Most parents’ first glimpse of their children comes in ultrasound images taken months before birth. But ultrasound could soon offer much more than prenatal portraits. In the past few years, researchers have opened a new door for ultrasound, developing techniques that harness the familiar, safe and noninvasive sound waves to control genes, alter brain function and deliver drugs to targets with millimeter precision. The advance of what’s being termed sonogenetics offers a new twist on ...read more

Sea stars, also commonly called starfish, are among the most abundant animals along the U.S. West Coast. But now scientists say an epidemic spurred by warming ocean waters is decimating sunflower sea stars, a critical predator in kelp forests. The sea stars’ collapse could wipe out the shallow water ecosystems that provide a home for seals, sea otters and commercially important fish. “The epidemic was catastrophic and widespread,” said Drew Harvell, a marine ecologist at Corne ...read more

In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo that their digital appearance is based on their “residual self-image.” That is, the characters look how they imagine themselves to look, based on their own mental models of themselves. In the real world, scientists have been trying to teach robots that trick as well. That's because, unlike the warring machines of the matrix, a real-life robot with an accurate self-image might benefit humanity. It’d allow for faster programming and more accura ...read more

Nestled in the foothills of southern Siberia's Altai Mountains, Denisova Cave has yielded numerous artifacts, as well as fossils of many animals and at least two hominins: Neanderthals and Denisovans. The cave is the only place in the world known to have remains of the Denisovans, who, like Neanderthals, were our close evolutionary cousins. The site is one of the most significant for understanding human evolution, but study of it has been hampered by difficulty dating the finds. Today ...read more

The brain of a fruit fly is captured here using a new, large-scale 3-D imaging technique developed by a multi-institutional group of researchers led by MIT and Harvard University. The method is shockingly fast, and millions of synapses can be analyzed in just a few days. That's much faster than previously possible. The technique makes use of expanding brain tissue and what’s called lattice light-sheet microscopy. Here, the fruit fly brain is about the size of a poppy s ...read more

Opportunity's Last Hope Last Martian summer, a dust storm blocked out the sun and grew until it enveloped the entire Red Planet. That left the Opportunity rover deprived of solar power and NASA lost contact with the robot. Now, after six months without a response, NASA is making a new, and potentially their last, effort to restore contact with the rover. The last contact that Opportunity had with Earth was on June 10, 2018, in the midst of the global dust storm. NASA’s Jet ...read more

What, if anything, is the function of adult neurogenesis in humans? Does neurogenesis even exist in our adult brains, or does it shut down during childhood? The debate over human neurogenesis has been one of the most prominent disputes in 21st century neuroscience. Just last year, two opposing papers appeared in leading journals, one claiming firm evidence of ongoing neurogenesis in the adult human dentate gyrus, while the other study came to the opposite conclusion. The fact that adult neuro ...read more

But thereʼs a silver lining to this dark cloud: You can still make a personal difference in preserving glacial ice. Even if we somehow stopped climate change dead in its tracks right now, recent research shows that more than a third of the world's 200,000 glaciers would melt anyway. That's because glacial ice takes decades to fully respond to the human-caused global warming that has already occurred. And as the inevitable thawing continues, meltwater flowing into the ocean ...read more

Chinese Space Launch Two Chinese private space companies are on the verge of attempting their first orbital launches, according to the space industry newssite SpaceNews. Companies OneSpace and iSpace aim to successfully complete orbital launches within the first half of 2019. The success of these launches would solidify the progress made by China's growing private space sector. Beijing-based OneSpace plans to launch their 62-foot-tall (19 meters) OS-M rocket as soon as late ...read more

A record-breaking cold wave is sending literal shivers down the spines of millions of Americans. Temperatures across the upper Midwest are forecast to fall an astonishing 50 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) below normal this week – as low as 35 degrees below zero. Pile a gusty wind on top, and the air will feel like -60 F. This cold is nothing to sneeze at. The National Weather Service is warning of brutal, life-threatening conditions. Frostbite will strike fast on any exposed skin ...read more