Hubble Embraces Spiral with Open Arms

spiral galaxy NGC 2008
The spiral galaxy NGC 2008 sits center stage, its ghostly spiral arms spreading out toward us, in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The spiral galaxy NGC 2008 sits center stage, its ghostly spiral arms spreading out toward us, in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

This galaxy is located about 425 million light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pictor (the Painter’s Easel). Discovered in 1834 by astronomer John Herschel, NGC 2008 is categorized as a type Sc galaxy in the Hubble sequence, a system used to describe and classify the various morphologies of galaxies. The “S” indicates that NGC 2008 is a spiral, while the “c” means it has a relatively small central bulge and more open spiral arms...

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New Material has Highest Electron Mobility among known Layered Magnetic materials

Atoms in layered material
High mobility in a van der Waals layered antiferromagnetic metalScience Advances, 2020; 6 (6): eaay6407 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay6407

A new material has properties that make it a promising candidate for new areas like magnetic twistronic devices and spintronics, as well as advances in data storage and device design.

All the elements are there to begin with, so to speak; it’s just a matter of figuring out what they are capable of – alone or together. For Leslie Schoop’s lab, one recent such investigation has uncovered a layered compound with a trio of properties not previously known to exist in one material.

With an international interdisciplinary team, Schoop, assistant professor of chemistry, and Postdoctoral Research Associate Shiming Lei, published a paper last week in Scien...

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New ‘Universal’ Target for Antiviral Treatment

 A Requirement for Argonaute 4 in Mammalian Antiviral Defense. Cell Reports, 2020; 30 (6): 1690 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.01.021

Researchers have uncovered a novel potential antiviral drug target that could lead to treatments protecting against a host of infectious diseases. As the coronavirus outbreak shows, viruses are a constant threat to humanity. Vaccines are regularly developed and deployed against specific viruses, but that process takes a lot of time, doesn’t help everyone who needs protection, and still leaves people exposed to new outbreaks and new viruses.

Now, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have uncovered a novel potential antiviral drug target that could lead to treatments protecting against a host of infectious diseases – creating a pan, or u...

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Globular Cluster system of NGC 4546 studied in detail

Image g′ of the central region of NGC 4546 after the subtraction of its surface brightness. Credit: Escudero et al., 2020.

Using the Gemini-South telescope, astronomers have performed a photometric study of the lenticular galaxy NGC 4546. Results of the new research provide more clues about the structure and nature of the galaxy’s globular cluster system. The study was published February 7 on arXiv.org.

Globular clusters (GCs) are collections of tightly bound stars orbiting galaxies. Astronomers perceive them as natural laboratories enabling studies on the evolution of stars and galaxies...

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