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The wide-field optical camera on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) — has captured the spectacular Orion Nebula and its associated cluster of young stars in great detail, producing this beautiful new image. This famous object, the birthplace of many massive stars, is one of the closest stellar nurseries, at a distance of about 1350 light-years. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

Using new observations from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have discovered three different populations of baby stars within the Orion Nebula Cluster. This unexpected discovery adds very valuable new insights for the understanding of how such clusters form. It suggests that star formation might proceeds in bursts, where each burst occurs on a much faster time-scale than previously thought.

A team led by ESO astronomer Gi...

Highlights
•Mutation clusters in cancer genomes provide fingerprints of mutagenic mechanisms
•Error-free mismatch repair lowers the mutation rate in H3K36me3-marked active genes
•Error-prone repair using POLH also targets H3K36me3, contributing driver mutations
•UV and alcohol increase error-prone repair, targeting mutations toward active genes

Sunlight, alcohol consumption increase the rate at which this happens, resulting in more mutations in the most important parts of our genomes. Cancer is mostly caused by changes in the DNA of our cells that occur during our lifetime rather than those that we inherit from our parents. Identifying the causes of these ‘mutations’ is a difficult challenge because many processes can result in an identical DNA sequence change in a genome...

Interferometric visibility and coherence. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Science, 2017; 473 (2203): 20170170 DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2017.0170

One of the main principles of quantum physics is the superposition of states. Systems are simultaneously in different states, i.e. “alive and dead” at the same time such as Schrödinger’s cat, until someone measures them and the system opts for one of the possibilities. As long as the superposition lasts the system is said to be in a coherent state...

Alexander A. Green, Jongmin Kim, Duo Ma, Pamela A. Silver, James J. Collins, Peng Yin. Complex cellular logic computation using ribocomputing devices. Nature, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature23271

The interdisciplinary nexus of biology and engineering, known as synthetic biology, is growing at a rapid pace, opening new vistas that could scarcely be imagined a short time ago. In new research, Alex Green, a professor at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, demonstrates how living cells can be induced to carry out computations in the manner of tiny robots or computers...