Tiny defects in common minerals may reveal unexpected patterns in how Earth’s interior moves.

Ancient rocks are revealing that early Earth may not have been geologically still at all.

Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around −63 °C and 1,000 atmospheres. Ordinary water at higher temperatures and lower pressures is strongly affected by the presence of this critical point, causing the origin of its strange properties. The findings are published in the journal Science.

Water, both omnipresent and essential for life on Earth, behaves very strangely in comparison with other substances. How water’s density, specific heat, viscosity and compressibility respond to changes in pressure and temperature is the complete opposite of other liquids that we know.

All matter shrinks when it is cooled, resulting in an increase in its density. One would therefore expect that water would have a high density at the freezing point. However, looking at a glass of ice water, everything is upside down, since—as we all know—ice cubes float. Strangely enough for the liquid state, water is the densest at 4 degrees C, and therefore it stays on the bottom whether it’s in a glass or in an ocean.

Immune effector cell–associated neurotoxicity syndrome: a practical overview for the general neurologist.

Purpose of Review.

When at rest, the mind becomes preoccupied with self-generated thoughts, commonly known as mind-wandering. While the social, autobiographical, and temporal features of these thoughts have been extensively studied, little is known about how frequently the wandering mind turns toward the interoceptive and somatic body. To map this underexplored component of “body-wandering,” we conducted a large-scale neuroimaging study in 536 healthy participants, expanding a retrospective multidimensional experience sampling approach to include probes targeting visceral and somatomotor thoughts. Our findings reveal a robust interindividual dimension of body-wandering characterized by negative affect, high autonomic arousal, and a reduction in socially oriented thoughts.

Cesar and Kim review how the synaptonemal complex assembles and serves as a dynamic signaling platform that coordinates meiotic recombination.

New observations of cosmic rays that distinguish between hydrogen and helium find unexpected complexity in a long-observed spectral feature.