Light curve of the microlensing event OGLE-2016-BLG-1469. The upper panel shows the enlarged view of the anomaly around the peak. The two lower panels show the residual from the binary-lens models with (orbit+parallax) and without (standard) considering higher-order effects. Credit: Han et al., 2017.

Using gravitational microlensing, astronomers have recently found a binary star composed of two brown dwarfs. The newly discovered system is the third brown-dwarf binary detected with this technique. Gravitational microlensing is an invaluable method of detecting new extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs, regardless of the light they emit...

A University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) team modeled a natural water-cracking process called radiolysis. They applied the model to the icy bodies around our solar system to show how radiation emitted from rocky cores could break up water molecules and support hydrogen-eating microbes. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

In the icy bodies around our solar system, radiation emitted from rocky cores could break up water molecules and support hydrogen-eating microbes. To address this cosmic possibility, a University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) team modeled a natural water-cracking process called radiolysis...

This study adds to previous evidence that air pollution causes oxidative stress, which can damage lipids, proteins, and DNA. Credit: © Pink Badger / Fotolia

Children and teens exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution have evidence of telomere shortening, reports a study in the May Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Young people with asthma also have evidence of telomere shortening, according to the preliminary research by John R. Balmes, MD, of University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues. “Our results suggest that telomere length may have potential for use as a biomarker of DNA damage due to environmental exposures and/or chronic inflammation.”

The study included 14 children and adolescents living in Fresno, Calif...

Assessing competing fundamental magnetic interactions. From: Long-range ferrimagnetic order in a two-dimensional supramolecular Kondo lattice

Achieving magnetic order in low-dimensional systems consisting of only 1 or 2 dimensions has been a research goal for some time. In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Uppsala researchers show that magnetic order can be created in a two-dimensional chessboard lattice consisting of organometallic molecules that are only one atomic layer thick.

Magnetic order is a common phenomenon in 3D materials, such as ferromagnetic order in iron bar magnets, where the magnetic moments on all iron atoms point in the same direction...