It’s #BlackFriday, but we don’t do much shopping in space. Instead, join us for our 6th annual #BlackHoleFriday where we’ll share awesome images and facts about black holes! https://go.nasa.gov/2FB9qQD
DOST-Philippines Undersecretary for research and development Rowena Guevara had recognized that to promote wider interest on the study and use of space technologies in the country, they have to get more academe-based engineers into the program.
The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) will get academe-based engineers outside of the University of the Philippine-Diliman to join the country’s microsatellite building program. by Rainier Allan Ronda.
No, we’re not talking about the #Thanksgiving day games, but rather our Mars InSight lander mission is on course for a touchdown with a #MarsLanding on Monday, Nov. 26. Learn about how the mission is on track to make this touchdown: https://go.nasa.gov/2qZDdZ2
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered how our bones grow at an atomic level, showing how an unstructured mass orders itself into a perfectly arranged bone structure. The discovery offers new insights, which could yield improved new implants, as well as increasing our knowledge of bone diseases such as osteoporosis.
The bones in our body grow through several stages, with atoms and molecules joining together, and those bigger groupings joining together in turn. One early stage in the growth process is when calcium phosphate molecules crystallise, which means that they transform from an amorphous mass into an ordered structure. Many stages of this transformation were previously a mystery, but now, through a project looking at an imitation of how our bones are built, the researchers have been able to follow this crystallisation process at an atomic level. Their results are now published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
“A wonderful thing with this project is that it demonstrates how applied and fundamental research go hand in hand. Our project was originally focused on the creation of an artificial biomaterial, but the material turned out to be a great tool to study bone building processes. We first imitated nature, by creating an artificial copy. Then, we used that copy to go back and study nature,” says Martin Andersson, Professor in Materials Chemistry at Chalmers, and leader of the study.
Continue reading “Skeletal imitation reveals how bones grow atom-by-atom” »
Magnetic reconnection takes place when the magnetic field lines embedded in a plasma—the hot, charged gas that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe—converge, break apart and explosively reconnect. This process takes place in thin sheets in which electric current is strongly concentrated.
According to conventional theory, these sheets can be highly elongated and severely constrain the velocity of the magnetic field lines that join and split apart, making fast reconnection impossible. However, observation shows that rapid reconnection does exist, directly contradicting theoretical predictions.
Asymmetry plays a major role in biology at every scale: think of DNA spirals, the fact that the human heart is positioned on the left, our preference to use our left or right hand … A team from the Institute of biology Valrose (CNRS/Inserm/Université Côte d’Azur), in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, has shown how a single protein induces a spiral motion in another molecule. Through a domino effect, this causes cells, organs, and indeed the entire body to twist, triggering lateralized behaviour. This research is published in the journal Science on November 23, 2018.
