A potential sign of dark matter is looking less convincing in the wake of a new analysis.
High-energy blips of radiation known as gamma rays seem to be streaming from the center of the Milky Way in excess. Some scientists have proposed that dark matter could be the cause of that overabundance. Particles of dark matter — an invisible and unidentified substance that makes up the bulk of the matter in the cosmos — could be annihilating in the center of the galaxy, producing gamma rays (SN Online: 11/4/14).
In the new study, scientists scrutinized the latest data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. At the galaxy’s center, the researchers found more gamma rays than they could explain, they report in a paper posted online April 12 at arXiv.org. But, when the researchers compared the region at the center of the galaxy with control regions away from the galaxy’s center — where dark matter signals wouldn’t be expected — they also found spots with more gamma rays than expected.
“What I see in the control regions looks just like what I see in the galactic center,” says astrophysicist Andrea Albert of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, one of the researchers who worked on the analysis. So they can’t claim that dark matter is the cause. “That’s a bummer,” she says.
Premature babies may one day continue developing in an artificial womb, new work with sheep suggests.
A fluid-filled bag that mimics the womb kept premature lambs alive and developing normally for four weeks, researchers report April 25 in Nature Communications. Lambs at a gestational age equivalent to that of a 23- or 24-week-old human fetus had normal lung and brain development after a month in the artificial womb, the researchers discovered. A similar device might be ready for use in premature human babies in three to five years if additional animal tests pan out, study coauthor Alan Flake estimates. But this is not the science fiction scenario of Brave New World, in which humans were grown entirely in tanks, says Flake, a pediatric and fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “I don’t view this as something that’s going to replace mothers.” Technical and biological hurdles would prevent doctors from using an artificial womb to rescue premature babies younger than about 23 weeks, he says.
Researchers have been trying for 60 years to make an artificial womb or artificial placenta, says George Mychaliska, a pediatric and fetal surgeon at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. His own group has been working on an artificial placenta, or what he calls an “extra-corporeal life-support” system for premature babies for a decade. “One month is very impressive, and the data behind that is strong,” Mychaliska says, but adds that what works for lambs might not work as well for human babies.
In the United States, thousands of babies each year are born extremely premature, before 28 weeks of pregnancy. Of those born at the edge of viability, at 23 weeks of gestation, up to about 70 percent die; many of the survivors have lung and other health problems partly caused by efforts to keep them alive. Putting premature babies on ventilators to get oxygen into their bodies has mixed results, Mychaliska says. “The same treatment that is potentially saving their lives is also damaging their lungs.”
Flake and colleagues’ initial efforts to make an artificial womb — including submerging lambs in fluid in a tank — failed. Infection soon set in, killing the animals. This time, the researchers tried to mimic more closely what happens during normal pregnancy. In the new system, a lamb is surgically delivered via cesarean section and placed in a sterile bag filled with an electrolyte fluid. Because the bag is closed, the risk of infection is reduced. Tubes carrying oxygenated blood plug into the lamb’s umbilical cord, and the beating of the fetus’s heart pumps the blood at volumes and pressure comparable to what is normally delivered by the placenta. Other groups have put tubes in the neck and used an external pump to circulate the blood, which may put too much pressure on fetal hearts, causing heart failure, Flake says.
Like a real womb, the artificial one also bathes lambs in the fluid needed for proper lung development. Flake’s team prevents the lambs from taking a breath because even a little air might harm lung development. Premature babies would have to be delivered surgically and placed immediately into the fluid incubator. That would rule out about 50 percent of extremely premature babies because they are born vaginally, Flake says.
Flake’s version of the device may not be feasible for human babies for several technical reasons, too, Mychaliska says. One barrier is that the system requires a delicate fetal surgery to connect the umbilical cord to the incubator while the baby is still attached to the mother. Few hospitals are equipped to perform such an operation, he says.
Flake acknowledges that several kinks must still be worked out before the artificial womb can be tested on human babies. “We have a lot to learn in terms of its capabilities and its safety,” he says, but his group may soon be ready to begin human clinical trials. “We honestly think it could be as early as two to three years from now — and certainly within five years — that we’ll be applying it to humans.”
A fossil dinosaur embryo known as “Baby Louie” has a new name. It belongs to a newly identified species of dinosaur called Beibeilong sinensis, researchers report May 9 in Nature Communications.
