29 July 2026
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Cracking the axolotl code: How to regrow limbs and stay young
Minor cuts and scrapes usually heal in time, but losing a finger or a whole limb? For most vertebrates, that's a done deal. Unless, of course, you've got the self-healing machinery of an axolotl.
These unusually resilient and famously photogenic aquatic salamanders—native
to Mexico—can regenerate parts of their bodies, including limbs, eyes and even bits of their brain. With their frilly pink gills and heartwarming smiles, they're always camera-ready—even if they have to regrow an appendage or two first.
Axolotls are also the Peter Pans of the amphibian class. Like the fictional boy who never wanted to grow up, they skip the transitional stage that ushers most of their counterparts into adulthood on land and remain in tadpole form forever. While they don't have to worry about aging, certain diseases—as well as predators—do catch up with them in time. Most live 10 to 15 years.
So why can axolotls—these charismatic creatures—regrow a limb, whereas humans just undergo wound healing? And how is it that most organisms go through aging while a lucky few get to press a pause button?
Understanding regeneration could allow for an axolotl-style intervention into wound healing and the aging process, according to Northeastern University professor of biology and mathematics Calina Copos. The question at the heart of both pathways is what steers cells down one path versus the other, she said. Each decision point is a fork in the road.
Copos is investigating how cells, the basic building blocks of body tissues, respond differently to outside pressures.
Source: Phys.org
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432 · 30 July 2026
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Quantum neural networks get their first hardware test
Neural networks have transformed how machines find patterns in data, from recognizing faces in photos to predicting the shapes of proteins. So far, all of this progress has been made on ordinary classical computers, but with quantum computers now edging into practical use, there is a real possibility that neural networks could tap into distinctly quantum effects and operate in ways that classical machines never could. So far, however, neural networks have proven far more difficult to run on quantum hardware.
Through new research published in Physical Review Letters, Djamil Lakhdar-Hamina and colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park, have built a neural network that runs on two different types of quantum computer, allowing them to test directly whether these systems can live up to their theoretical promise.
Elusive quantum advantage
A neural network is built from layers of simple units, each taking in signals and passing on an output depending on what it receives. To train a network, the connections between these units are adjusted until the network reliably produces the right answer for a given task.
In the quantum world, a similar structure can be built using qubits: the basic unit of quantum information, whose measurement outcomes stand in for the signals passed between layers. Researchers have long suspected that quantum versions of these networks could offer genuine advantages over classical ones, perhaps by exploiting quantum uncertainty. However, very few of these ideas have actually been tested on physical devices.
Source: Phys.org
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437 · webpage
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AI tools for predicting protein folding produce chemically impossible structures and need human oversight
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have found that today's leading artificial intelligence tools for predicting protein structures routinely generate results that are physically and chemically impossible, exposing critical blind spots in how AI is being applied across scientific research. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, serves as a cautionary reminder that AI still requires human oversight and physics-based verification to produce reliable results in the lab.
The paper, authored by George I. Makhatadze, professor of biological sciences and Constellation Endowed Chair at RPI, evaluated widely used deep learning tools for predicting how flat sequences of amino acids fold into the three-dimensional structures that determine a protein's function. Makhatadze found that these tools frequently overlook the underlying scientific rules of protein folding—and, notably, that every tool tested rated its own accuracy higher than the results warranted.
"The major conclusion of the paper essentially is: trust but verify," Makhatadze explained. "You have to verify [AI outputs] using physics-based methods."
Where the models break down
AI has become indispensable for analyzing the massive data sets used to predict protein folds. For example, Google's DeepMind AI laboratory—known for AlphaFold2—shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for its contributions to protein structure prediction.
But according to Makhatadze's work, AlphaFold2 and RoseTTAFold2—a similar deep learning-based prediction platform developed at the University of Washington—both produced "implausible structures for variant sequences" by "[prioritizing] statistical patterns over the underlying thermodynamic principles of folding." Both tools are trained on evolutionary data and structural databases.
"AlphaFold is considered the gospel of the field
412 · Фотография
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Orbiting over the Caribbean is always stunning! The shallow turquoise waters are more prominent than anywhere else on Earth.
Source: @astro_Pettit
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HOZJ_LQXgAEYGRQ.mp4 · 338 KB · click to show
HOZJ_LQXgAEYGRQ.mp4 · 338 KB · click to show
Ahead of the total solar eclipse on 12 August, scientists are forecasting the Sun’s corona using advanced 3D simulations.
This animation reveals the magnetic structures shaping the corona and helping improve space weather forecasts. 🌘☀️
🔗esa.int/Space_Safety/S…
ESA Operations
Source: @esa
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What's connecting these two volcanoes? In ancient folklore, the two volcanoes, Parinacota (left) and Pomerape (right), are connected by representing a mythical prince and princess who engaged in a forbidden romance. Beneath the ground, the two peaks are not known to be connected by a common pool of hot magma, and neither volcano has erupted in the past 1000 years. Above the ground, there is usually nothing in the sky that connects them -- except if you use careful timing and look from a specific location. The featured well-planned image was captured from Bolivia in mid-April with a series of camera exposures taken on the same day and from the same location. Then, Barnard's Loop appeared to connect the volcanic peaks. Also visible in the image is the Orion Nebula in the center, the star Betelgeuse on the right, and the Rosette Nebula on the upper right.
