel), dipoles are disordered and the material is nonmagnetic. Pancakes of liquidlike magnetism (middle panel) arise at an intermediate temperature where magnetic interactions within horizontal 2D layers are much stronger than vertical interactions between layers.
Illustration Credit: M. Butcher, courtesy of A. Nevidomskyy/Rice University

Physicists have discovered “stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism” that may account for the strange electronic behavior of some layered helical magnets.

The materials in the study are magnetic at cold temperatures and become nonmagnetic as they thaw. Experimental physicist Makariy Tanatar of Ames National Laboratory at Iowa State University noticed perplexing electronic behavior in layered helimagnetic crystals and brought the mystery to the attention of Rice theoretical physicist Andriy Nevidomskyy, who worked with Tanatar and former Rice graduate student Matthew Butcher to create a computational model that simulated the quantum states of atoms and electrons in the layered materials.

Giants of the Jurassic seas were twice the size of a killer whale

An artist’s impression of the pliosaur
Illustration Credit: Megan Jacobs, University of Portsmouth

Over 20 years ago, the BBC’s "Walking with Dinosaurs" TV documentary series showed a 25-meter long Liopleurodon. This sparked heated debates over the size of this pliosaur as it was thought to have been wildly overestimated and more likely to have only reached an adult size of just over six meters long.

The speculation was set to continue, but now a chance discovery in an Oxfordshire museum has led to University of Portsmouth paleontologists publishing a paper on a similar species potentially reaching a whopping 14.4 meters - twice the size of a killer whale. 

Professor David Martill from the University of Portsmouth’s School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences, said: “I was a consultant for the BBC’s pilot program ‘Cruel Sea’ and I hold my hands up - I got the size of Liopleurodon horrendously wrong. I based my calculations on some fragmentary material which suggested a Liopleurodon could grow to a length of 25 meters, but the evidence was scant and it caused a lot of controversy at the time.

“The size estimate on the BBC back in 1999 was overdone, but now we have some evidence that is much more reliable after a serendipitous discovery of four enormous vertebrate.”

SwRI selected for phase a study to develop next-generation NOAA coronagraph

SwRI used internal funding to develop SwSCOR three-stage lens system mounted behind a single-pylon external occulter to minimize distortion across the field of view. A polarizer wheel is placed in front of the first lens. The current Phase A study will study options for the external occulter.
Illustration Credit: Courtesy of SwRI

NASA has selected Southwest Research Institute for a Phase A study to develop SwRI’s Space Weather Solar Coronagraph (SwSCOR) on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s Space Weather Next Program is charged with providing critical data for its space weather prediction center. SwRI is one of five organizations developing a definition-phase study to produce the next-generation NOAA L1 Series COR instrument to detect and characterize Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

CMEs are huge bursts of coronal plasma threaded with intense magnetic fields ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours. CMEs arriving at Earth can generate geomagnetic storms, which can cause anomalies in and disruptions to modern conveniences such as electronic grids and GPS systems. Coronagraphs are instruments that block out light emitted by the Sun’s surface so that its outer atmosphere, or corona, can be observed.

A New Cancer Mechanism: Failed Cell Housekeeping

Illustration of single-stranded RNA
Illustration Credit: National Institute of General Medical Sciences

New research pinpoints a gene that, when mutated, causes cancer through a mechanism scientists haven’t seen before: cells lose the ability to dispose of their trash, namely defective strands of RNA.

This mechanism appears to cut across many different malignancies and could present a whole new set of molecules for cancer drugs to target, as reported in the journal Science by a team from Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

While studying zebrafish, Megan Insco, HMS instructor in medicine who was a research fellow in the lab of Leonard Zon at HMS and Boston Children’s at the time, identified a tumor-suppressing gene called CDK13. When mutated, it expedited the development of melanoma. 

The same gene was also mutated in many human melanomas, she found.

But what was really surprising was how the CDK13 mutation causes cancer.

Investigating the RNAs made by melanoma cells, Insco saw multiple short, defective RNAs. She immediately shared this odd finding with Zon.