In the 1980s and 1990s, farmers found thousands of fossilized dinosaur eggs in the rocks of Henan Province in China and sold them overseas. It turned out that one chunk of rock, purchased by a company that sells museum-quality fossils and rock specimens, held not only eggs but also an embryonic dinosaur skeleton. It was dubbed “Baby Louie,” after a National Geographic photographer whose images of it appeared in a cover story for the magazine. Paleontologists knew Baby Louie was some kind of oviraptorosaur, a two-legged, birdlike dinosaur. But its species was a mystery. So in 2015, Junchang Lü of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing and colleagues returned to the site in China where the eggs were excavated. They analyzed fossils there and examined Baby Louie’s remains, now housed in the Henan Geological Museum. The embryo measures 38 centimeters from its snout to the start of its tail and dates to about 90 million years ago.
Based on the structure of Baby Louie’s facial bones and other anatomical features, the team declared the dinosaur a new species. In Chinese, Beibei means “baby” and long means “dragon.”
Baby Louie’s skeleton was found with six to eight similar-looking dinosaur eggs. This type of dino egg is the largest identified to date and appears to have been abundant, leading paleontologists to think that birdlike dinosaurs like Baby Louie were common in the Late Cretaceous.
Mouse sperm could win awards for resilience. Sperm freeze-dried and sent into space for months of exposure to high levels of solar radiation later produced healthy babies, researchers report online May 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
If humans ever embark on long-term space flights, we’ll need a way to reproduce. One potential hurdle (beyond the logistical challenges of microgravity) is the high amount of solar radiation in space — radiation exposure is 100 times as high on the International Space Station as on Earth. Those doses might cause damaging genetic mutations in banked eggs and sperm. To test this possibility, Japanese researchers sent freeze-dried mouse sperm up to the space station, where the sperm spent nine months. When rehydrated back on Earth, the sperm showed some signs of DNA damage compared with earthly sperm.
But when the researchers used the space sperm to fertilize eggs in the lab and then injected the eggs into female mice, the mice birthed healthy pups that were able to have their own offspring. The researchers suspect that some of the initial DNA damage might have been repaired after fertilization.
If mouse sperm can survive a trip to space, perhaps human sperm can, too.
HAT-P 7b is a windy world. Stiff easterlies typically whip through the atmosphere of the distant exoplanet, but sometimes the powerful gales blow in surprisingly varied directions. Now, simulations of the planet’s magnetic field lines, illustrated here as a rainbow of scrawled marks, reveal that HAT-P 7b’s magnetic field influences the winds, even turning some into westerlies. The result, published May 15 in Nature Astronomy, could lead to a better understanding of the atmospheres of other exoplanets. Known as a “hot Jupiter,” HAT-P 7b is a gas giant that orbits its star once every 2.2 Earth days. The exoplanet, located 1,043 light-years away, is also tidally locked: One side always faces toward its star while the other faces away. That orientation pushes temperatures to about 1,900° Celsius on the planet’s dayside compared with about 900° C on the nightside. Those extreme temperature differences tend to power strong easterly winds, according to an analysis of data from the Kepler satellite. But that analysis also revealed that over time the winds are surprisingly mercurial.
The magnetic field, which may be generated by the planet’s core, is connected to the winds because of high temperatures stripping electrons from atmospheric atoms of lithium, sodium and potassium, making them positively charged. Those particles then interact with the field, creating an electromagnetic force strong enough to disrupt the stout easterly winds, writes study author Tamara Rogers, an astrophysicist at Newcastle University in England.
In the image above, blue lines track strong magnetic field lines directed one way, while those in magenta trace powerful lines in the opposite direction. Weaker parts of the field lines are shown in green and yellow. The stronger the magnetic field, the wilder the winds — with the strongest lines completely reversing the direction the winds blow, Rogers concludes.
Take a trip to a black hole with Stephen Hawking as a guide, watch glowing bioluminescent earthworms wriggle away from predators and discover the fascinating mathematics of origami — all while cuddled up in front of a laptop. That’s the promise of the online streaming service CuriosityStream, which offers hefty doses of science for viewers who prefer fact-based documentaries over reality TV, sports and the political bickering that dominate today’s television programming.
