Sampling environmental DNA and RNA (eDNA and eRNA) can better help determine the presence of both human and wildlife pathogens, according to researchers. The eDNA and eRNA approach works through the collection of a sample (often from an aquatic source), whose genetic contents are then sequenced to reveal the presence and prevalence of pathogens. This […]
A giant planet orbiting at a large distance around a sun-like star has presented a puzzle to astronomers because it does not seem to fit either of the two most well-known models for the formation of large gaseous planets, according to a study. The planet — YSES 2b — is located 360 light years from […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to be launched this October, could feasibly detect ammonia around six gas dwarf planets after just a few orbits, thus detecting a potential signature of life on other planets in as little as 60 hours. Gas dwarf planets have the potential to foster life. Since none of these super-Earths […]
A solitary lifestyle can have profound effects on the brains’ ability to recognize faces, finds a study on wasps with implications on humans facing social isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic. Paper wasps – a social insect – recognizes the brightly colored faces of other paper wasps. But, when reared in isolation, they tend to […]
Modern human brain structures developed 1.5 to 1.7 million years ago in the African Homo populations and after they had already begun walking on two feet and had even started spreading out of Africa, according to a study. The first ancestors from the genus Homo emerged in Africa about 2.5 million years ago and walked […]
Do you know that a NASA spacecraft launched 20 years ago is still working at the Red Planet? For two decades, the longest-lived spacecraft at the Red Planet, 2001 Mars Odyssey, has helped locate water ice, assess landing sites, and study the planet’s mysterious moons, NASA said. Launched 20 years ago on April 7, the […]
Interbreeding among modern humans and Neanderthals was common in Europe, say scientists who sequenced the oldest Homo sapiens DNA dating back more than 45,000 years from the caves in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. In the first study, Mateja Hajdinjak and team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, examined […]
Peering back 10 billion years into the universe’s past, astronomers have found a pair of quasars that are so close to each other they look like a single object in ground-based telescopic photos, but not in the Hubble Space Telescope’s crisp view. The researchers believe the quasars are very close to each other because they […]
Tracking a rare supernova explosion, Indian astronomers have traced it to one of the hottest kind of stars, called Wolf-Rayet stars or WR stars. The rare Wolf-Rayet stars are highly luminous objects a thousand times that of the Sun and have intrigued astronomers for long, the Union Ministry of Science and Technology said in a […]
A research team of international space scientists has found new evidence of an asteroid impact in Antarctica 430,000 years ago. Extra-terrestrial particles recovered on the summit of Walnumfjellet (WN) within the Sor Rondane Mountains, Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, indicate an unusual touchdown event where a jet of melted and vaporised meteoritic material resulting from […]
Scientists have identified a pattern of mutations in the novel coronavirus which enable it to evade the immune system’s antibodies, findings that shed light on how the virus may possibly escape existing vaccines and therapeutics. According to the researchers, including those from the University of Pittsburgh in the US, the coronavirus undergoes selective deletions in […]
