D-BRIEF

Elephants Now Gang Up In Human-Dominated Areas

(Credit: Natthawut Raruen/Shutterstock)

Elephants might be popular in zoos and older kids’ TV shows, but they’re not doing so great in the wild. Asian elephants are classified as endangered, thanks in large part to human activity. But the big beasts are brainy, and they’re trying apparently trying new things in the face of these changing conditions to survive and even thrive.

At least, that’s what a team of Indian researchers describes in a Scientific Reports paper today. They obs …

D-BRIEF

Space Radiation Hasn’t Contributed to Astronaut Mortality — Yet, Study Shows

Astronauts and cosmonauts aren’t at any elevated risk from radiation damage — at least so far. (Credit: NASA)

As NASA and other agencies look forward to placing humans on the Moon, Mars, and other destinations far beyond Earth’s sheltering atmosphere and magnetic fields, their worries about the harmful radiation that permeates space will only grow.

Many aspects of how the human body will react to long periods in space remain unknown. But using the small group of people who have already …

D-BRIEF

Eta Carinae Explodes in a Vibrant Fireworks Show in New Hubble Image

(Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of Arizona) and J. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute))

As though in preparation for summer festivities, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this cosmic fireworks show from Eta Carinae. The double star system, glowing in red, white, and blue, has exploded several times. The most recent explosion was nearly 200 years ago, in 1838, when an event called the Great Eruption set this fireworks show off.

Hubble has been photographing Eta Carinae for 25 years,  …

D-BRIEF

Astronomers Peer Into the Atmosphere of a Super-Earth for the First Time

The planet GJ 3470 b has a rocky core and a thick hydrogen and helium atmosphere, and circles quite close to its dim red star. (Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Hustak)

The Kepler Space Telescope revealed planets outside our solar system by the thousands. With this wave of discoveries, astronomers realized something peculiar: the most common type of planet in the galaxy is one our solar system doesn’t have. It’s a planet between the size of Earth and Neptune, known either as a super-Earth or a sub-Ne …

D-BRIEF

Lichens Survived A Mass Extinction, Scientists Find. But How Are They Doing Now?

Lichens come in many colors. (Credit: Field Museum)

65 million years ago, a meteor catastrophically changed our planet’s biodiversity. All non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. By some estimates, 15,000 teragrams (that’s equal to the mass of 10 million redwood trees) of soot darkened the air. Lush and flowering plants that had proliferated around 40 million years earlier were decimated, deprived of life-giving sunlight. Surrounded by death, fungi flourished – their favorite  …

D-BRIEF

Treated Gut Bacteria Help Slim Down Cardiovascular Risks in Obese People

(Credit: aijiro/Shutterstock)

Nearly a third of all deaths in the world are due to heart diseases. Now, a new study suggests that an infusion of gut bacteria might hold promise for treating cardiovascular conditions.

The proof-of-concept study looked at obese people given a daily supplement of helpful bacteria that had been killed with heat, or pasteurized. The study paves the way for a larger human trial aimed at turning the discovery into a commercially-available food supplement that co …

D-BRIEF

The 2019 South American Eclipse, as Captured By Those on the Ground

The solar eclipse took place around 4:30 p.m. EDT over parts of South America. (Credit: Mike Newbry on Unsplash)

A total solar eclipse blazed a path through parts of South America on July 2, 2019. Tens of thousands of tourists and locals looked skywards in Chile and Argentina to see the midday light turn to darkness as the sun and the moon crossed paths. Totality, the point at which the Moon covers the Sun completely, lasted for a little over two minutes.

The event was predictably a hit o …

D-BRIEF

With CRISPR and Medication, Scientists Remove HIV Virus from Mice

(Credit: Evgeniy Kalinovskiy/Shutterstock)

Nearly 37 million people suffer from human immune deficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The go-to treatment for the infection is antiretroviral therapy, better known as ART. It can prevent the progression of the disease, enabling infected individuals to live longer, healthier lives. But even with ART, the virus still lingers in the body.

Now researchers describe a new form of ART dubbed LASER ART that, in combination with CRISPR- …

D-BRIEF

Second Non-Repeating Fast Radio Burst Tracked to Its Source

The Deep Synoptic Array-10, which spotted the burst, is located at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory. (Credit: Caltech/OVRO/Gregg Hallinan)

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are one of astronomy’s hottest topics — and biggest mysteries. These brief bursts of radio waves from outside the Milky Way typically pop off for only a fraction of a second, then disappear forever, never to be seen again. Only two FRBs have ever been caught repeating, one of which astronomers traced back to its home gal …

THE CRUX

Made in Space: Why Earth’s Industries Might One Day Leave Our Planet

Asteroids like Psyche 16, thought to be the core of a vanished planet, could be worth trillions. (Credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech)

What if the key to protecting our planet … was leaving it? Well, in part, at least. As worries about climate change mount, and the race to obtain resources from space heats up, some experts and über-rich CEOs are seriously considering moving our industry off-planet. That means using robots to build satellites and space stations by mining asteroids, …