CuriosityStream, which recently celebrated its second birthday, operates much like Netflix. With plans starting at $2.99 per month, users can browse more than 1,700 commercial-free programs covering science, technology, history and the arts. The service works on computers, mobile devices and streaming players such as Roku and Apple TV. CuriosityStream aims to supplement the media diet of science-starved viewers. “When you look at television … there’s very little science on anymore,” says Steve Burns, CuriosityStream’s chief programming officer. Subscribers, he says, “crave the substance that they’ve been missing on TV for so long.”
Along with a slew of documentaries from the BBC and other public broadcasters, CuriosityStream offers more than 600 original programs that you won’t find anywhere else. One standout is David Attenborough’s Light on Earth, in which the naturalist takes viewers on an engaging survey of bioluminescent life, from flickering fireflies and luminous mushrooms to eerily glowing ocean creatures.
Another enjoyable original is Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, in which the famed physicist tours a black hole, exoplanet Gliese 832c, Saturn and other cosmic locales. Computer-generated imagery of the turbulent region around a black hole, for example, provides a brilliant visual background to Hawking’s explanations of relevant research. One episode is currently available, and two new ones are slated to go online later in the year.
Some shows are more engaging than others. Another original, The Hunt for Dark Matter, takes a deep dive into the technology behind the search for the invisible substance thought to pervade the universe. But the show will likely fall flat for many viewers, as its introduction lacks some of the background on the physics of dark matter that is necessary to grasp the relevance of the work.
CuriosityStream provides a wealth of options to choose from, including a variety of shorter shows, each 10 or 15 minutes long. With new programs added regularly, the service should provide enough binge-worthy fodder to keep even the most avid documentary lovers busy
On June 18, 4-year-old Bentley Thomas Koch fatally shot himself in the face. A few weeks earlier, Harmony Warfield, age 7, was shot and killed by her 2-year-old cousin. And teens Shadi Najjar and Artem Ziberov, both on the eve of graduating from high school, died in a hail of gunfire. Stories like these of kids dying from gunshot wounds are devastating, but, sadly, they aren’t an anomaly.
The most comprehensive look at fatal and nonfatal firearm injuries among children in the United States makes that abundantly clear. Every day, roughly 19 children die or are medically treated in an emergency department for gun-inflicted wounds, a study published June 19 in Pediatrics finds.
The statistics, based on data from 2002 to 2014, are stark:
Nearly 1,300 children, from birth to age 17, die from gunshot wounds each year on average and another 5,790 kids are wounded; Of the deaths, 53 percent are homicides, 38 percent are suicides and 6 percent are accidents; Boys ages 13 to 17 make up the bulk of gunshot victims; Cause of death varies by race — African-Americans are overwhelmingly more likely to die from homicide than suicide; white kids are nearly three times as likely to die from suicide as from homicide; and for American Indian and Asian-American kids, it’s 50-50. But this study doesn’t just lay out the numbers. It starts to dig deeper into the whys. And those whys can have important implications, laying the framework for policies that could ultimately lead to a drop in the numbers.
For the numbers, Katherine Fowler, a behavioral scientist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and colleagues started with data from the National Vital Statistics System and the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System.
For the whys, her team looked at cases described in the National Violent Death Reporting System, or NVDRS. That let the researchers fill in details like where an incident took place and whether it involved multiple victims — for instance, a homicide followed by suicide or a multiple victim homicide. The database also includes demographic information about the shooter, evidence of alcohol or drugs at the time of death, and whether the incident was gang-related or involved a boyfriend or girlfriend or parents. Clues to whether relationship, financial or school issues were part of the problem also come to light, as does evidence of depression, anxiety, any previous suicide attempt, treatment for mental health problems and physical health problems. Notes about playing with a gun or thinking the gun was a toy, as well as hunting accidents are also included. This tally of circumstances led Fowler and colleagues to conclude that firearm homicides of younger children, up through age 12, often involve conflict between parents, intimate partners or among family. “This highlights how children can be caught in the cross fire in cases of domestic violence and points to the importance of addressing the intersection of these forms of violence,” she says.
The results also reveal something important about child suicides involving guns. “While mental health factors are important, the findings also show that firearm suicides were also frequently related to situational life stressors and relationship problems with an intimate partner, friend or family member,” Fowler notes.
