On the edge: Disease and habitat loss is decimating wild amphibian populations globally, with more than 200 species needing urgent intervention through captive breeding, says Dr. Simon Clulow. In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Department of Biological Sciences’ Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters. Clulow is keen to stress that this doesn’t mean getting rid of conventional zoos or captive breeding programs. “Captive breeding has had some wonderful successes, and there will always be a huge place for it,” he says. PhD student and lead author Lachlan Howell agrees. “It was captive breeding that brought the giant panda back from

  Low-dimensional uniform manifold approximation projection showing symmetry-aware image similarity from a database of greater than 25,000 piezoresponse force microscopy images. Credit: Joshua Agar/Lehigh University A novel neural network to understand symmetry, speed materials research. Using a large, unstructured dataset gleaned from 25,000 images, scientists demonstrate a novel machine learning technique to identify structural similarities and trends in materials for the first time. Understanding structure-property relations is a key goal of materials research, according to Joshua Agar, a faculty member in Lehigh University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. And yet currently no metric exists to understand the structure of materials because of the complexity and multidimensional nature of structure. Artificial neural networks, a type of machine learning, can be trained to identify similarities―and even correlate parameters such as structure and properties―but there a

  Pulsed electrical stimulation drives cell-type specific neuromodulation.  Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have found a way to make deep brain stimulation (DBS) more precise, resulting in therapeutic effects that outlast what is currently available. The work, led by Aryn Gittis and colleagues in CMU’s Gittis Lab, will significantly advance the study of Parkinson’s disease.  DBS allows researchers and doctors to use thin electrodes implanted in the brain to send electrical signals to the part of the brain that controls movement. It is a proven way to help control unwanted movement in the body, but patients must receive continuous electrical stimulation to get relief from their symptoms. If the stimulator is turned off, the symptoms return immediately. Gittis, an associate professor of biological sciences in the Mellon College of Science and faculty in the Neuroscience Institute, said that the new research could change that. “By finding a way to intervene that has long-lasti

The mouse atrioventricular (AV) node. Green staining indicates AV node cells, while red staining highlights neighboring atrial muscle cells. All cell nuclei are stained blue. Specialized cells that propagate heartbeats have the capacity to regenerate after birth, study by UT Southwestern scientists shows. Specialized cells that conduct electricity to keep the heart beating have a previously unrecognized ability to regenerate in the days after birth, a new study in mice by UT Southwestern researchers suggests. The finding, published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could eventually lead to treatments for heart rhythm disorders that avoid the need for invasive pacemakers or drugs by instead encouraging the heart to heal itself. Nikhil V. Munshi, M.D., Ph.D. “Patients with arrhythmias don’t have a lot of great options,” said study leader Nikhil V. Munshi, M.D., Ph.D., a cardiologist and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Molecular Biology, and in the Eugene McDermot

The escarpment the science team refers to as “Scarp a” is seen in this image captured by Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on April 17, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Pictures from NASA’s latest six-wheeler on the Red Planet suggest the area’s history experienced significant flooding events. A new paper from the science team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover details how the hydrological cycle of the now-dry lake at Jezero Crater is more complicated and intriguing than originally thought. The findings are based on detailed imaging the rover provided of long, steep slopes called escarpments, or scarps in the delta, which formed from sediment accumulating at the mouth of an ancient river that long ago fed the crater’s lake. The images reveal that billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support water flowing across its surface, Jezero’s fan-shaped river delta experienced late-stage flooding events that carried rocks and debris into it from the hi

Shiny nacre of Abalone washed ashore.  Strongest and toughest glass known developed by McGill University scientists. Scientists from McGill University develop stronger and tougher glass, inspired by the inner layer of mollusk shells. Instead of shattering upon impact, the new material has the resiliency of plastic and could be used to improve cell phone screens in the future, among other applications. While techniques like tempering and laminating can help reinforce glass, they are costly and no longer work once the surface is damaged. “Until now there were trade-offs between high strength, toughness, and transparency. Our new material is not only three times stronger than the normal glass, but also more than five times more fracture-resistant,” says Allen Ehrlicher, an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University. (A) Glass composite (without index-matching strategy on left and with index-matching on right), (B) Glass composite’s microstructure, (C) Vie

  Flash in space: An artist’s view of a gamma-ray burst. Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab Using the H.E.S.S. observatory, researchers at GRB 190829A observe unusual features that challenge models. Researchers from the H.E.S.S. Collaboration succeeded to derive the intrinsic spectrum of the very-high-energy gamma-ray afterglow emission of a relatively nearby gamma-ray burst. Surprisingly, the gamma-ray spectrum resembles that of the much lower-energy X-rays, while the fading emission from both bands was observed to march in parallel over three nights. These remarkable findings challenge the current emission scenarios. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are bright X-ray and gamma-ray flashes observed in the sky, emitted by distant extragalactic sources. They are associated with the creation or merging of neutron stars or black holes; processes that result in an explosive outburst of material moving incredibly close to the speed of light. The initial flashes, which last a few seconds, are fol

