How can long DNA filaments, which have convoluted and highly knotted structure, manage to pass through the tiny pores of various biological systems? This is the fascinating question addressed by Antonio Suma and Cristian Micheletti, researchers at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste who used computer simulations to investigate the options available to the genetic material in such situations. The study has just been published in PNAS, the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unites States. Credit: Antonio Suma, SISSA

How can long DNA filaments, which have convoluted and highly knotted structure, manage to pass through the tiny pores of various biological systems? This is the fascinating question addressed by Antonio Suma and Cristian Micheletti, re...

1. Iowa State engineers don’t need a plow to clear snow from the heated test slabs they installed at the Des Moines International Airport. Larger photo. Photos courtesy of Halil Ceylan.
2. A thermal image of the heated airport pavements.

Engineers have installed 2 test slabs of electrically conductive concrete and the pavement has effectively cleared ice and snow. Iowa State University’s Halil Ceylan picked up his smartphone, opened up an app and called up the remote controls for the first full-scale test slabs. When a winter storm approaches, Ceylan can use that app to turn on the heated pavement system and, thanks to real-time video capability, watch as snow and ice melts away.

Late last fall Prof...

Artist’s impression of stars born in winds from supermassive black holes. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

MUSE and X-shooter instruments on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile have been used to study an ongoing collision between two galaxies, known collectively as IRAS F23128-5919, 600 million light-years from Earth. The group observed the outflows – that originate near the supermassive black hole at the heart of the pair’s southern galaxy, and have found the first clear evidence that stars are being born within them. The discovery has many consequences for understanding galaxy properties and evolution.

Such galactic outflows are driven by the huge energy output from the active and turbulent centres of galaxies...

Spiral galaxy NGC 253. The core reveals violent star formation within a region 1, 000 light-years across. A starburst galaxy has an exceptionally high rate of star birth, first identified by its excess of infrared radiation from warm dust. Credit: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Credit: Jay Gallagher (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Alan Watson (Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ) and NASA/ESA/HST.

Astronomers have used a radio telescope in outback Western Australia to see the halo of a nearby starburst galaxy in unprecedented detail. A starburst galaxy is a galaxy experiencing a period of intense star formation and this one, NGC 253 or the Sculptor Galaxy, is ~11.5 million light-years from Earth.

“The Sculptor Galaxy is currently forming stars at a rate of 5 solar masses each year, wh...