Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble .... maybe Macbeth should have consulted the Witch Head Nebula. A frighteningly shaped reflection nebula, this cosmic crone is about 800 light-years away though. Its malevolent visage seems to glare toward nearby... Continue Reading →
Can probiotics fend off mood disorders? It’s too early to say with scientific certainty, but a new study by CU Boulder researchers suggests that one particular beneficial bacteria can have long-lasting anti-inflammatory effects on the brain, making it more resilient to the... Continue Reading →
The Mars Express orbiter has taken some stunning photos of Korolev Crater, an ice-filled crater near the Martian north pole. It looks from a distance like a snowy winter landscape on Earth. Mars is famous for its polar ice caps... Continue Reading →
When we celebrate the start of 2019, on January 1 the New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Ultima Thule. A world of the Kuiper belt 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, the nickname Ultima Thule (catalog designation 2014 MU69) fittingly means "beyond the known world". Following its 2015 flyby... Continue Reading →
Attendants from the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College Of Surgeons packing up some of the 3,000 human skulls stored in a shed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, before their transfer to the Natural History Museum, July 1, 1948. The... Continue Reading →
Humans can perform a vast array of mental operations and adjust their behavioral responses based on external instructions and internal beliefs. For example, to tap your feet to a musical beat, your brain has to process the incoming sound and... Continue Reading →
Autophagy—the process by which a cell digests and recycles various molecules and organelles in its cytoplasm—is critical for maintaining homeostasis and for helping cells survive low-nutrient conditions. In a series of steps, a vesicle precursor, known as the phagophore, is... Continue Reading →
Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster. This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming... Continue Reading →
A protein in the brain that binds to alcohol could be the key to curing alcoholism, reports UH College of Pharmacy medicinal chemist Joydip Das in eNeuro, a journal of the Society for Neuroscience. The protein, called MUNC 13-1, plays a pivotal role in... Continue Reading →
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