Coffee Table Science

Photo by  GEORGE DESIPRIS  from  Pexels Water is a valuable resource in deep space, along with being a sign of possible life. There are numerous things that astronauts do in space and water is important for a few among those. It is also essential for astronaut landings, survival, and other purposes such as the production of rocket fuel. Researchers in China discovered the first signs of the  presence of water on the moon’s surface . This was done with help of the data obtained from Chang’E-5 lander’s lunar mineralogical spectrometer (LMS).  Professors  LIN Yangting and LIN Honglei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGGCAS) were the ones who made the discovery. The study also included researchers from CAS's National Space Science Center, the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, CAS's Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, and Nanjing University. Context images and water content at the Chang’E-5 landing site. Credit: LIN Honglei This

Image credit: University of Minnesota                                       The researchers at the University of Minnesota Twins Cities have developed a fully 3D-printed, flexible OLED display using a customised printer that can print objects for you. This finding can help to produce low-cost OLED displays in the coming years, instead of technicians using costly microfabrication facilities to construct small-scale structures such as computer chips, smartphone displays, etc. The detailed study is published in Science Advances . OLED Technology- Overview OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode- a technology that uses LEDs to produce light by organic molecules. This technology helps to create the world’s best display panels. Organic displays are prepared by placing thin films of organic semiconductors such as silicon or gallium arsenide between two conductors. These films emit a bright light when an electric current is applied. Each pixel emits its own light and is controlled indivi

Photo by  Pixabay  from  Pexels Without a shadow of a doubt, dogs are humanity's best friend. The close association over several centuries may have also given them an extraordinary ability to understand human languages. New research published in the journal, NeuroImage has revealed that dogs can actually distinguish between different human languages. The research was conducted by  Laura Cuaya , a neurobiologist at Eötvös Loránd University , and her team in Hungary.  Analyses of Dogs' Auditory Abilities Cuaya and her team trained 18 dogs including Kun-Kun (Cuaya's own pet), to lie motionless inside the MRI machine so their brains could be scanned while listening to the audio recordings of the human speech.  A dog trained to lie motionless for a MRI scan. Photo: Eniko Kubinyi Out of the 18 dogs, two came from Spanish-speaking families and the rest from Hungarian-speaking ones. In the machine, each dog was exposed to an excerpt from a popular children's book, ‘The Little

Image: A plasma ejection during a solar flare. Immediately after the eruption, cascades of magnetic loops form over the eruption area as the magnetic fields attempt to reorganize. Source: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA One of the major mysteries of solar physics is why the Sun's corona, the outermost part of its atmosphere reaches temperatures of several million degrees Celsius . A "hot" path leading to a region of the solar atmosphere just below the corona, where sound waves and certain plasma waves move at the same speed, explains this effect. A team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) , a German national lab, developed a laboratory model and for the first time experimentally confirmed the theoretically predicted behaviour of these plasma waves – called Alfvén waves. This was done in an experiment using the molten alkali metal rubidium and pulsed high magnetic fields, as reported in the journal Physical Review Letters. In solar physics, it is now comm

Photo by  SpaceX  from  Pexels On a recent resupply mission, SpaceX's-Dragon spacecraft carried numerous important items for scientific research to the International Space Station (ISS) . The Dragon spacecraft separated from Falcon 9 and landed autonomously on the space station on Wednesday, December 22 2021, around 4:30 a.m., and will remain there for a month. Among the 6500 pounds of materials that the spacecraft launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida were supplies for the crew, a skin bioprinter, and even a detergent . Skin Bioprinting Bandages Skin bioprinting is a new approach for creating artificial skin from natural and synthetic building blocks. This process uses biological molecules and cell viability (a measure of live and healthy cells in a population) to print tissue structures. Skin reconstruction via burns is one of the applications of bioprinting that has been developing in the past years. However, it still needs a large bioprinter to print a tissue, allow

Image Credit: Gilles San Martin/ Wikimedia Commons Scientists have recovered human DNA from the 'cement' that head lice use to bind their eggs to hairs potentially opening up a new window into the past. In a recently published study, DNA was extracted for the first time from cement on hairs obtained from mummified corpses dating back 1,500-2,000 years. As female lice attach eggs, known as nits, to the hair, skin cells from the scalp also get enclosed in the cement made by female lice, saving them from decay for a considerable period. The University of Reading led the study, which also included other researchers from Argentina, Wales and Denmark. The findings of the study were published in  Molecular Biology and Evolution . A mummified adult man of the Ansilta culture, from the Andes of San Juan, Argentina, dating back approx 2,000 years. Credit: Universidad Nacional de San Juan Ancient DNA has been retrieved mostly from thick bone from the skull or from within teeth, as these

                                   Photo by Pixabay from Pexels A recent study conducted at Texas A&M University has shown that college students are addicted to smartphones, have higher levels of screen time and access multiple devices frequently compared to previous generations. Due to the increased use of these gadgets, especially tabs and smartphones, students are more likely to shift towards a comfortable workplace such as a couch or chair with no desk that leads to musculoskeletal disorders like low back pain, sprains, and strain at a very young age. According to the 2021  Statista  report, the present number of smartphone users on the planet is 6.37 billion, which means 80.63% of the human population owns a smartphone. The figure rose from 2016 when the number of users was 3.66 or roughly 50% of the global population. With the hike in the number of smartphone users, a large population is expected to suffer from musculoskeletal disorders like low back pain due to incorrect