Enlarge / NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft are at the launch site in Florida, ready for a wet dress rehearsal in early April. (credit: NASA) President Joe Biden on Monday released his budget request for the coming fiscal year, and NASA is a big winner. The administration is asking Congress to fund $25.9 billion […]
Enlarge / Tawny crazy ants (Nylanderia fulva) feeding on a cricket. (credit: Lawrence E. Gilbert) Several years ago, staffers at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco, Texas, noticed a new type of invasive ant species. Tawny crazy ants were so aggressive that they were driving birds out of their nests and occasionally swarming over […]
Enlarge / Don’t you hate it when ice crystals form and make your ice cream all crunchy? Scientists at the University of Tennessee found that plant cellulose could work better than the additives manufacturers currently use to slow the growth of ice crystals. (credit: Sally Anscombe/Getty Images) We’ve all made the mistake of leaving a […]
Enlarge / A woman wearing a face mask leaves a pharmacy in the town of Podolsk some 40 kilometers outside Moscow on November 12, 2021. (credit: Getty | YURI KADOBNOV ) As Western countries continue to ratchet up sanctions and boycotts against Russia, the country’s citizens are panic-buying medicines, such as antidepressants, sleeping pills, and […]
Enlarge / The three-dimensional structures of proteins provide many opportunities for specific interactions. (credit: Getty Images) Thanks in part to the large range of shapes they can adopt and the chemical environments those shapes create, proteins can perform an amazing number of functions. But there are many proteins we wish didn’t function quite so well, […]
Enlarge / Astra’s LV0009 takes off from Kodiak Island, Alaska, on March 15. (credit: Brady Kenniston/Astra) Welcome to Edition 4.36 of the Rocket Report! As I took last week off for Spring Break, there is quite a bit of news to get to this week, including positive steps forward for some US small launch companies […]
Enlarge / Brown University biologists x-rayed boa constrictors to determine how they manage to breathe while squeezing prey to death. (credit: John Capano) Watching a boa constrictor capture and consume its prey is quite something. First, the snake strikes and latches onto the prey with its teeth, then it coils its body tightly around the […]
Enlarge / Paltrow and Loehnen sit in Goop’s headquarters for an interview. (credit: Netflix) A former high-profile executive at Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle and wellness brand, Goop, has publicly denounced the brand’s “wellness culture” as “toxic”—but only for the purpose of promoting a different wellness brands’ products. In an Instagram post Tuesday, Goop’s former chief content […]
Enlarge / A 13-year-old celebrates getting the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 13, 2021. (credit: Getty | JOSEPH PREZIOSO ) So-called “natural immunity” against COVID-19 has always been a dodgy argument for avoiding vaccination during the pandemic. But amid omicron, natural immunity is clearly rubbish. Unvaccinated people who have recovered from an […]
Enlarge / Grand Prismatic Spring, Midway Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, (credit: Ignacio Palacios / Getty Images) The vast volcanic caldera at Yellowstone National Park is just the latest in a long string of volcanic sites, all of which seem to be linked to a hot blob of material that may go all the way […]