During its routine yearly monitoring of the weather on our solar system’s outer planets, Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new mysterious dark storm on Neptune and provided a fresh look at a long-lived storm circling around the north polar region on Uranus. Like Earth, Uranus and Neptune have seasons, which likely drive some of the features in their atmospheres...

A new computational method called ‘CATCH’ designs molecular ‘baits’ for any virus known to infect humans and all their known strains, including those that are present in low abundance in clinical samples, such as Zika. The approach can help small sequencing centers around the globe conduct disease surveillance, which is crucial for controlling outbreaks.

During the Zika virus outbreak of 2015-16, public health officials scrambled to contain the epidemic and curb the pathogen’s devastating effects on pregnant women...

This dazzling region of newly forming stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer instrument (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The relatively small amount of dust in the LMC and MUSE’s acute vision allowed intricate details of the region to be picked out in visible light...

Researchers have developed a method to change the shape of a flat sheet of elastomer, using actuation that is fast, reversible, controllable by an applied voltage, and reconfigurable to different shapes.

Mechanical systems, such as engines and motors, rely on 2 principal types of motions of stiff components: linear motion, which involves an object moving from one point to another in a straight line; and rotational motion, which involves an object rotating on an axis. Nature has developed far more sophisticated forms of movement – or actuation – that can perform complex functions more directly and with soft components...