As galaxy in the Abell 1033 system (in orange at left) travels, it leaves a gas trail behind it that is somehow brighter at the oldest end, near a second white-orange galaxy. (Credit: Francesco de Gasperin/Leiden University) Imagine a sparkler, crackling and spitting, leaving behind a faint trail of smoke. Now imagine your surprise as, instead of dissipating away, that smoke trail actually got bright over time, or lit up. That’s effectively what astronomers have seen in the Abell 10 ...read more

That’s the spot! Thanks to drone technology, this polar bear was spotted getting cozy. (Credit: Intel Corporation) Polar bears’ fortunes deeply tied to the whims of a changing climate, and as the Arctic continues to warm it’s increasingly important to keep an eye on their populations. But the Arctic’s stark white terrain can make that a difficult task to accomplish. In the past, helicopters have been used to spot the bears, but those aircraft are both costly and disturbi ...read more

Wernher von Braun popped briefly back into his office before heading out to a pre-dinner reception. He’d spent the day giving General Bruce Medaris, head of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency, and Neil McElroy, incoming Secretary of Defense, a tour of the facilities where his team was building America’s first intermediate range ballistic missile. But what von Braun really wanted was to use the same IRBM to launch a small satellite into orbit, ideally before the Soviet Union did the ...read more

(Credit: science photo/Shutterstock) Cancerous tumor cells get addicted to the very drugs meant to eradicate them. It’s an ironic twist in the field of cancer treatment. A small percentage of tumor cells can possess a resistance to cancer-fighting drugs, allowing tumors to return after treatment has stopped. These few cells usually possess a mutation that renders them immune, but the protection comes at a cost. To withstand the drug regimen, the cells must alter their meta ...read more

Cosmologists from the U.K., France and Germany have come up with new maps of how dark matter moves throughout the universe. Scientists can’t actually observe dark matter, which makes up about 27 percent of our universe’s total mass, since it doesn’t react to light. So these researchers had to infer its movement by using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an ongoing project to create a 3-D map of the universe. Here, researchers have layered the location of galaxies ( ...read more

An unexpected meeting helps solve an epidemiological mystery. In the early 1980s, Aedes albopictus, a mosquito species native to Southeast Asia that spreads dengue fever and yellow fever, turned up deep in the American South. Though there were no reported disease outbreaks, epidemiologists were still worried, especially when huge swarms arrived in Houston. The so-called Asian tiger mosquito had clearly gained a foothold in the U.S., but no one knew how it had gotten there. So medical entomo ...read more

Meet the microscale: essentially, a teeny-tiny ruler that’s a must-have for entomologists — researchers who investigate insects. For larger specimens, such as the metallic, wood-boring Chalcophora japonica (or ubatamamushi, as the Japanese call the beetle, pictured at right and below), the device helps measure morphological features, such as genitalia. For smaller species, such as water-dwelling riffle beetles (Optioservus fastiditus, also pictured), the miniature ruler helps measure ...read more

If you want to impress at a cocktail party, bust this term out. It’s just a fancy word for fat cells, which come in two varieties: brown and white. Brown adipose tissue (BAT), which most animals have, is also called “good” fat because it stores energy as small units that burn easily — think of kindling in a campfire. White adipose tissue (WAT), though, is like a log: It’s harder to burn because it stores energy as one big unit. Our bodies can transform WAT to BAT. U ...read more

A.D. 1728 | Tooth worm, part II: French dentist Pierre Fauchard publishes work that helps dispel the tooth worm myth, at least among dentists. The myth persists in popular lore, however, until the 20th century. A.D. 1847 | Filling the gap: Edwin Truman introduces a natural latex called gutta-percha, made from trees found in Southeast Asia, for use in root canal fillings. Previously, dentists had used anything from silver to lead to asbestos. A.D. 1965 | Laser power: Researchers find that treatme ...read more

An automated combine harvests crops. (Credit: Hands-Free Hectare) Is there anything more quintessentially American than a farmer in the heartland, toiling away on their land? But this vision of agrarian life will fade into the dusty shelves of sentimental nostalgia, because agriculture is poised to become an industry ruled by robot laborers. Companies like Hands Free Hectare (HFHa) are leading the way. After a year of work, the HFHa project successfully harvested a crop of spring barley, grown ...read more