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People say “pics or it didn’t happen,” and apparently even space robots know what that means. As such, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover provided a stunning panorama of its recently completed sample depot – a big milestone for the mission and humanity’s first collection of samples on another planet. The panorama, stitched together from 368 images that were sent to Earth, captures more than a month of careful placement and mapping of 10 titanium tubes....

“The presence of neon in the exosphere of the moon has been a subject of speculation since the Apollo missions, but no credible detections were made,” said Mehdi Benna of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “We were very pleased to not only finally confirm its presence, but to show that it is relatively abundant.” Benna is lead author of a paper describing observations from LADEE’s Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS) instrument published May 28 in Geophysical Research Letters....

To prepare for additional inspections, engineers will next extend access platforms around the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). After this, they will begin preparation for the next launch attempt, including retesting the flight termination system. As NASA teams complete post-storm recovery operations, the agency has determined it will focus Artemis I launch planning efforts on the launch period that opens on November 12 and closes on November 27....

Possible Bittersweet Effects of Stevia Uncovered According to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, the natural sweetener stevia may lead to a gut microbial imbalance. The findings were just published in Molecules, a leading international peer-reviewed journal of chemistry. Stevia is a natural low-calorie sweetener that is growing in popularity in food and beverage products and is generally considered safe. However, emerging scientific evidence has implicated the sweetener in gut microbial imbalance, which can lead to a variety of gastrointestinal health issues....

Stressful experiences in the first year of life can drive hormonal changes in girls later in childhood. These chemical changes lead to abnormal brain connectivity, signs of anxiety, and depression at age 18. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Stress in early life is a risk factor for a large variety of psychological and physical problems, from mood disorders and substance abuse, to obesity and cardiovascular disease....

About one in 20 people go through a period of stuttering during childhood. Until the latter half of the 20th century, stuttering was believed to be a psychological problem stemming from lack of effort or from trauma. However, techniques in neuroimaging are leading to a much better understanding of brain function during speech and how stuttering arises. Frank Guenther, from Boston University, will present his findings on the origins of stuttering at the 181st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, which runs from November 29 to December 3, at the Hyatt Regency Seattle....

MIT neuroscientists have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensor that allows them to monitor neural activity deep within the brain by tracking calcium ions. Because calcium ions are directly linked to neuronal firing — unlike the changes in blood flow detected by other types of MRI, which provide an indirect signal — this new type of sensing could allow researchers to link specific brain functions to their pattern of neuron activity, and to determine how distant brain regions communicate with each other during particular tasks....

Neuroscientist Professor Pierre Vanderhaeghen (VIB-KU Leuven, Université libre de Bruxelles) explains what makes the human brain so unique: “One remarkable feature of human neurons is their unusually long development. Neural circuits take years to reach full maturity in humans, but only a few weeks in mice or some months in monkeys.” “This long period of maturation allows much more time for the modulation of brain cells and circuits, which allows us to learn efficiently for an extended period up until late adolescence....

Researchers at the University of Maryland developed a new tool based on genetic evolution that automatically learned to evade censorship in China, India and Kazakhstan. Internet censorship by authoritarian governments prohibits free and open access to information for millions of people around the world. Attempts to evade such censorship have turned into a continually escalating race to keep up with ever-changing, increasingly sophisticated internet censorship. Censoring regimes have had the advantage in that race, because researchers must manually search for ways to circumvent censorship, a process that takes considerable time....

Constantly tracking a person’s glucose levels through their tears or sweat could be one step closer to providing people with diabetes an improved monitoring tool. Researchers report in the journal ACS Nano the development of an ultra-thin, flexible sensor that could be incorporated into contact lenses or on the backs of watches for real-time glucose tracking. Wearable sensors are part of an increasingly digitized world. But those that are commercially available typically monitor physical activities by measuring steps taken, for example, or heart rate....

The study led by Prof. Zhao was recently published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Based on eBOSS observations, Prof. ZHAO’s team measured the history of cosmic expansion and structure growth in a huge volume of the past universe, corresponding to a distance range between 0.7 and 1.8 billion light years away from us. This volume had never been probed before. This study took advantage of a method called “multi-tracer analysis,” which mitigated the observational systematics proposed and implemented by Prof....

A team of physicists at the University of Sussex has successfully developed the first nonlinear camera capable of capturing high-resolution images of the interior of solid objects using terahertz (THz) radiation. Led by Professor Marco Peccianti of the Emergent Photonics (EPic) Lab, Luana Olivieri, Dr. Juan S. Totero Gongora and a team of research students built a new type of THz camera capable of detecting THz electromagnetic waves with unprecedented accuracy....

The project “Mutational dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in Austria” was launched by CeMM in close cooperation with the Medical University of Vienna at the end of March. Together with the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) and in cooperation with numerous universities and hospitals all over Austria, scientists are working on drawing a more precise picture of the virus mutations and transmissions that occur by genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 viruses....

For the first time, Australian scientists have confirmed a link between the role of regular fish oil to break down the ability of ‘superbugs’ to become resistant to antibiotics. The discovery, led by Flinders University and just published in international journal mBio, found that the antimicrobial powers of fish oil fatty acids could prove a simple and safe dietary supplement for people to take with antibiotics to make their fight against infection more effective....

A recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports on the diets of giant pandas and sloth bears provides additional proof that bears are omnivores like humans and need a lot less protein than they are given in zoos. “Bears are not carnivores in the strictest sense like a cat where they consume a high-protein diet,” said lead author Charles Robbins, a Washington State University wildlife biology professor. “In zoos forever, whether it’s polar bears, brown bears, or sloth bears, the recommendation has been to feed them as if they are high-protein carnivores....

Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have discovered a new genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease by screening people’s DNA and then using an advanced type of scan to visualize their brains’ connections. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia in the elderly, erodes these connections, which we rely on to support thinking, emotion and memory. With no known cure for the disease, the 20 million Alzheimer’s sufferers worldwide lack an effective treatment....

The insect was first found by Philipp Hoenle of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, during a cooperative investigation of the Reserva Río Canandé in 2018. The reserve belongs to the NGO Jocotoco, and preserves a small part of the highly threatened biodiversity hotspots called the Chocó. Hoenle reached out to taxonomic expert Douglas Booher of Yale University. Soon, Booher responded with excitement that this species was unlike any other of the 850+ species belonging to its genus....

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers used a molecule present in green tea to uncover more molecules that may break up protein tangles in the brain, which are known to cause Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders. Tau fibers, which are lengthy, multilayered filaments that create tangles and attack neurons, are known to be broken up by the green tea molecule EGCG. UCLA biochemists detail how EGCG breaks tau fibers layer by layer in a paper that was recently published in the journal Nature Communications....

Although there have been about 800 extra-solar planets discovered so far in our galaxy, the precise masses of the majority of them are still unknown, as the most common planet-finding technique provides only a general idea of an object’s mass. Previously, the only way to determine a planet’s exact mass was if it transits—has an orbit that periodically eclipses that of its host star. Former Carnegie scientist Mercedes López-Morales has, for the first time, determined the mass of a non-transiting planet....