It’s these kinds of details that can help researchers and lawmakers create more effective policies to prevent such tragic deaths and injuries. It’s worked in other cases. Statistics have shown that tweaks to laws regulating the times of day teens can drive lead to injury prevention. Ditto for access to free swimming lessons when it comes to stopping accidental drownings. But similar data on gun deaths and injuries and the effectiveness of policy to prevent them are harder to come by thanks to lack of funding and political support (SN: 5/14/16, p. 16).
Even so, “we know kids are killing themselves and others with guns,” says David Hemenway, a Harvard University economist and an expert in gun research. When it comes to combatting the problem, “the circumstances help narrow down the policy.”
Fowler says the findings “highlight the need for evidence-based solutions to address this public health problem.” She’s armed with a laundry list of potential policies that could have an impact on the whys of gun violence and make a dent in the stats. School counseling programs could help kids manage their emotions and develop skills to resolve problems in relationships and with peers, she says. Along with therapy, those programs could help to reduce suicidal behavior and youth violence. Street outreach programs may also reduce gang-related violence. Parents and pediatricians talking about storing guns safely — a policy touted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, but one that has met resistance in some states — is another option.
There’s another big need, too: more data.
Despite a better picture of what’s happening when kids get a hold of guns, the data are fragmentary and incomplete, says pediatrician Eliot Nelson of the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital in Burlington. For instance, information from the NVDRS was limited to 17 states, so the numbers aren’t nationally representative. Last year, the database was expanded to 42 states and could eventually be expanded to all 50, but that will take additional funding from Congress.
The way gun injury and death data are coded in databases is another issue. Many unintentional deaths, such as when a child accidentally shoots and kills a sibling or friend, are labeled homicides, Hemenway says. Such misclassifications make it more difficult to create a policy, he says. Take, for instance, encouraging parents to lock up guns in the house. Without correctly coded data to say that younger kids are more likely to be killed by a gun at home while older kids are more likely to be killed by guns at a friend’s house, it’s harder to know how to talk to parents. For parents of young kids, the message might be to lock up their own guns; for parents of older kids, it might be to inquire about guns at the homes of their children’s friends. “We don’t always know who best to target our message to,” Nelson says.
Studies such as Fowler’s are slowly filling in the gaps. But not fast enough for kids like Bentley, Harmony, Shadi and Artem. “We want to keep growing our knowledge to prevent problems,” Nelson says. But, he says, it’s hard to do when money and politics hamper research into the problem. Gun-related deaths ranks third as the leading cause of death in 1- to 17-year-olds in the United States. “Gun death in kids is such a common problem,” Nelson says. “We can’t continue to ignore it.”
In Carl Sagan’s 1985 sci-fi novel Contact, a radio astronomer battles naysayers and funding setbacks to persist in her audacious plan — scanning the skies for signals from aliens. Sagan had real-life inspiration for his book (and the 1997 movie of the same name): astronomer Jill Tarter, who spearheaded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, for decades.
In Sagan’s story, the protagonist, Ellie Arroway, detects mysterious chatter from the cosmos. Tarter had no such luck. But her story, told by journalist Sarah Scoles in Making Contact, still provides insights into what it means to be human in a vast universe potentially harboring other life. Tarter began her career as a typical radio astronomer, studying mainstream topics like stars and galaxies as a Ph.D. student. But after graduating in 1975, she began to focus on SETI, poring over data from radio telescopes, searching for unnatural blips that could be a sign of an intelligent civilization. SETI researchers typically focus on radio waves because those long wavelengths can travel through our galaxy’s dust without being absorbed. Writings about SETI are prone to dreamy romanticism, but Making Contact admirably steers clear of excessive sentimentality. As a child gaping at the stars, Tarter wondered if creatures in the heavens were looking in our direction. Of course, Scoles notes, plenty of kids have wondered the same thing. Though Tarter’s childhood musings might seem special in retrospect, they aren’t what make her stand out.
Instead, Scoles — who has clear affection for her subject — highlights Tarter’s tenacity. In the face of numerous obstacles, Tarter pushed the field forward, seemingly by force of will.
