NASA’s Mars mission InSight probes the geology of the Elysium Planitia, finding alternate layers of basalt and sediments. An international team of scientists compares on-the-ground data with data from models, which helps to understand, e.g., the surface’s load-bearing capacity and trafficability.

Seismic data collected in Elysium Planitia, the second largest volcanic region on Mars, suggest the presence of a shallow sedimentary layer sandwiched between lava flows beneath the planet’s surface. These findings were gained in the framework of NASA’s InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), in which several international research partners, including the University of Cologne, collaborate...

New study shows there may be a way to help even more psoriasis patients. About 7.5 million Americans suffer from psoriasis, an autoimmune disease that shows up as patches of red, inflamed skin and painful, scaly rashes. Although there are effective treatments for psoriasis, not everyone responds to these therapies — and for many, the relief is temporary.

“These therapies don’t reduce disease by 100 percent, and they don’t cure the disease” says La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) Professor Michael Croft, Ph.D. “And if you take patients off those drugs, the disease almost always comes back.”

Now Croft and his team in LJI’s Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation have discovered how a key protein called TWEAK damages skin cells in psoriasis patients...

Researchers have developed a jelly-like material that can withstand the equivalent of an elephant standing on it, and completely recover to its original shape, even though it’s 80% water.

The soft-yet-strong material, developed by a team at the University of Cambridge, looks and feels like a squishy jelly, but acts like an ultra-hard, shatterproof glass when compressed, despite its high water content.

The non-water portion of the material is a network of polymers held together by reversible on/off interactions that control the material’s mechanical properties. This is the first time that such significant resistance to compression has been incorporated into a soft material.

The ‘super jelly’ could be used for a wide range of potential applications, including soft robotics,...

Sofia Bergman, Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) and Umeå University, will defend her doctoral thesis on low-energy ions around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 26 November. Observing low energy ions is notoriously difficult because their properties are affected greatly by the spacecraft which observes them. Sofia has developed new methods to do this. Using her work, scientists can study low-energy ions around comets and in a variety of other places in the solar system.

Comets have an environment of plasma which contains a large number of ions with low energies...