82 articles from THURSDAY 7.11.2019

Boeing traces problem with Starliner parachute system to an unsecured pin

For want of a pin, the use of a spaceship's parachute was lost. That may be a simplistic way to explain why one of the three parachutes on Boeing's CST-100 Starliner space taxi failed to open. It does, however, serve as a cautionary tale about the one obvious glitch in Monday's pad abort test of the Starliner, a craft that's due to start transporting NASA astronauts to and from the...

NASA Data Used to Battle Invasive Mosquitoes

A NASA-enhanced website that began in California to strengthen mosquito control efforts has gone cross-country. Utah and New Jersey state public health officials and mosquito control agencies are now using the California Vectorborne Disease Surveillance System (CalSurv) to help monitor and respond to potential outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases. Data have been used from several...

Alternative polyadenylation of Pax3 controls muscle stem cell fate and muscle function

Adult stem cells are essential for tissue homeostasis. In skeletal muscle, muscle stem cells (MuSCs) reside in a quiescent state, but little is known about the mechanisms that control homeostatic turnover. Here we show that, in mice, the variation in MuSC activation rate among different muscles (for example, limb versus diaphragm muscles) is determined by the levels of the transcription factor...

Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean

Ancient Rome was the capital of an empire of ~70 million inhabitants, but little is known about the genetics of ancient Romans. Here we present 127 genomes from 29 archaeological sites in and around Rome, spanning the past 12,000 years. We observe two major prehistoric ancestry transitions: one with the introduction of farming and another prior to the Iron Age. By the founding of Rome, the genetic...

Comment on "Protein assemblies ejected directly from native membranes yield complexes for mass spectrometry"

Chorev et al. (Reports, 16 November 2018, p. 829) describe mass spectrometry on mitochondrial membrane proteins ionized directly from their native environment. However, the assignments made to measured masses are incorrect or inconclusive and lack experimental validation. The proteins are not in their "native" condition: They have been stripped of tightly bound lipids, and the complexes are...

Direct observation of changing NOx lifetime in North American cities

NOx lifetime relates nonlinearly to its own concentration; therefore, by observing how NOx lifetime changes with changes in its concentration, inferences can be made about the dominant chemistry occurring in an urban plume. We used satellite observations of NO2 from a new high-resolution product to show that NOx lifetime in approximately 30 North American cities has changed between 2005 and 2014...

Double PIK3CA mutations in cis increase oncogenicity and sensitivity to PI3K{alpha} inhibitors

Activating mutations in PIK3CA are frequent in human breast cancer, and phosphoinositide 3-kinase alpha (PI3Kα) inhibitors have been approved for therapy. To characterize determinants of sensitivity to these agents, we analyzed PIK3CA-mutant cancer genomes and observed the presence of multiple PIK3CA mutations in 12 to 15% of breast cancers and other tumor types, most of which (95%) are...

Efficient, stable solar cells by using inherent bandgap of {alpha}-phase formamidinium lead iodide

In general, mixed cations and anions containing formamidinium (FA), methylammonium (MA), caesium, iodine, and bromine ions are used to stabilize the black α-phase of the FA-based lead triiodide (FAPbI3) in perovskite solar cells. However, additives such as MA, caesium, and bromine widen its bandgap and reduce the thermal stability. We stabilized the α-FAPbI3 phase by doping with...

Engineering spin-orbit synthetic Hamiltonians in liquid-crystal optical cavities

Spin-orbit interactions lead to distinctive functionalities in photonic systems. They exploit the analogy between the quantum mechanical description of a complex electronic spin-orbit system and synthetic Hamiltonians derived for the propagation of electromagnetic waves in dedicated spatial structures. We realize an artificial Rashba-Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction in a liquid...