We finally have an opening date for the California Science Center’s space shuttle–centric expansion - Time Out Worldwide

A 518-million-year-old ambulacrarian fossil from China suggests that the common ancestor of starfish and their relatives was not a burrowing worm; it was probably a tentacled animal that fed from the water around it. An artist’s impression of Yujingia glutenotunica. Image credit: He et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.08.053.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- NASA on Tuesday provided an update on the development of crewed and robotic lunar rovers to support its planned Moon Base initiative, highlighting efforts to develop the surface mobility capabilities needed for future exploration and sustained human operations on the Moon. NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover is scheduled to embark on a mission to the lunar South Pole region in 2027 to explore permanently shadowed craters in search of water and other potentially valuable resources that could support sustainable lunar exploration. The rover will be delivered to the lunar surface by Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and is expected to travel more than 30 kilometers, collecting data on local temperatures, lighting conditions and terrain. NASA said the data could help scientists better understand the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and assess how lunar resources might be used to support future exploration.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- NASA on Tuesday provided an update on the development of crewed and robotic lunar rovers to support its planned Moon Base initiative, highlighting efforts to develop the surface mobility capabilities needed for future exploration and sustained human operations on the Moon. NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover is scheduled to embark on a mission to the lunar South Pole region in 2027 to explore permanently shadowed craters in search of water and other potentially valuable resources that could support sustainable lunar exploration. The rover will be delivered to the lunar surface by Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and is expected to travel more than 30 kilometers, collecting data on local temperatures, lighting conditions and terrain. NASA said the data could help scientists better understand the origin and distribution of water on the Moon and assess how lunar resources might be used to support future exploration.

In a recent study published in Science, Lisowski et al. identified superparamagnetic, iron-loaded macrophages in the pigeon liver and showed that depletion of clodronate-sensitive phagocytic cells impaired homing under overcast skies, when solar cues were unavailable.1 Together, these observations point to a light-independent magnetoreceptive system outside the head and broaden current models of magnetoreception beyond receptors based on cryptochrome, magnetite, and ion channels in the eye and beak.2Magnetic measurements pointed the way (Fig. 1). Vibrating-sample magnetometry revealed a magnetic blocking transition near 12 K in liver and spleen, the signature of superparamagnetic nanoparticles, absent from muscle and beak. The measured signal could not be explained by isolated paramagnetic ferric iron, and low-temperature hysteresis indicated long-range magnetic order: not merely iron in the liver, but a biological nanomagnet. Prussian blue staining localized ferritin-bound iron to MHC II+ cells in hepatic sinusoids, abundant in liver, sparse in spleen, and absent from brain, eye, muscle, and beak. Fig. 1A liver-based route for magnetic orientation in homing pigeons.

In a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine, Guo et al.1 shed further light on TDP-43 pathology by demonstrating that several transcripts involved in synaptic function and membrane excitability are aberrantly spliced upon depletion of TDP-43. Simultaneous treatment with antisense oligonucleotides targeting these transcripts corrected the splicing abnormalities and restored neuronal function, suggesting that combination therapy could be a promising approach in TDP-43 proteinopathies.1TDP-43 is an RNA-binding protein involved in key aspects of pre-mRNA splicing, particularly in the repression of cryptic exons that could lead to frameshifts and premature stop codons. While physiologically localized in the nucleus, TDP-43 forms cytoplasmic aggregates in almost all cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neuron disease (MND), and roughly half of the cases of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), leading to a de facto loss of the protein’s function. TDP-43 pathology is thus regarded as the common downstream event onto which probably multiple pathogenetic mechanisms converge. But what lies even more downstream?