NASA Explores a Winter Wonderland on Mars

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured these images of sand dunes covered by frost just after winter solstice. The frost here is a mixture of carbon dioxide (dry) ice and water ice and will disappear in a few months when spring arrives. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Cube-shaped snow, icy landscapes, and frost are all part of the Red Planet’s coldest season.
When winter comes to Mars, the surface is transformed into a truly otherworldly holiday scene. Snow, ice, and frost accompany the season’s sub-zero temperatures. Some of the coldest of these occur at the planet’s poles, where it gets as low as minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 123 degrees Celsius).

Cold as it is, don’t expect snow drifts worthy of the Rocky Mountains...

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Treating Gut Pain via a Nobel Prize-Winning Receptor

Targeting a receptor responsible for our sense of touch and temperature, which researchers have now found to be present in our colon, could provide a new avenue for treating chronic pain associated with gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome.

A team examining the colon, led by Professor Hongzhen Hu at Washington University and Professor Nick Spencer at Flinders University, identified the presence of Piezo2, the subject of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, now known to be responsible for sensing light touch on our skin.

“In discovering that this receptor is also in our gut, there’s the potential that selectively targeting these channels could be used for long-term silencing of pain sensations from internal organs, without the need for frequent c...

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Nanoimprinting Technique for Humidity-Responsive Holographic Images

A magical display that projects holographic images that change when in contact with water has been developed. This new technology increases the possibility of commercialization as it can infinitely imprint holographic images.

A POSTECH research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho (Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering) and Ph.D. candidates Byoungsu Ko, Younghwan Yang, Jaekyung Kim, and Dr. Trevon Badloe has developed a technology for a humidity-responsive display that changes in brightness and color depending on the degree of humidity.

The team first successfully realized holographic images with tunable brightness using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)...

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The World’s Largest Turbulence Simulation Unmasks the Flow of Energy in Astrophysical Plasmas

Solar corona
Halo-like solar corona. (Photo courtesy of NASA.)

Researchers have uncovered a previously hidden heating process that helps explain how the atmosphere that surrounds the Sun called the “solar corona” can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it.

The discovery at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could improve tackling a range of astrophysical puzzles such as star formation, the origin of large-scale magnetic fields in the universe, and the ability to predict eruptive space weather events that can disrupt cell phone service and black out power grids on Earth. Understanding the heating process also has implications for fusion research.

First clear 3D explanation

“Our direct numerical simulation is the first to pro...

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