An artist’s rendition of the Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Astronomers have used data from Parker, along with data from other solar missions, to detect and study Solar stream interactions. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben  When a fast solar wind stream erupts from a coronal hole (a cooler region in the Sun’s atmosphere) and overtakes a slower moving solar wind stream, a stream interaction region (SIR) can form. In the SIR, a density “pileup” of compressed plasma develops upstream of the interface; typically there is a peak in pressure followed by a rarefaction region in the fast solar wind component. As the SIR propagates away from the Sun, to distances of one astronomical unit or beyond, the compression can form a shock that efficiently accelerates charged particles. Thus SIRs are a major source of energetic particles in interplanetary space. Coronal holes, the main sources of the high-speed stream, rotate as the Sun rotates on its axis, and the SIR structures ro

  In a rare non-magnetic kagome material, a topological metal cools into a superconductor through a sequence of novel charge density waves. Researchers have discovered a complex landscape of electronic states that can co-exist on a kagome lattice, resembling those in high-temperature superconductors, a team of Boston College physicists reports in an advance electronic publication of the journal Nature. The focus of the study was a bulk single crystal of a topological kagome metal, known as CsV3Sb5 – a metal that becomes superconducting below 2.5 degrees Kelvin, or minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit. The exotic material is built from atomic planes composed of Vanadium atoms arranged on a so-called kagome lattice – described as a pattern of interlaced triangles and hexagons –  stacked on top of one another, with Cesium and Antimony spacer layers between the kagome planes. The material offers a window into how the physical properties of quantum solids — such as light transmission, electrical co

  Galaxies exchange matter with their external environment thanks to galactic winds. The MUSE instrument from the Very Large Telescope has, for the very first time, mapped the galactic wind that drive these exchanges between galaxies and nebulae. This observation led to the detection of some of the Universe’s missing matter. Galaxies can receive and exchange matter with their external environment thanks to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions. Thanks to the MUSE instrument[1] from the Very Large Telescope at the ESO, an international research team, led on the French side by the CNRS and l’Université Claude Bernard Lyon,[1,2] has mapped a galactic wind for the first time. This unique observation, which is detailed in a study published in MNRAS on September 16, 2021, helped to reveal where some of the Universe’s missing matter is located and to observe the formation of a nebula around a galaxy. Galaxies are like islands of stars in the Universe, and possess ordinary or baryon

  Researchers collected samples from the Berufjörður-Breiðdalur region in eastern Iceland, where glacial erosion has carved deep valleys and fjords into basalt rock to reveal buried zeolites. Credit: Claire Nelson/Northwestern University New finding could help inform how zeolites are used in carbon capture and storage. First study to analyze the calcium isotope composition of zeolite minerals Bonding conditions between calcium and oxygen partition calcium isotopes Findings point toward developing a novel ‘geothermometer’ for investigating Earth systems Zeolites could be considered as nature’s workhorse. Filled with microscopic holes and channels, these ultraporous minerals can soak up environmental contaminants, filter drinking water, manage nuclear waste, and even absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). Now, in the first study of its kind, Northwestern University researchers have analyzed ancient zeolite specimens collected from the edges of East Iceland to discover that zeolites separate calciu

 On September 16, Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles). The 2021 minimum is the twelfth lowest in the nearly 43-year satellite record. The last 15 years are the lowest 15 sea ice extents in the satellite record. The amount of multi-year ice (ice that has survived at least one summer melt season), is one of the lowest levels in the ice age record, which began in 1984. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent is now falling rapidly, but it is still too early to assume that the maximum has been reached. The maximum for Antarctic sea ice typically occurs in late September or early October. However, Antarctic sea ice extent is highly variable near the maximum because of storms acting to expand or compact the extended ice edge. Please note that this is a preliminary announcement. Changing winds or late-season melt could still reduce the Arctic ice extent, as happened in 2005 and 2010. NSIDC scientists will release a ful

  Whether consuming cocoa, known to be packed with powerful antioxidants that protect our cells from damage, helps us age better, is a question scientists want to definitively answer. They are looking for answers in the blood of 600 individuals age 60 and older who participated in the largest trial ever to assess the impact of a cocoa supplement as well as a common multivitamin, on reducing the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other health outcomes, says Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at the Georgia Prevention Institute at the Medical College of Georgia. The COSMOS Trial (COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study), led by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, gathered data from 21,444 men and women looking at the impact of a cocoa extract supplement and/or multivitamins on common health problems, most of which increase with age. Dong just received a $3 million grant (1RO1HL157665-01) from the Nation