Researchers map the genome of the world’s grumpiest cat

The mighty roar of a grumpy and angry Pallas' cat (Otocolobus manul)
Photo Credit: Johannes Heel

University of Minnesota researchers recently led successful efforts to build the first genome for Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), a small wild cat native to central Asia known for its grumpy facial expression. The cat, which faces growing challenges from climate change, habitat fragmentation, and poaching, had no available genetic resources to help with conservation prior to this study. 

The study, published in NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics, was led by Nicole Flack, a doctoral candidate in the College of Veterinary Medicine, along with Christopher Faulk, a professor in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences. 

The researchers used blood samples from Tater, a 6-year-old Pallas’s cat who lives at the Utica Zoo in New York, to construct a high-quality diploid nuclear genome assembly, a representative map of genes for the species.

The study results include confirmation that the Pallas’s cat is more closely related to certain wild cat species and less related to house cat species than some previous studies have suggested. 

Wild plants can adapt to agricultural propagation

Wild plants for restoration projects are propagated in culture.
Photo Credit: Ute Matthies

Researchers study rapid domestication of plants grown for seed production to restore ecosystems

Wild plants play an important role in the renaturation of degraded landscapes and ecosystems. The seeds for this are mainly propagated in specialized farms, similar to crops. A team of biologists led by researchers from the University of Marburg has now taken a more detailed look at how the farm production of seeds for restoration affects the characteristics of the species. Across as few as three generations, some species evolved signs of a so-called domestication syndrome - a suite of traits typically evolved by crops during domestication from their wild relatives. The observed changes across the first generations were primarily small and unlikely to compromise the quality of the currently produced seeds. Yet, it is the first warning that seeds of wild plants must be produced with caution and only for a limited number of cultivated generations before new seeds are collected from the wild. The results of the study have been published in the Journal PNAS.

The destruction of natural habitats is the greatest threat to biodiversity. More than half of the world's land area is already degraded. However, this dire state can be partially reversed through ecosystem restoration - the restoration of natural habitats on degraded land. Restoration measures include, for example, restoring forests by planting trees or restoring grasslands by sowing seeds. The seeds for these measures are usually produced in specialized seed farms.

Fecal beads to act at the core of the intestinal microbiota

Alginate microparticles containing isolated bacterial strains (white particles) and a fecal transplant (brown particles), with a zoom on the structure of the microparticles by scanning electron microscopy.
 Image Credits: © Adèle Rakotonirina et Nathalie Boulens
(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

A UNIGE team, in collaboration with the CHUV, has developed a new method of encapsulating fecal bacteria to treat a serious intestinal infection.

Clostridioides difficile infection causes severe diarrhea and results in the death of nearly 20,000 patients in Europe each year. It is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. When it relapses, the disease must be treated by fecal microbiota transplantation. This treatment, which is administered via a nasogastric or colorectal tube, is very demanding. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), have developed small beads to be taken orally, which could radically improve its administration. This work can be found in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics.

Naturally found in 15% of the population, Clostridioides difficile is a bacterium that can become pathogenic when the protective "barriers" of our intestinal flora are weakened. This is particularly the case after prolonged and repeated use of antibiotics. Clostridioides difficile then causes severe diarrhea and can lead to a critical inflammation of the colon, known as pseudomembranous colitis. With more than 124,000 cases per year in Europe, it is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections and is fatal in about 15% of cases.

The bat's ability to convert energy into muscle power is affected by flight speed

Photo Credit: Anders Hedenström

Small bats are bad at converting energy into muscle power. Surprisingly, a new study led by Lund University reveals that this ability increases the faster they fly.

The researchers have studied the efficiency of migratory bats – a species that weighs about eight grams and is found in almost all of Europe. Efficiency, in this case, is the ability to convert supplied energy into something we need. For bats and birds, it’s the energy required to fly. In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a research team in Lund states that the efficiency varies with the bats' flight speed. The faster the bats flew, the more energy they managed to convert into muscle power.

“Previously, we believed that efficiency is a constant. So, this is a bit of a breakthrough”, says Anders Hedenström, biology researcher at Lund University.

Using high-speed cameras, laser and smoke in a wind tunnel, the researchers have measured the bat's kinetic energy. They then compared these results with the animals' metabolism – a methodological breakthrough with technically advanced measurements. In the past, researchers have only measured either kinetic energy or metabolic rate and compared this to theories.