In a detailed portrait of how the science sausage gets made, the book follows Tarter as she faced numerous funding woes. The field of SETI, which has at various points in its history received money through NASA, is an easy target for funding cuts, with some politicians deriding it as a wasteful hunt for “little green men.” Tarter, like the fictional Arroway, fought with Congress for taxpayer dollars SETI received, then scrambled for cash from other sources to keep telescopes and other equipment in operation. Wealthy donors kept SETI afloat — and still do. To maximize their ability to accept funding, Tarter and other SETI pioneers founded the nonprofit SETI Institute, in Mountain View, Calif., in 1984. Throughout, Tarter somehow managed to maintain her passion for a long shot search.
Although it’s a compelling story, the book stumbles in a few places, mainly minor sloppiness with physics facts, which may bother the most astute readers. (Scoles writes, for example, “Light is the only way we can learn about the universe,” neglecting gravitational waves and neutrinos, both of which have revealed secrets of cosmic objects.)
Now retired, Tarter has lost her chance to follow in Arroway’s fictional footsteps — she will never find any alien communiqués. But even if astronomers never hear from E.T., Tarter sees benefits in the search: SETI is an opportunity to make humankind less selfish. Just the thought that other creatures might inhabit the universe can make human squabbles seem less significant.
People in the United States who wear contact lenses share an eye-opening characteristic. Roughly 85 percent report regularly taking at least one risk when wearing or cleaning their lenses. In the Aug. 18 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe results from a 2016 national survey of more than 6,000 people.
Contrary to previous studies, teens did better in some categories than adults. The no-no’s below can lead to serious eye infections, mainly by introducing microorganisms into the eye. Even water that’s safe to drink or swim in can bug up lenses.
Three days after Bronny James revealed that he had committed to USC, the Trojans have landed another son of an NBA great.
DJ Rodman, the son of five-time NBA champion Dennis Rodman, announced on Tuesday that he will transfer to USC for the 2023-24 season.
Rodman played four seasons at Washington State. He will use his extra year of eligibility to join a USC team that is loading up on talent.
Just how good is Rodman? And what role could he play for the Trojans?
How good is DJ Rodman? Rodman was a reliable starter in 30 out of 31 games for Washington State this past season. He is coming off his most impactful year, posting 9.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 0.7 steals while shooting 38.1 percent from beyond the arc in 2022-23.
Rodman scored in double figures in 12 contests this past year, including a 23-point performance against Eastern Washington in the NIT. He corralled double-digit rebounds in four games and snagged at least two steals in eight games.
Rodman plays on the wing, but he competes on the defensive end and on the glass — just like his father. He's a versatile defender who will take on perimeter assignments and battle big men in the post.
He'll create second-chance opportunities with a nose for the ball as an offensive rebounder, and he's capable of stretching the floor with an improved 3-point shot.
Rodman will add depth to a reloaded USC roster that should compete for a Pac-12 championship next season.
DJ Rodman college stats Rodman played 111 games over four seasons at Washington State. He served as a role player over his first three seasons before being promoted to the starting lineup for his senior season.
You can find his career averages below:
21.7 minutes per game 5.5 points per game 4.0 rebounds per game 0.9 assists per game 0.4 steals per game 0.2 blocks per game 39.8 percent FG 35.2 percent 3PT 77.6 percent FT USC roster for 2023, including DJ Rodman and Bronny James Name Height Position Class Hometown High School Isaiah Collier 6-4 G FR Marietta, Ga. Wheeler HS Bronny James 6-3 G FR Los Angeles, Calif. Sierra Canyon HS Arrinten Page 6-9 F FR Marrieta, Ga. Wheeler HS Kobe Johnson 6-6 F JR Milwaukee, Wis. Nicolet HS Vincent Iwuchukwu 7-1 F SO San Antonio, Texas Southern Calif. Academy Oziyah Sellers 6-5 G SO Hayward, Calif. Southern Calif. Academy Boogie Ellis 6-3 G SR San Diego, Calif. Mission Bay HS Zach Brooker 6-0 G SR Calabasas, Calif. Sierra Canyon HS Joshua Morgan 6-11 F SR Sacramento, Calif. Sheldon HS Harrison Hornery 6-10 F JR Toowoomba, Australia Mater Dei HS Kijani Wright 6-9 F SO Los Angeles, Calif. Sierra Canyon HS DJ Rodman 6-6 F SR Newport Beach, Calif. JSerra Catholic HS Did LeBron James and Dennis Rodman play together? No, they did not.
Rodman retired after the 1999-00 season. James was drafted in 2003, making his NBA debut at the start of the 2003-04 season.
