Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) F-test result comparing three subjective age (SA) groups (younger, same and older) in Korean Social Life, Health and Aging Project (KSHAP) data (n = 68). Significant group differences in regional gray matter (GM) density are visualized (p < 0.01, uncorrected, k > 500). Post hoc pairwise t-tests of the three groups indicated whether family-wise error (FWE)-corrected (voxel-level or cluster-level p < 0.05) voxels were included in the initially identified F-test clusters.

The first study to link subjective age to biological age shows that elderly people who feel younger have less signs of brain aging. While everyone gets older, not everyone feels their age. A recent study finds that such feelings, called subjective age, may reflect brain aging...

The next generation of Harvard’s Ambulatory Microrobot (HAMR) can walk on land, swim on the surface of water, and walk underwater, opening up new environments for this little bot to explore. Credit: Yufeng Chen, Neel Doshi, and Benjamin Goldberg/Harvard University

‘HAMR’ can walk on land, swim, and walk under water. In nature, cockroaches can survive underwater for up to 30 minutes. Now, a robotic cockroach can do even better. Harvard’s Ambulatory Microrobot, known as HAMR, can walk on land, swim on the surface of water, and walk underwater for as long as necessary, opening up new environments for this little bot to explore.

This next generation HAMR uses multifunctional foot pads that rely on surface tension and surface tension induced buoyancy when HAMR needs to swim but can also apply a...

The collision with Uranus of a massive object twice the size of Earth that caused the planet’s unusual spin, from a high-resolution simulation using over ten million particles, coloured by their internal energy.
Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Durham University

Uranus was hit by a massive object roughly twice the size of Earth that caused the planet to tilt and could explain its freezing temperatures, according to new research. Astronomers at Durham University, UK, led an international team of experts to investigate how Uranus came to be tilted on its side and what consequences a giant impact would have had on the planet’s evolution.

The team ran the first high-resolution computer simulations of different massive collisions with the ice giant to try to work out how the planet evolved...

View of comet 67P taken by Rosetta.
Credit: European Space Agency

Scientists have found that molecular oxygen around comet 67P is not produced on its surface, as some suggested, but may be from its body. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft escorted comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on its journey round the sun from August 2014 – September 2016, dropping a probe and eventually crashing onto its surface.

When the comet is close enough to the sun the ice on its surface ‘sublimes’ – transforms from solid to gas – forming a gas atmosphere called a coma. Analysis of the coma by instruments on Rosetta revealed that it contained not only water, CO and CO2, as anticipated, but also molecular oxygen.

Molecular oxygen is O2, and on Earth it is essential for life, where it is produced by photo...