Mars bears the scars of five giant impacts, including the ancient giant Borealis basin (top of globe), Hellas (bottom right), and Argyre (bottom left). An SwRI-led team discovered that Mars experienced a 400-million-year lull in impacts between the formation of Borealis and the younger basins. Credit: University of Arizona/LPL/Southwest Research Institute

Studying the early bombardment history of Mars, scientists have discovered a 400-million-year lull in large impacts early in Martian history. “The new results reveal that Mars’ impact history closely parallels the bombardment histories we’ve inferred for the Moon, the asteroid belt, and the planet Mercury,” Bottke said. “We refer to the period for the later impacts as the ‘Late Heavy Bombardment...

Subjecting artificial amino acids to extreme conditions, researchers hunt for clues on what it takes to survive on other planets. Credit: Claire Mammoser, Valparaiso University

Subjecting artificial amino acids to extreme conditions, researchers hunt for clues on what it takes to survive on other planets. Scientists are attempting to identify the amino acids -building blocks that make proteins and support all life on Earth – that might feasibly form the basis of extraterrestrial life. The researchers have analyzed how an assortment of 15 amino acids, some found here on Earth in living organisms and some not found in living organisms on Earth, hold up in the face of extreme conditions found on other planets and moons.

Claire Mammoser, an undergraduate research assistant at Valparaiso Univer...

Credit: Vera Kratochvil/public domain

Researchers show that foot’s impact helps control, increase the amount of blood sent to the brain. You probably know that walking does your body good, but it’s not just your heart and muscles that benefit. Researchers at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) found that the foot’s impact during walking sends pressure waves through the arteries that significantly modify and can increase the supply of blood to the brain.

Until recently, the cerebral blood flow or CBF was thought to be involuntarily regulated by the body and relatively unaffected by changes in the blood pressure caused by exercise or exertion...

New imaging potential: Standard resolution (left) compared to (center, right) high resolution and super-resolution obtained with the chip-based technique. Credit: Bielefeld University/Robin Diekmann

Physicists have developed a photonic chip that makes it possible to carry out super-resolution light microscopy, ie ‘nanoscopy,’ with conventional microscopes. In nanoscopy, the position of single fluorescent molecules can be determined with a precision of just a few nano-meters (millionth of a millimeter). This information can be used to produce images with a resolution of ~20 to 30 nm, and thereby 10X that of conventional light microscopy. Until now, this method has required the use of expensive special instruments...