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Artist’s impression of the V404 Cygni black hole jet. Credit: G Perez Diaz IAC

They are nature’s very own Death Star beams – ultra-powerful jets of energy that shoot out from the vicinity of black holes like deadly rays from the Star Wars super-weapon. Now a team of scientists led by the University of Southampton has moved a step closer to understanding these mysterious cosmic phenomena – known as relativistic jets – by measuring how quickly they ‘switch on’ and start shining brightly once they are launched.

How these jets form is still a puzzle. One theory suggests that they develop within the ‘accretion disc’...

Researchers showed that FAP (middle panels) is overexpressed in pancreatic tumors compared to normal pancreatic tissue. Particularly high levels of FAP expression were associated with poorer outcomes. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

New findings from a University of Pennsylvania-led team offer a promising target for future therapies that could potentially root out even well-hidden metatstatic cancer lesions. When they deleted the gene encoding this protein in mice with the disease, the animals lived longer, and the cancer’s spread to other organs was reduced...

Three-Dimensional Printing with Biomass-Derived PEF for Carbon-Neutral Manufacturing. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201708528

3D printing with a biobased polymer for CO2-neutral manufacturing. In our modern world, eliminating plastics is inconceivable. Unfortunately, they do have disadvantages, including the formation of CO(2) in both production and combustion, depletion of fossil feedstocks, and growth of landfills. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Russian researchers introduce a new way forward, a polymer made entirely from biomass that can easily and inexpensively be used in 3D printing. Objects produced in this way are of high quality, easily recyclable, and highly solvent-resistant.

Conventional “subtractive” processes involve cutting, sawing, turni...

Linear gullies on a dune in Matara Crater, Mars, Red and white arrows point to pits. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Winter temperatures on the Red Planet sublimate CO2 from a gas to a solid. These solid carbon dioxide blocks are then thought responsible for making gullies and furrows on Mars’ landscape, based on innovative lab experiments. Researchers millions of kilometres from Mars lab-based experiments on sublimation suggest the same process is responsible for altering the appearance of sand dunes on Mars. Lauren Mc Keown said: “We’ve all heard the exciting news snippets about the evidence for water on Mars...