Close social bonds help wild jackdaws hold feeding spots but come with waiting costs - Phys.org

This week’s cover of the international journal 'Science' features a young orangutan striking an awkward pose as it imitates an adult orangutan. An international research team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, Universitas Nasional (UNAS) in Indonesia, and the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom analyzed how young Sumatran orangutans (scientific name Pongo abelii) acquire new behaviors as they grow, through social relationships and individual exploration, and published their findings on the 24th (local time) in the journal 'Science'.

High school science class taught us that stars come in very specific colors. You have cooler stars that are red, orange and yellow. Then you have hotter, larger stars that are white and blue. It turns out that much like the wind in the movie Pocahontas, stars also come in all sorts of colors, including green and pink. The discovery was outlined in a study published this month in RAS Techniques and Instruments. According to the lead author, Mark Hollands of Warwick University’s astronomy and astrophysics group, the humble white dwarf star is the centerpiece of this chromatic curiosity.

Male rats exposed to simulated cosmic radiation had roughly twice as much collagen around heart blood vessels at long-term follow-up. Simulated weightlessness produced persistent changes in immune signaling, but combining the two stressors did not consistently worsen their effects. The findings raise questions for astronaut health, while small tissue samples, preliminary DNA results and compressed radiation delivery limit direct human predictions. Heart tissue examined nearly a year after simulated cosmic-radiation exposure carried a warning for long-distance space exploration. Male rats had accumulated roughly twice as much collagen around small coronary blood vessels as unexposed controls. The finding suggests that assessing radiation hazards requires attention to what happens long after exposure ends. The experiments were conducted on Earth, not during astronaut missions. They provide evidence about biological responses in a particular rat model, while leaving important questions about human risk unanswered. John Baker, PhD, lead researcher on the study and a professor of surgery at MCW.

On Oct. 18, 1963, a cat went to space! Félicette was a French "catstronaut" who became the first and only feline to fly to space. Here's why it mattered.