Mars may have been Habitable much more recently than thought

Evidence suggests Mars could very well have been teeming with life billions of years ago. Now cold, dry, and stripped of what was once a potentially protective magnetic field, the red planet is a kind of forensic scene for scientists investigating whether Mars was indeed once habitable, and if so, when.

The “when” question in particular has driven researchers in Harvard’s Paleomagnetics Lab in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. A new paper in Nature Communications makes their most compelling case to date that Mars’ life-enabling magnetic field could have survived until about 3.9 billion years ago, compared with previous estimates of 4.1 billion years—so hundreds of millions of years more recently.

The study was led by Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences s...

Read More

New miRNA Inhibitor could Extinguish the ‘Inflammatory Fire’ that Stroke causes in the Brain

It’s been more than three decades, but still there are only two treatments for a stroke: either rapid use of a clot-busting medication called tPA or surgical removal of a clot from the brain with mechanical thrombectomy. However, only 5% to 13% percent of stroke cases are actually eligible for these interventions.

“We need to be persistent with our research to find a new therapy for stroke,” says Rajkumar Verma, M.Pharm., Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Neuroscience at UConn School of Medicine working in cross-campus collaboration with Professor Raman Bahal Ph.D. of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the UConn School of Pharmacy. “Stroke research is hard and challenging to do. But without trying we won’t make progress. We need to keep trying...

Read More

Breakthrough in 3D Object Scanning: Boosting Clarity and Depth Perception for Complex Structures

Researchers develop a novel edge-highlighting visualization technique for more comprehensible 3D-scanned objects. Improvements in three-dimensional (3D) scanning have enabled quick and accurate scanning of 3D objects, including cultural heritage objects, as 3D point cloud data. However, conventional edge-highlighting visualization techniques, used for understanding complex 3D structures, result in excessive line clutter, reducing clarity. Addressing these issues, a multinational team of researchers have developed a novel technique, involving independent rendering of soft and sharp edges in 3D structures, resulting in improved clarity and depth perception.

Recent advances in three-dimensional (3D) scanning, particularly in photogrammetry and laser scanning, have made it possible to ...

Read More

Seeing a Black Hole’s Jet in a New Light

The Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals the jet of Centaurus A, extending into the upper left corner of the image. Researchers have found new insights in the jet by focusing on the motion of the bright spots, or knots, within the jet. Image credit: Used under a CC-BY 4.0 license from D. Bogensberger et al. Astrophys. J. (2024) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad73a1

Research led by the University of Michigan has pored over more than two decades’ worth of data from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory to show there’s new knotty science to discover around black holes.

In particular, the study looks at the high-energy jet of particles being blasted across space by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Centaurus A.

Jets are visible to different types of telescopes, including those ...

Read More