A team of researchers from Google Brain, the University of Texas at Austin, MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, NASA, and NOAO has used artificial intelligence (AI) to find two more exoplanets in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope’s extended mission, K2. An artist’s impression of the super-Earth K2-265b. Image credit: Sci-News.com. The…

The discovery of life on Mars would get pretty much everyone excited. But the scientists hunting for it would probably be happy no matter what the outcome of their search — whether life turned out to extinct, dormant or extant. They’d even consider finding no evidence of life whatsoever to be an important discovery. But, as the saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,…

A team of professional and amateur archaeologists believe they may have discovered the monastery of Aebbe (615-683 CE), a powerful Anglo-Saxon woman who helped shape British history. Coldingham Priory. Image credit: DigVentures / Aerial Cam. Born a pagan princess, Aebbe (Æbbe of Coldingham) was the daughter of King Ethelfrith of Bernicia and Acha of Deira. Bernicia and Deira were Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in…

At a site dubbed Tanis in North Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation, paleontologists have unearthed an assemblage of exquisitely-preserved fossilized organisms — fish stacked one atop another and mixed in with burned tree trunks, conifer branches, mammals, mosasaur bones, insects, the partial carcass of a Triceratops, marine microorganisms called dinoflagellates and snail-like marine cephalopods…

An international team led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München scientist Mark Scherz has described a new genus and five new species of tiny frogs from the island of Madagascar. Mini mum in Manombo Special Reserve, lateral view on a thumbnail. Image credit: Scherz et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213314. “The five new species belong to Microhylidae (‘narrow-mouthed’ frogs), a highly…

A team of nuclear physicists from the Washington University, St. Louis, Michigan State University, Western Michigan University and the University of Connecticut has created and characterized ‘featherweight’ oxygen — the lightest-ever version of the familiar oxygen, with only three neutrons to its eight protons. The results appear in the journal Physical Review Letters. Webb et al discovered…

A team of researchers led by University of Massachusettes Amherst’s Dr. Trisha Andrew has developed ‘smart’ pajamas embedded with self-powered sensors that provide unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of heartbeat, breathing and sleep posture. Ordinary-looking pajamas are transformed into ‘smart’ ones with five strategically placed sensors that measure heartbeat, respiration and posture….

A research team led by scientists from the University of California, Davis, has used a unique approach to sequence the genomes of the English walnut (Juglans regia) and its wild North American relative, the little walnut (Juglans microcarpa), by tapping into the capabilities of two state-of-the-art technologies: long-read DNA sequencing and optical genome mapping. Members of the genus Juglans are…

A new theory on the thermal evolution of Earth explains why the planet’s upper mantle was cool enough to produce diamonds in the Archean Eon between 4 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, rather than turning into lumps of common graphite. After studying thousands of rocks samples dating at least 2.5 billion years old, Kamber & Tomlinson determined the Earth’s upper mantle was much cooler than…

A team of researchers led by University of Massachusettes Amherst’s Dr. Trisha Andrew has developed ‘smart’ pajamas embedded with self-powered sensors that provide unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of heartbeat, breathing and sleep posture. Ordinary-looking pajamas are transformed into ‘smart’ ones with five strategically placed sensors that measure heartbeat, respiration and posture….