Mice fed Tryptophan develop Immune cells that foster a tolerant gut. Immune cells patrol the gut to ensure that harmful microbes hidden in the food we eat don’t sneak into the body. Cells that are capable of triggering inflammation are balanced by cells that promote tolerance, protecting the body without damaging sensitive tissues. When the balance tilts too far toward inflammation, inflammatory bowel disease can result.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a kind of tolerance-promoting immune cell appears in mice that carry a specific bacterium in their guts...

Researchers Bjorn Scholz (left) and Grayson Rich (right) with the world’s smallest neutrino detector as it’s being installed along ‘neutrino alley’ at the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Credit: Juan Collar/University of Chicago

Physicists play leading role in confirming theory predicted 4 decades ago. In 1974, a Fermilab physicist predicted a new way for ghostly particles called neutrinos to interact with matter. More than four decades later, a UChicago-led team of physicists built the world’s smallest neutrino detector to observe the elusive interaction for the first time. Neutrinos are a challenge to study because their interactions with matter are so rare...

The colors represent the relative amounts of short-lived radioactive isotopes, such as iron-60, injected into a newly formed protoplanetary disk (seen face on with the protostar being the light purple blob in the middle) by a supernova shock wave. Credit: Image courtesy of Alan Boss

New evidence supporting the supernova shock theory of our Solar System’s origin. According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System’s formation was triggered by a shock wave from an exploding supernova. The shock wave injected material from the exploding star into a neighboring cloud of dust and gas, causing it to collapse in on itself and form the Sun and its surrounding planets...

Researchers have found that a “hot Jupiter” exoplanet named WASP-121b (left) has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. The planet is as close to its host star (right) as possible without the star’s gravity ripping the planet apart. Credit: Engine House VFX, At-Bristol Science Centre, University of Exeter

Distant ‘hot Jupiter’ has a stratosphere hot enough to boil iron. Scientists have found compelling evidence for a stratosphere on an enormous planet outside our solar system. The planet’s stratosphere – a layer of atmosphere where temperature increases with higher altitudes – is hot enough to boil iron. WASP-121b, located ~900 light years from Earth, is a gas giant exoplanet commonly referred to as a “hot Jupiter.”

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Exeter wit...