Buried among 77 other people from her village in western Sweden are the bones of a 20 year-old woman. Now an analysis of DNA extracted from her teeth reveals what likely killed her. An international team of researchers has discovered the woman, who died some 5,000 years ago, had the oldest known case of the plague.
The finding suggests the world’s first plague epidemic took out her community and vast swaths of the Neolithic farming population in Europe. If confirmed, the notorio ...read more
Although 54 percent of adults in the United States have registered as organ donors, just one in three people die in a way that allows for organ donation. That leaves more than 100,000 people in the United States waiting for a transplant. Many will die waiting.
Because demand for organs outpaces supply and probably always will, researchers have looked to xenotransplantation — placing animal organs into human bodies — as an alternative. However, getting to the point where xenotra ...read more
Moon-bound
Tomorrow, at about 1:30 p.m. EST (2:30 a.m. on Dec. 8 local time), China’s robotic Chang'e-4 mission will launch on a Long March 3B rocket, headed for the lunar surface.
After launching, the spacecraft will spend 27 days traveling to the moon. Upon arrival at our rocky satellite, an accompanying lander, which doubles as a rover, will descend towards the surface. The craft will touch down in the Von Kármán Crater in the South Pole‐Ait ...read more
Human tissues on a chip are headed into space. Tissue chips contain a small network of cells that work like real human organs, and are a safe, compact way for scientists to study the human body.
SpaceX's Dragon resupply mission launched from Florida yesterday and is currently rocketing toward the International Space Station (ISS). On board are a few dozen chips designed to mimic the immune system — like the kidney-on-a-chip shown here. The missions is led by the National Institu ...read more
If orbiting just 4 million miles from your fiery host star wasn’t bad enough, things might have just gotten even worse.
New research shows that stars emitting high levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation could strip the atmospheres of their ultra-close exoplanets. While observing gas giants that orbit exceptionally close to their host stars, astronomers found that those bombarded with radiation were losing helium from their atmospheres. These results, which were published in multiple st ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine