EverythingScience

Did you miss NASARoman lift off into space yesterday?

Check out our recap of the launch — and what we're learning from Roman. Next, the telescope will spend the next few months flying to its new home 1 million miles from Earth.

‍Success! Roman’s planned mid-course correction burn went as expected, ensuring that we are on track for our orbit around the second Lagrange point, a million miles from Earth.
go.nasa.gov/4A3zDi2

Scientists may have found a way to regenerate the neurons that are lost due to conditions like Alzheimer's disease, a new laboratory study hints.

The research, published Aug. 26 in the journal Cell Biomaterials, suggests that reducing levels of a key protein in another type of cell in the brain, called astrocytes, may convert those cells into neurons. The adult brain has a limited capacity to produce new neurons, at baseline, and an even more limited ability to replace neurons lost to disease.

If successfully developed into a treatment for humans, this new approach could replenish lost neurons and thus restore brain function, the study authors say.

Astrocytes are abundant, star-shaped cells in the brain that protect and support the functions of neurons. A crucial protein for astrocyte development is called PTBP1, and previously, scientists suggested that eliminating this protein in astrocytes may convert them into neurons. In that study, researchers reported converting astrocytes in the mouse brain into neurons by eliminating the gene that coded for PTBP1.

However, later experiments contradicted these results, suggesting that newly formed neurons could not be traced back to the astrocytes. So Peisheng Xu, a co-author of the new study and a pharmaceutical scientist at the University of South Carolina, set out to investigate that contradiction...

Does the devastating flooding unleashed by the collapse of a section of a glacier in the Nepali Himalayas signal a new kind of risk in a world warmed by climate change? Here's what scientists told AFP.

Repeat collapse risk
On Friday, Nepal issued an alert about the risks posed by a large body of water formed in China's Tibet region following the collapse of a section of a glacier two days earlier. That collapse killed at least 584 people, and more than 2,400 remain missing.

"Once you take a piece of mountain away, then there's probably another piece right beside it that's been destabilized by the removal. And so you could have a similar thing collapse," Simon Cox, principal scientist at New Zealand's GNS Science research institute, told AFP.

"You may well have more material to fall down right from up at the source area, and the same thing could happen immediately again."

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the resulting flood was triggered by a glacier collapse so violent that it generated energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake and caused numerous landslides.

Rising global hazard
Etienne Berthier, a glaciologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), told AFP, "we can't rule out" the risk of similar phenomena occurring elsewhere.

"They reach such proportions in the Himalayas because the terrain and the region's high tectonic activity amplify the likelihood of such events occurring on that scale," he explained.

Other regions may have similarly "dynamic" glaciers—such as Alaska—but "this happens in completely uninhabited areas."

"We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of extremely hazardous flows such as this globally in the past decade or so,"

Researchers have developed fluorescent molecules that permit imaging of how DNA is packaged inside living cells at unprecedented resolution and, in preserved cells, at a resolution close to the width of the double helix itself.

The team tested the fluorescent probes on slices of bowel tissue taken from three cancer patients. These are ordinary wax-preserved samples, which is how almost all hospitals store patient biopsies.

In the tumors, the DNA was noticeably looser and more spread out than in the healthy tissue sitting right beside it.

Other studies have found that DNA unpacks steadily as cancer takes hold, and the researchers suggest that how loosely a cell's DNA is folded could eventually serve as a measure of how far a tumor has progressed or how aggressive it is.

Doctors currently examine these types of biopsies by eye, using a staining method more than a century old. The advance, described today in the journal Molecular Cell, raises the possibility that one day they could also look at how DNA occupies three-dimensional space inside cells as an additional clue for diagnosing and treating cancer.

"With the same dye we can do two very different things. In a living cell we can watch DNA moving, which tells us how chromatin, the natural state of DNA in cells, behaves. In a preserved cell we can zoom in until we are almost at the scale of the DNA molecule itself. Combining both approaches helps us see one of the main layers of control in human biology in unprecedented resolution," explains ICREA Research Professor Pia Cosma, senior author of the study.

