Wired Space Photo of the Day: Supermassive Black Hole Jets
Wired Space Photo of the Day: Close-Up With Halley’s Comet
Wired Space Photo of the Day: Ligeia Mare
Telling Hexanes Apart
The efficiency of modern internal combustion engines depends on the relative reactivity of the hydrocarbons that comprise the fuel. In particular, branched hydrocarbons are less likely than their linear counterparts … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
Life Versus the Volcanoes
Correlating a specific triggering event, such as an asteroid impact or massive volcanism, to mass extinction events is clouded by the difficulty in precisely timing their occurrence in the geologic … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
The Master Switch for Itch?
Recently, gastrin-releasing peptide (GRP) has been implicated as the primary neurotransmitter between itch-sensitive nerve fibers and downstream neurons in the spinal cord. However, Mishra and Hoon (p. 968) challenge this … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
A Touchy Subject
The ability to hold a glass being filled with water without dropping it depends on our ability to touch objects and to know the correct pressure to exert. Thus, for … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
For Good Measure
SS Cygni is a well-studied binary star system in the northern constellation Cygnus, consisting of a white dwarf that accretes matter from its companion star. Miller-Jones et al. (p. 950; … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
Folding Too Slow, Off You Go
One of the major questions of chaperone-assisted protein-folding pathways is how substrates that fail to fold avoid futile folding cycles. Xu et al. (p. 978; see the Perspective by Kleizen … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
Spleen Knockout Explained
Isolated congenital asplenia (ICA) is a rare disorder where patients are born without a spleen and are at increased risk of bacterial infection but have no other developmental abnormalities. Through … [Read more]
via This Week in Science
