Paola Sebastiani, Bharat Thyagarajan, Fangui Sun, Nicole Schupf, Anne B. Newman, Monty Montano, Thomas T. Perls. Biomarker signatures of aging. Aging Cell, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/acel.12557

Levels of specific biomarkers can be combined to produce patterns that signify how well a person is aging and his or risk for future aging-related diseases, according to a new study by researchers at the Boston University Schools of Public Health and Medicine and Boston Medical Center. The study used biomarker data collected from the blood samples of almost 5,000 participants in the Long Life Family Study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A large number – about half – had an average “signature,” or pattern, of 19 biomarkers...

FImage: PPPL physicist Hantao Ji in front of the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment
Credit: Elle Starkmann

Physicists at DOE PPPL have for the first time directly observed a phenomenon that had previously only been hypothesized to exist. The phenomenon, plasmoid instabilities that occur during collisional magnetic reconnection, had until this year only been observed indirectly using remote-sensing technology. They created the phenomenon where they could measure it directly and confirm its existence on the electron scale, which describes the range of motion of electrons and how quickly they move.

Plasmoid instabilities create magnetic bubbles within plasma, superhot gas whose atoms have separated into electrons and atomic nuclei...

Illustration showing how solar energetic particles may cause dielectric breakdown in lunar regolith in a permanently shadowed region (PSR). Tiny breakdown events could occur throughout the floor of the PSR. Credits: NASA/Andrew Jordan

Powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid, permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles, and may possibly produce “sparks” that could vaporize and melt the soil, perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts. This alteration may become evident when analyzing future samples from these regions that could hold the key to understanding the history of the moon and solar system.

The moon has almost no atmosphere, so its surface is exposed to the harsh space environment...

This illustration shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star. These “kamikaze” comets will eventually plunge into the star and vaporize. The comets are too small to photograph, but their gaseous spectral “fingerprints” on the star’s light were detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The gravitational influence of a suspected Jupiter-sized planet in the foreground may have catapulted the comets into the star. This star, called HD 172555, represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. The star resides 95 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and G. Bacon (STScI)

Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! Hubble has discove...