SciPak

Mineral Dust, Metallic Particle Seeds for Ice Cloud Formation

Cirrus clouds are thin, wisps of white puffs, looking almost like the steam that comes out of a hot coffee cup on a cold morning. Formed by clumps of ice crystals at high altitudes, the role of cirrus clouds in the atmosphere and their impact on climate remain murky. Researchers have now discovered that mineral dust and metallic particles are the most common seeds that cirrus ice crystals form on, paving the way for cloud formation.

Read more about this research from the 9 May issue of Science Express here.

[Image courtesy of Bill Stafford, NASA. Click the image for more information.]

© 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

Special Issue on Exoplanets

Once people realized that the sun was a star — and that planets travel around it — it was only natural to suspect that other stars had planets of their own. Confirmation, however, didn’t come until the early 1990s, when astronomers found compelling signs of smaller bodies orbiting pulsars and main-sequence stars. Now, astronomers estimate that our Milky Way galaxy contains at least as many planets as it does stars. And with almost 900 of these so-called exoplanets detected already (and a few thousand other celestial bodies under investigation), this special issue of Science is dedicated to what researchers have learned about these distant planets so far.

Anyone wishing to use the cover of Science must contact AAAS to request permission to do so.

The Secret Lives of Bubbles

Although foams and foam-like materials, such as fire retardants, soapy films and the frothy head of a beer, are quite common, they have complex dynamics owing to their growth, coalescence and the shape-shifting properties of individual bubbles. The difficulty in modeling foam behavior is that the bubbles’ clustering together and bursting slowly, one-by-one, takes place across a wide range of space and timescales. Now, Robert Saye and James Sethian have untangled these processes and developed models for each of the key ones, along with rules for linking them together, to give a model for bulk foam dynamics.

Read more about this research from the 10 May issue of Science here.

[Video courtesy of Saye & Sethian, UC Berkeley/LBNL. Click here for more information.]

Flowering Activity Reveals Role for R-Loop

Researchers have gained insight into how one member of a category of mysterious molecule called long-noncoding RNA (lncRNA) is regulated. Long-noncoding RNA, once thought to have little use, is now being shown to play a part in gene expression — but how lncRNA itself is regulated has left researchers perplexed.

Read more about this research from the 3 May issue of Science here.

[Image courtesy of Andrew Davis. Click the image for more information.]

Agile Flight for a Tiny, Winged Robot

A flying robot the size of a house-fly is providing researchers with a new way to study the flight dynamics of nature’s smallest fliers. Flies are capable of extremely unique and agile flight maneuvers that, for example, allow them to quickly avoid flyswatters and tactfully land on flowers that are blowing in the wind. For this reason, their aerial prowess has been difficult to reproduce in the laboratory. But, Kevin Ma and colleagues have designed a tiny robot with flapping wings that can hover in place and perform controlled flight maneuvers.

Watch a video of the robots and read more about this research from the 3 May issue of Science here.

[Image courtesy of Kevin Ma, Pakpong Chirarattananon. Click the image for more information.]

© 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All Rights Reserved.

Reporter in North Korea Investigates Fight against Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis

Last month, International News Editor for the journal Science, Richard Stone, traveled to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to observe progress at the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory (NTRL), the only facility in the country capable of detecting strains of multidrug resistant tuberculosis. The article about Stone’s observations of the TB epidemic in North Korea appears in the 26 April issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS.

Read more here.

[Image courtesy of Richard Stone. Click the image for more information.]

The Mitochondria Cleanup Crew Just Got Bigger

Damaged mitochondria need to be eliminated or serious health issues result, and a new study describes a previously unknown part of this elimination process. As the main energy source of cells, mitochondria are essential — but when these tiny power plants go bad, they become toxic, and cells have a special way of eliminating them.

Read more about this research from the 26 April issue of Science here.

[Image courtesy of Gerald Dorn. Click the image for more information.]

Europas kjøttmeisbestand trosser spådommer, forblir stabil

Fire tiår med data om europeiske kjøttmeis viser at bestanden av fuglen har holdt seg ganske stabil, selv om larver, fuglenes primære matkilde, har dukket opp tidligere hvert år som følge av klimaendringer. Disse funnene er viktige fordi mange planter og dyrs livssyklus, inkludert hendelser som parring, blomstring og migrasjon er sterkt påvirket av sesongmessige og mellomårlige endringer. Mange forskere har trodd at tidligere blomstring eller tidligere ankomsttider for en art kunne være en katastrofe for andre arter som er avhengig av den. Thomas Reed og kollegene viser imidlertid at selv om stadig varmere vårer i Nederland har ført til et misforhold mellom kjøttmeisenes årlige hekketid og høysesongen for larver i regionen, har fuglenes befolkningsvekst forblitt upåvirket.

Denne forskningen var i utgaven av Science for 26. april.

[Image courtesy of Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Click the image for more information.]

Europe’s Great Tits Defy Predictions, Remain Stable

Four decades of data on European great tits show that populations of the bird have remained fairly stable, even though caterpillars—the birds’ primary food source—have been appearing earlier each year in response to climate change. These findings are important because the life cycles of many plants and animals, including events such as breeding, flowering and migration, are strongly influenced by seasonal and inter-annual changes, and many researchers have believed that earlier flowering dates or arrival times for one species could spell doom for another species that relies upon it. Thomas Reed and colleagues, however, show that even though increasingly warm springs in the Netherlands have led to a mismatch between the great tits’ annual breeding time and the seasonal peak of caterpillars in the region, the birds’ population growth has remained unaffected.

This research appeared in the 26 April issue of Science.

[Image courtesy of Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Click the image for more information.]

Probing and Proving Theories of Gravitation

Observations of a massive neutron star in a compact stellar binary in outer space confirm general relativity theory in a previously untested regime, a new study reports. General relativity (GR), proposed by Albert Einstein, has been tested outside of Earth before, but it has not been tested in the strong field of such a massive neutron star (or other, even stronger gravitational fields). Thus, scientists haven’t known whether this theory applies in such extreme environments. Now, new research by John Antoniadis and colleagues tests this theory in a strong-field setting.

Read more about this research from the 26 April issue of Science here.

[Image courtesy of European Southern Observatory / J. Antoniadis (MPIfR). Click the image for more information.]