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...