Neptune has a new storm, in the form of a large dark spot that appeared in late 2018. By analyzing Hubble images dating back to 2015, astronomers have discovered high-altitude clouds that formed years ahead of the visible storm, indicating it was already forming there, swirling beneath the clouds and haze. The telltale clouds are teaching astronomers more about how such storms form and evolve on all the giant outer planets. Birth of a Storm Neptune, like all the outer solar system planets, ...read more

The American southwest is littered with slot canyons – deep, narrow passages worn through by the erosive force of water. But there’s another place in the solar system with this majestic geology: Saturn’s moon, Titan. “Titan’s canyons are wider, generally deeper, and have slightly more sloping walls (than Earth),” says Tracy Gregg, a geologist at the University of Buffalo in New York. Gregg presented her research on Titan’s slot canyons last week a ...read more

(Inside Science) -- A new trove of outstandingly preserved fossils in China from the dawn of animal life rivals the horde of weird creatures found in legendary sites such as the Burgess Shale, and may shed light on many puzzles concerning the animal family tree, a new study finds. The earliest hints of life in the roughly 4.5 billion-year history of Earth may have appeared 3.95 billion years ago, but for a long time after that, life consisted of relatively simple organisms. However, about ...read more

Treatment-resistant depression affects 1 in 3 of the estimated 16.2 million adults in the U.S. who have suffered at least one major depressive episode. For them, two or more therapies have failed and the risk of suicide is much greater. It’s a grim prognosis. There are few therapies for depression that resists treatment, which is why the FDA granted this new drug application Fast Track and Breakthrough Therapy status. On March 5, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new treatment c ...read more

An hour before we spoke, Darragh O’Carroll, an emergency room physician from Hawaii, had just given an elderly patient a sedating shot of ketamine. The man had pneumonia and was acting confused and fidgety, making him hard to treat. “Not only it was a pain control for him when I was putting needles into his neck, but it also kept him still,” O’Carroll says. “And with very minimal risk of lowering his blood pressure.” Ketamine’s use as an anesthetic &m ...read more

Parkinson’s disease stinks. Figuratively. But according to new research, it literally stinks too — to those who have a heightened sense of smell. Thanks to the help of one of these “super-smellers,” a team of scientists has identified subtle volatile compounds produced by Parkinson’s sufferers. These compounds could be used to make much easier, and earlier, diagnostics for the disease. According to the CDC, Parkinson’s is the second-most common neurodegenerat ...read more

Scientific papers should have two Discussion sections - one written by the authors, and the other by an independent researcher. According to a new paper from Michael S. Avidan, John P. A. Ioannidis and George A. Mashour, this "second discussant" system could help ensure more balanced and objective inference in science. The authors begin by noting that while the reproducibility crisis has focussed attention on the Methods and Results sections of papers, Discussion sections are not free ...read more

Flooding characterized by the National Weather Service as "major to historic and catastrophic" is continuing across parts of the central plains and Upper Midwest. The flooding has come in the wake of last week's "bomb cyclone," which dumped heavy rain atop snowpack with high water content. The resulting runoff has triggered record-setting flooding throughout the Missouri and Mississippi river basins. As I'm writing this on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 19, more ...read more

Digging into NASA’s Apollo-era history of nuclear propulsion for manned deep space missions, I found another gem in the history of the government not really knowing how to address women’s clothing. This time, we’re talking beauty and badges. For the back story on this image, we need to the Plum Brook Station before it was a NASA centre, all the way back to the Second World War when it was the Plum Brook Ordnance Works. In 1941, some  9,100 acres of land was acquired by t ...read more

The Kamchatka Peninsula in far eastern Russia is one of the most active volcanic areas on Earth. It isn't surprising to find multiple volcanoes erupting each week and this week is no exception. Two side-by-side volcanoes -- Bezymianny and Sheveluch -- were simultaneously erupting over the weekend (above). The eruption at Bezymianny was big enough to cause some air travel over the peninsula to divert flight paths to avoid the ash, but that's business-as-usual in Kamchatka. Kamchtka is ...read more