NASA finds multi-billion-year-old 'coral' on Mars - Live Science

Julia Margaret Cameron, photographic portrait of Charles Darwin, 1868. From the D. Hall Darwin-Wallace Collection. Rare books, documents, letters and images from famous evolutionary biologists are on display this fall at the U of C’s Nickle Galleries.

MEGATRON simulations offer a possible explanation for the similar iron content of many of the smallest galaxies. Radiation delayed early star formation until galaxies could retain elements from powerful stellar explosions. The results connect ancient stars with early-universe observations, but depend on uncertain assumptions about the first stars. Some of the universe’s smallest galaxies contain a surprisingly similar proportion of iron, despite holding different amounts of stars. Computer simulations now offer an explanation: a single explosion from a very massive first-generation star could have supplied much of that iron. The finding gives astronomers a testable way to investigate stars that disappeared billions of years ago. One paper follows the chemical legacy of the first stars into hundreds of simulated dwarf galaxies. Its central finding concerns an iron pattern already measured in nearby galaxies, rather than a direct observation of the earliest stellar explosions. Other MEGATRON studies investigate galaxy spectra and the gas within and around galaxies.

Schematic of an observational experiment using an X-ray free-electron laser to study the plasma formation dynamics of a microscale rod assembly target under a high-intensity femtosecond laser. Credit: National Institute for Fusion Science Understanding instabilities and turbulence in plasmas is one of the key challenges across a wide range of plasma research fields, including nuclear fusion, astrophysics and laser-plasma physics. In plasmas, slight disturbances can grow due to instabilities, and energy is transferred between structures of various sizes due to turbulence. These phenomena give rise to structures ranging from very small to large, which significantly influence the overall motion and energy flow of the plasma.

An ideologue should hate paleontology. It is always turning up something new. And sometimes the new stuff is really inconvenient. At one time, Neanderthal man was our dumb cousin. His stupidity caused him to lose the Darwinian battle for survival. National Geographic had the story back then.

We’re sharing this article early to provide faster access to peer-reviewed, accepted research. It is citable and carries a permanent DOI. This version is subject to further edits and will be replaced automatically by the final Version of Record. All legal disclaimers apply. AbstractIn environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding, the choice of filter membrane material and pore size governs DNA enrichment, detection sensitivity, and taxonomic representativeness of aquatic communities. This study employed eDNA metabarcoding to evaluate the influence of various filter membranes on the phytoplankton community within Caohai Wetland. Four membrane materials with a pore size of 0.22 μm were tested: mixed cellulose esters (MCE), polyethersulfone (PES), nylon (NY), and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), and three pore sizes were tested with the MCE membranes: 0.22 μm, 0.45 μm, and 0.8 μm. The results demonstrated that among the tested materials, MCE filters achieved the best detection performance, yielding higher eDNA recovery, taxonomic counts, class coverage, and Chao1 richness than PES, NY, and PTFE membranes, owing to their superior retention of eDNA and algal particles.

This is the sound of our solar system's giants. By converting astronomical data into audio, we can now 'listen' to Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. This process, called sonification, translates light detected from the planets into unique and ethereal soundscapes.