Image Credit & Copyright: Gonzalo Laserna Vargas
Source: @apod
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What created this huge space bubble? Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, head-like apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as the Bubble Nebula. Taken from Krakow, Poland, the featured view utilizes a long exposure to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the 10 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Seen here right of the Bubble's center, a bright hot star is embedded in the nebula's reflecting dust. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from the star, which likely has a mass 10 to 20 times that of the Sun, has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula lies a mere 11,000 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia.
Image Credit & Copyright: Paweł Piechnik
Source: @apod
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Curiosity has delivered a new 360-degree panorama from Mars. “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away,” said the mission’s project scientist.
Learn more, and zoom into the rover's latest breathtaking views: go.nasa.gov/4ySV84C
Source: @NASAMars
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451 · 
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This video is 10 beautiful minutes of celebration of our science and technology; linking it here since I know people here will surely appreciate it :)
https://youtu.be/eTfEPt96JSM
31 July 2026
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Plants know when to grow—and when to hold back, study finds
Researchers have uncovered a surprising mechanism that allows plants to carefully coordinate the formation and growth of new leaf parts. The study shows that the hormone auxin regulates different phases in organ formation by oppositely affecting the activity of another hormone, gibberellin, to trigger the formation of new leaf structures before reversing course and boosting gibberellin to drive their expansion. The findings offer new insight into how plants build complex organs and could eventually help scientists develop crops with improved growth and architecture.
A plant's ability to produce leaves, flowers and other organs depends on precise location and timing. It must first determine where a new structure will form before allowing it to expand. Now, researchers have uncovered the molecular switch that coordinates these two steps, revealing how plants carefully alternate between putting on the brakes and stepping on the accelerator during organ development.
Source: Phys.org
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336 · 1 August 2026
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This video has a really great explanation of what exactly El Nino is and how it occurs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=69o-8Mtd3Kc
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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon—and It Could Be Visible From Earth
If you own a strong enough telescope, you might be able to witness history on Wednesday: A dead rocket is going to crash into the moon. On August 5, at around 6:34 am UTC, a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage is expected to hit the moon's sunlit western limb near Einstein crater at more than 5,400 mph. If it unfolds as predicted, the crash could throw up a plume of debris bright enough to briefly see from Earth with the right equipment.
That would be a first. No impact flash has ever been recorded on the sunlit face of the moon, and that's exactly where the Falcon 9 crash is forecast to happen, kicking up plumes of dust that could stand out against the blackness of space. The findings are based in part on two new preprint studies.
That includes one posted July 27 to arXiv and led by William Jo, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering, that forecasts just how big the impact could be. To predict the plume, Jo ran the crash through a high-resolution physics simulation that allowed him to model what would happen when 3,900 kilograms of hollow metal hit the lunar surface. That’s different from solid meteorites making impact.
"It's like an empty eggshell, because it had all the fuel in it, and there is a rocket engine at one end that's denser," David Goldstein, an aerospace engineering professor at UT Austin who supervised the work, says of the Falcon 9.
Rather than burrowing in like a cannonball, the shell will collapse from its edges inward, throwing up a broad, low curtain of soil spreading as far as 183 kilometers wide as well as a thin, faster spike nearly straight up. All told, the crash is forecast to displace about 12,700 kilograms of debris.
Source: Wired
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I finally have all 1.2 million raw image files from my latest mission to ISS! Here is a sample of one of my favorite Milky Way photos, taken from the Cupola with Nikon Z9, Arri Zeiss 15mm lens, T1.8 with custom sidereal drive that cancelled out star motion relative to our orbit.
Source: RT @astro_Pettit
MaciekI finally have all 1.2 million raw image files from my latest mission to ISS! Here is a sample of one of my favorite Milky Way photos, taken from the Cupola with Nikon Z9, Arri Zeiss 15mm lens, T1.8 with custom sidereal drive that cancelled out star motion relative to our orbit.
Naaaaa that image isn't raw, bro cooked! It's very well done (even tho it's a medium-rare sight)!
I'll show myself out
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Waste CO₂ converts into graphite through a newly observed two-step process
Graphite, the carbon core of a humble No. 2 pencil, is also an essential component in technologies such as batteries, smartphones, laptops and industrial power equipment. Today, nearly all of this critical mineral must be mined and processed and, in the United States, imported.
But now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), UC Berkeley and Estonia's National Institute of Chemical Physics and Biophysics have shown a promising way to convert waste carbon pulled from the air into graphite, opening up a potential alternative to mining. The work was published recently in the journal Nature Communications.
Researchers built a custom microscope setup to watch a process known as molten-salt electrolysis, which uses electricity and hot liquid salts to turn carbon dioxide into solid carbon. For the first time, researchers were able to watch the process in real time inside corrosive molten salts heated to 500°C (932°F) while the system was running.
The observations answered a decades-old question about how the reaction occurs at the molecular level, revealing an unexpected two-step process. The researchers also found that the basic chemical reaction remained the same even when they changed the materials used for the electrodes and molten salts. Because different materials produce different carbon structures, scientists should be able to tune the process to make valuable carbon products, with the goal of making battery-grade graphite.
Source: Phys.org
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129 · Видео
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On Aug. 12, a total solar eclipse will cross Greenland, Iceland, and Spain — and NASA science will be there! ☀️🌑🔭
We're flying high-altitude jets and launching scientific balloons to study the Sun and the eclipse's effects on us: go.nasa.gov/4x5qvqP
Source: @NASASolarSystem
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