Watching DNA in living cells
Every cell in the human body holds 2 meters of DNA squeezed into a very small space. How tightly it is folded up decides which genes are switched on and which stay off.

Almost all images of DNA folding come from cells that are already dead. Powerful microscope techniques needed to track individual components of DNA in cells typically require treating samples with harsh chemicals and strong laser lights that living cells cannot survive.

A team at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, the City University of Hong Kong and the Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences) Southern Medical University found a way to overcome this challenge by designing fluorescent probes.

Called HoTs, the dyes can navigate inside living cells on their own and stick to DNA. The probes are designed to blink intermittently, meaning they flicker on and off like fairy lights. The researchers tested them in living human skin cells and in living HeLa cancer cells grown in the laboratory.

If every dye lit up at once, microscopes would take a blurry picture. By blinking one at a time, an advanced microscope works out exactly where each probe is. After taking thousands of snapshots, a computer program builds up a picture 10 times sharper than conventional microscopes.

NASA's newest eye on the sky, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has begun its journey to unravel the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and Earthlike planets — months ahead of schedule.

The 9-ton telescope rode to space today aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. ET (11:26 UTC). The ascent went off without a hitch, setting up the telescope for a three-month cruise to a gravitational balance point known as Earth-sun L2, a million miles beyond our planet. The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters flew themselves back to landings on the Florida coast, near the launch site, while the center core booster splashed into the sea after stage separation.

NASA had originally scheduled liftoff for 2027, but the $4.3 billion mission came in ahead of schedule and under budget.

Here are five key facts about the Roman Space Telescope and its mission...

Claim your pixel on one the first images from NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! When Roman captures its first images (early 2027), each pixel will represent a piece of the cosmos never seen before at this resolution. Claim your pixel and be part of this historic moment! You will receive a certificate like the one above with your pixel number. » Adopt your pixel!

Acquisition of signal confirmed for our NASARoman telescope. We have spacecraft separation, and a last look at Roman, now flying on its own. go.nasa.gov/4chzg9c

✅ Second Engine Cutoff 1 confirmed.

The Falcon's second stage is now in a 16-minute coast phase of flight. There will be a second and final engine burn before deployment of the Roman spacecraft!

Fairing separation. Free of its protective shell, our Roman telescope has its first taste of space.

First and second stage separation complete. The first stage’s job is done, while the Falcon Heavy’s second stage and NASARoman continue the journey.

‍✅ Booster Engine Cutoff
✅ Booster Separation
✅ Main Engine Cutoff
✅ Stage Separation
✅ Second Engine Start 1
✅ Fairing Jettison

It's amazing how much happens in the first few minutes of flight. An incredible opening sequence and Roman's journey is only just beginning!

Liftoff! NASARoman begins its flight to space. The Roman telescope’s wide field of view will generate never-before-seen images, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.

Our teams are GO. NASARoman is ready for launch.

T-10 minutes!

Over the next few minutes, the Roman spacecraft and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy will both transition to internal power. Engine chill will start followed by the strongback retracting into position for liftoff! 🚀

Weather Update!

Weather officials with the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 have predicted a 70% chance of favorable weather conditions for this morning’s launch.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch [soon] aboard a SpaceX rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. When it becomes operational early next year, it will transform our view of the universe.

With a mirror the same size as the one in the Hubble Space Telescope but a field of view more than 100 times larger, NASA's newest tool is designed to survey vast swaths of sky quickly. It will hunt for dark energy's fingerprints and detect perhaps 100,000 exoplanets.

In August 2018, just four months before she died on Dec. 25, I had the great fortune to fly from Sydney to Washington, D.C., to interview the woman this telescope is named after. She was 93 years old, and over the hours we spent talking, she shared her remarkable life story...