The remnant of Tycho’s supernova as seen in X-rays, showing the expanding shock wave. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.; Optical: DSS

An international team of scientists from the Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), the Towson and Pittsburgh Universities (USA) and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, has shed new light on the origins of the famous Tycho’s supernova. The research debunks the common view that Tycho’s supernova originated from a white dwarf, which had been slowly accreting matter from its companion in a binary system.

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) serve as standard candles of modern observational cosmology; they also play a vital role in galactic chemical evolution. However, the origin of these gigantic cosmic explosions remains uncertain...

Some diabetes medicine reduce the risk of getting Parkinson´s disease by 35%. Copyright: Colourbox

A Norwegian study shows that the taking of diabetes medicine reduces the risk of getting Parkinson´s disease. Researchers at the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Bergen (UiB) have discovered that medical treatment against diabetes reduces the risk of getting Parkinson´s disease by 35%. “We have made an important discovery, which takes us a step further towards solving the Parkinson´s riddle,” says researcher Charalampos Tzoulis. He has lead the study together with researcher Kristoffer Haugarvoll at the same department.

Tzoulis says that the researchers have to do follow-up studies on the diabetes medicine to fully understand why it protects against Parkinson´s disease...

A researcher uses a pipette to put a sample on to a molography chip. Photograph of the experimental set-up in an ETH Zurich laboratory. Credit: ETH Zurich / Andreas Frutiger

A new method for analysis of molecules in liquids on a chip has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics. Much can be detected in blood or urine: viral illnesses, metabolic disorders or autoimmune diseases can be diagnosed with laboratory tests. But such examinations often take a few hours and are quite complex Scientists at ETH Zurich and the company Roche have jointly developed a completely new analysis method based on light diffraction on molecules on a small chip. In future, physicians may be able to perform complex examinations easily and quickly in their own practice.

As with other established diagnosti...

IceCube is a neutrino detector composed of 5,160 optical modules embedded in a gigaton of crystal-clear ice a mile beneath the geographic South Pole. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

For a decade, astronomers have puzzled over fast radio bursts, FRBs, which were first detected in 2007 by astronomers scouring archival data from Australia’s Parkes Telescope, a 64-meter diameter dish best known for its role receiving live televison images from the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. But the antenna’s detection of the first FRB – and the subsequent confirmed discovery of nearly two dozen more powerful radio pulses across the sky by Parkes and other radio telsescopes – has sent astrophysicists scurrying to find more of the objects and to explain them.

“It’s a new class of astronomical ...