Earth’s first animals had particular taste in real estate

Obamus coronatus.
Photo Credit: Mary Droser/University of California, Riverside

Even without body parts that allowed for movement, new research shows — for the first time — that some of Earth’s earliest animals managed to be picky about where they lived.

These creatures from the Ediacaran Period, roughly 550 million years ago, are strangely shaped soft-bodied animals that lived in the sea. Researchers have long considered them enigmatic. 

“It’s not like studying dinosaurs, which are related to birds that we can observe today,” said Phillip C. Boan, UC Riverside paleontology graduate student and lead author of the new study. “With these animals, because they have no modern descendants, we’re still working out basic questions about how they lived, such as how they reproduced and what they ate.”

For this particular research project, the researchers focused on understanding where in the sea the animals spent their lives. 

The ancient sea was also a largely foreign place compared to today’s marine environments. It was dominated by a mat on the sea floor composed of bacteria and layers of other organic materials. In addition, predatory creatures were uncommon.

The brain reacts differently to touch depending on context

Photo Credit: Thor Balkhed

The touch of another person may increase levels of the “feelgood” hormone oxytocin. But the context really matters. The situation impacts oxytocin levels not only in the moment, but also later, as is shown by researchers at Linköping University and the University of Skövde.

 An embrace from a parent, a warm hand on your shoulder or a caress from a romantic partner are examples of how touch can strengthen social bonds between people and influence emotions. But although touch and the sense of touch have a very important function, knowledge of how this actually works is still lacking.

Studies in animals have shown that the hormone oxytocin is linked to touch and social bonding. However, many questions remain unanswered when it comes to oxytocin’s role in human social interactions and how this hormone can influence and be influenced by the brain. To study this closer, researchers have examined what happens in the body when we feel a soft touch. India Morrison. 

Beetles and their biodiversity in dead wood

The red dots on the map of Europe show the locations where the biodiversity of deadwood beetles was studied in relation to the available energy.
Illustration Credit: Peter Kriegel / Universität Würzburg

Which energy type promotes the biodiversity of beetles living in dead wood in the forest? That depends entirely on where the beetles are in the food chain.

Energy is the key to life. For decades, scientists have been trying to decipher the connection between available energy and biodiversity in ecosystems.

In the process, clear correlations have emerged. For example, ecosystems with higher energy input, for example due to stronger solar radiation near the equator, are endowed with greater biodiversity. But ecosystems do not exclusively draw their energy directly from the sun. Energy can also be stored chemically, for example in resources such as wood.

Which type of energy promotes biodiversity? Does it happen uniformly along the food chain? These questions have remained unanswered until now.

The first answers have now come from researchers at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg Biocentre. A team led by ecologists Simon Thorn and Peter Kriegel has studied the species diversity of beetles that live in deadwood in forests. Data from all over Europe was collected for this purpose. Simon Thorn initiated and coordinated the project six years ago; he has recently started research at the Hessian Agency for Nature Conservation, Environment and Geology.

AI Predicts Future Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer cells
Image Credit: National Cancer Institute

An artificial intelligence tool has successfully identified people at the highest risk for pancreatic cancer up to three years before diagnosis using solely the patients’ medical records, according to new research led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and the University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with VA Boston Healthcare System, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The findings, published May 8 in Nature Medicine, suggest that AI-based population screening could be valuable in finding those at elevated risk for the disease and could expedite the diagnosis of a condition found all too often at advanced stages when treatment is less effective and outcomes are dismal, the researchers said. Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers in the world, and its toll projected to increase.

Currently, there are no population-based tools to screen broadly for pancreatic cancer. Those with a family history and certain genetic mutations that predispose them to pancreatic cancer are screened in a targeted fashion. But such targeted screenings can miss other cases that fall outside of those categories, the researchers said.

“One of the most important decisions clinicians face day to day is who is at high risk for a disease, and who would benefit from further testing, which can also mean more invasive and more expensive procedures that carry their own risks,” said study co-senior investigator Chris Sander, faculty member in the Department of Systems Biology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. “An AI tool that can zero in on those at highest risk for pancreatic cancer who stand to benefit most from further tests could go a long way toward improving clinical decision-making.”