The team’s lab setup was used to test the powerplant condenser system. The mesh is placed above the funnel at right to collect the water that condenses on the mesh. Courtesy of researchers

Technology captures water evaporating from cooling towers. A new system devised by MIT engineers could provide a low-cost source of drinking water for parched cities around the world while also cutting power plant operating costs. About 39% of all the fresh water withdrawn from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs in the U.S. is earmarked for the cooling needs of electric power plants that use fossil fuels or nuclear power, and much of that water ends up floating away in clouds of vapor...

This is an image of the R Aquarii nebula taken with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at the Observatory of Roque de los Muchachos (ORM) in La Palma. Colours indicate different ionization stages of the same chemical element, oxygen. Credit: R. Corradi – Daniel López

Scientists have published a detailed study of the evolution of the nebula surrounding the symbiotic star R Aquarii. The study employed observations from telescopes at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, and Chile taken over the course of more than two decades. In astronomical terms, at 600 light years away, the nebula around R Aquarii is rather close to us...

Researchers expect the volcanoes in Mars’ Sisyphi Planum region to look similar to subglacial volcanoes on earth, such as Herðubreið in Iceland. Credit: Purdue University photo/Sheridan Ackiss

The climate throughout Mars’ early history has long been debated – was the Red Planet warm and wet, or cold and icy? New research published in Icarus provides evidence for the latter. Mars is littered with valley networks, deltas and lake deposits, meaning it must have had freely flowing water at some point, probably around 4 billion years ago. But climate models of the planet’s deep past haven’t been able to produce warm enough conditions to allow liquid water on the surface.

“There are people trying to model Mars’ ancient climate using the same kind of models we use here on Earth, and they’re hav...

Learning Impairments, Memory Deficits, and Neuropathology in Aged Tau Transgenic Mice Are Dependent on Leukotrienes Biosynthesis: Role of the cdk5 Kinase Pathway. Molecular Neurobiology, 2018; DOI: 10.1007/s12035-018-1124-7

Reversing memory deficits and impairments in spatial learning is a major goal in the field of dementia research. A lack of knowledge about cellular pathways critical to the development of dementia, however, has stood in the way of significant clinical advance. But now, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) are breaking through that barrier. They show, for the first time in an animal model, that tau pathology – the second-most important lesion in the brain in patients with Alzheimer’s disease – can be reversed by a drug.

“We show t...