The different layers of Earth’s airglow can be seen from the International Space Station as it orbits Earth. The very thin green layer above the bottom of the window occurs 95 kilometers (59 miles) above Earth’s surface; the red region above is a different type of airglow. The rectangle represents the portion of the airglow measured in a single WINDII image. Credit: American Geophysical Union

Dating back to the first century, scientists, philosophers and reporters have noted the occasional occurrence of “bright nights,” when an unexplained glow in the night sky lets observers see distant mountains, read a newspaper or check their watch. A new study uses satellite data to present a possible explanation for these puzzling historical phenomena.
The authors suggest that when waves in the u...

Protostar FIR 3 (HOPS 370) with outflow that may have triggered the formation of younger protostar FIR 4 (HOPS 108, location marked with red dot), in the Orion star-forming region. (au = astronomical unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.)
Credit: Osorio et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF

Youngerstar is in path of outflow from older. Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found new evidence suggesting that a jet of fast-moving material ejected from one young star may have triggered the formation of another, younger protostar. “The orientation of the jet, the speed of its material, and the distance all are right for this scenario,” said Mayra Osorio, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalucia (IAA-CSIC) in Spain.

The scientists studied a giant clo...

Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (colored green) interacting with a human immune cell. This study shows that in conditions like toxic shock syndrome, toxins from such bacteria can trigger one type of immune cells (MAIT cells) to turn against the host. Credit: NIAID; CC-BY

A subpopulation of immune cells that normally fend off pathogens can turn against the host during certain infections, a new study publishing on June 20 in the open access journal PLOS Biology reveals. The researchers led by Dr...

Jonathan Pritchard (center) and his colleagues, Yang Li (left) and Evan Boyle, discuss their recent work positing that almost any gene can influence disease. Credit: Steve Fisch

A core assumption in the study of disease-causing genes has been that they are clustered in molecular pathways directly connected to the disease. But work by a group of researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine suggests otherwise. The gene activity of cells is so broadly networked that virtually any gene can influence disease, the researchers found. As a result, most of the heritability of diseases is due not to a handful of core genes, but to tiny contributions from vast numbers of peripheral genes that function outside disease pathways.

Any given trait, it seems, is not controlled by a small set o...