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This is a schematic representation of Ti4O7 (a) and γ-Ti3O5 (b). Credit: Scientific Reports

Many of us are familiar with titanium dioxide (TiO2), a whitener commonly used in sunscreens and paints such as the white lines seen on tennis courts. Less well known are other higher titanium oxides – those with a higher number of titanium and oxygen atoms than TiO – that are now the subject of intensifying research due to their potential use in next-generation electronic devices. Now, researchers at Tokyo Tech have reported superconductivity in two kinds of higher titanium oxides prepared in the form of ultrathin films. With a thickness of around 120nm, these materials reveal properties that are only just beginning to be explored.

“We succeeded in growing thin films of Ti4O7 and γ-Ti3O5 for the f...

The figure shows how surface air pressure changed throughout Martian history. A bar at 4 billion years ago denotes a lower limit shown by this study. Constraints suggested by other studies are also shown by arrows. Credit: Image courtesy of

Exploration missions have suggested that Mars once had a warm climate, which sustained oceans on its surface. To keep Mars warm requires a dense atmosphere with a sufficient greenhouse effect, while the present-day Mars has a thin atmosphere whose surface pressure is only 0.006 bar, resulting in the cold climate it has today. It has been a big mystery as to when and how Mars lost its dense atmosphere.

An old meteorite has been known to contain the ancient Martian atmosphere...

ALMA and ESA’s Rosetta mission, have revealed the presence of the organohalogen Freon-40 in gas around both an infant star and a comet.

Dashing hopes that molecule may be marker of life. Using data captured by ALMA in Chile and from the ROSINA instrument on ESA’s Rosetta mission , a team of astronomers has found faint traces of the chemical compound [Freon-40] – (CH3Cl), also known as methyl chloride and chloromethane, around both the infant star system IRAS 16293-2422, about 400 light-years away, and the famous comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G) in our own Solar System. The new ALMA observation is the first detection ever of a stable organohalogen in interstellar space.

Organohalogens consist of halogens, such as chlorine and fluorine, bonded with carbon and sometimes other eleme...

GFRAL-expressing neurons (yellow cells) are found exclusively in the brainstem (pictured), and form the ’emergency circuit’ of body weight regulation. Credit: NGM Bio

Insights enable the discovery of multiple drug candidates for obesity and cachexia. Scientists at NGM Bio have revealed deep insights into the role that a little-understood human hormone plays in regulating body weight. Named Growth and Differentiation Factor 15 (GDF15), this hormone is typically active only when the body experiences acute or prolonged stress, including following exposure to tissue-damaging toxins, such as chemotherapy, or during chronic disease, such as obesity or cancer...