Fossil footprints found in Australia the oldest evidence of amniotes
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The Sun
4 hours ago
- The Sun
Robot house-hunters to search cosy caves for humans to live in on MARS – after testing skills on Brit holiday island
SPACE bots are set to explore off-planet caves to set up new homes for humans. The robo-teams would work together to plunge into lava holes on Mars and the Moon - in search for new habitats for humans. 5 5 5 Research was recently carried out by a team of European academics who outlined the next-level mission in the journal Science Robotics. Their report shows tests carried out on the volcanic, Brit holiday Island of Lanzarote - chosen due to its environmental similarities with the Moon and Mars. The research team includes scientists from the robotics innovation centre at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) DFKI said: "Lava caves on planetary bodies near Earth are promising sites for future base camps, offering natural protection from radiation and meteorite impacts. "Yet their exploration remains difficult due to harsh conditions and restricted access." Three different robot types worked together on their own to rapidly explore and map out the extreme Lanzarote environment including vast lava fields and numerous craters. While on their discovery mission, the robo-explorers found a skylight - a hole leading to an underground cave. The AI-gadgets took part in a four-step mission to map together the area around the hole, drop a sensor into the cave to collect data, descend a planetary surface exploration device and have it explore the cave independently to create a 3D map. The robot that was lowered into the cave was able to explore the difficult-to-enter area, and successfully generated a 3D model of the cave. Pulling off the application of such technologies in alien landscapes is a key breakthrough in the world of science and technology. DFKI said: "The results not only confirm the technical feasibility of the concept but also demonstrate the potential of collaborative robotic systems for use in future Moon or Mars missions. "The study thus provides valuable impetus for the further development of autonomous robotic solutions in the context of planetary exploration." The major milestone comes after research from 2024 which suggested future humans living on Mars will undergo drastic physical changes and may even develop into a new sub-species, an expert has told The Sun. Kyle Zagrodzky, founder of OsteoStrong, a company that specialises in bone health, explained that an unforgiving Martian environment could push humans to evolve into haunting versions of their "Earthling cousins". At first, Mars-bound astronauts will feel pretty good, according to Zagrodzky, as the lower level of gravity eases the weight on their bones and joints. "New comers would have a massive physical advantage in the short run," he said, before grimly stating: "Until their bones and muscles are down regulated." Living in Martian gravity - about 38% of Earth's gravity - over extended periods is expected to have significant effects on the human body. 5 5 Optimistic estimates from a 2020 Stanford study found that astronauts on a three year mission to Mars and back would lose a third of their bone density. Around half of them could go on to develop osteoporosis. "For new adult visitors, spine elongation would probably the first noticeable change," Zagrodzky continued. "Other than a change in the distribution of fat, which might look more and more strange over time, we probably wouldn't see significant outward physical changes in adults going to visit Mars for short periods of time." The first crewed Mars mission has been proposed for the 2030s - with Elon Musk 's SpaceX aiming to send humans to the Red Planet as early as 2029. But Musk hopes his crew will have built a self-sustaining colony by 2050. Mars has dust storms, high levels of radiation and less gravity than Earth. In order to live there, humans would have to completely change their ways of life although researchers claim streaming Netflix won't be an issue.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
NASA reveals Uranus has a secret moon
More than one billion miles away from Earth, Uranus is one of the least explored planets in our solar system. So it comes as no surprise that scientists still regularly make new discoveries about the ice giant planet. This week, NASA has uncovered a secret moon hiding in Uranus' orbit. The moon – which is yet to be named – was discovered using the James Webb Space Telescope, and is believed to be around six miles wide. To put that into perspective, that's around 350 times smaller than our own moon! The discovery expands the total known number of moons orbiting Uranus to 29. 'No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and their complex inter–relationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons,' said Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a member of the research team. 'Moreover, the new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the previously known inner moons, making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered.' NASA first spotted the new moon during an observation of Uranus on 2 February 2025. 'This object was spotted in a series of 10 40–minute long–exposure images captured by the Near–Infrared Camera (NIRCam),' explained Dr Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in SwRI's Solar System Science and Exploration Division based in Boulder, Colorado. 'It's a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft didn't see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago.' The moon is the 14th small moon found to orbit Uranus' larger moons – Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon (named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope). 'It's located about 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) from Uranus' center, orbiting the planet's equatorial plane between the orbits of Ophelia (which is just outside of Uranus' main ring system) and Bianca,' Dr El Moutamid added. 'Its nearly circular orbit suggests it may have formed near its current location.' The planets in our solar system have different numbers of moons – ranging from 0 to 274. Neither Mercury nor Venus have any moons, while you probably already know that Earth has just one. Mars has two moons named Phobos and Deimos, and Jupiter has 95 – including the biggest moon in our solar system, Ganymede.
Reuters
8 hours ago
- Reuters
Health Rounds: Human fetal kidney development mimicked in test tubes
Aug 20 (Reuters) - This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here. Researchers are a step closer to learning how congenital kidney defects develop in the fetus and how they might be prevented, a new report shows. For the first time, they can watch miniature human fetal kidneys develop in test tubes over periods that simulate the course of a pregnancy. So-called kidney organoids have been grown in test tubes before, but only starting with pluripotent stem cells – immature cells found in early embryos that can differentiate into any cell type in the body but without the tissue-specific characteristics that would allow them to perform an organ's specialized functions. In contrast, the new organoids are grown in test tubes using the same fetal progenitor stem cells that are destined to develop into human kidneys. These cells are capable of building, maintaining and repairing specific organs – in this case, the kidneys. While kidney organoids grown from pluripotent stem cells have survived in test tubes for weeks, the new organoids built from the human fetal kidney stem cells can survive and grow for six to eight months, essentially allowing researchers to observe human kidney development as it would happen during a pregnancy, the research team reported in The EMBO Journal, opens new tab. 'Once we had the tissue stem cells coming from the developing human kidney in the Petri dish, they did the job because this is what they do in nature,' said Dr. Benjamin Dekel of Safra Children's Hospital at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, who led the research. 'The cells are self-assembling. They know how to self-organize and how to self-renew, (that is) make copies of themselves,' Dekel said. At the same time, Dekel continued, the cells begin to differentiate, developing qualities that make them appropriate for different roles. Researchers can watch as kidney tubules, ducts, blood vessels and other renal tissues are formed. In his clinical practice, Dekel treats children with kidney diseases. He hopes eventually to use the organoids to study kidney malformations and to isolate genes that lead to birth defects, develop new treatments in the field of regenerative medicine and test the toxicity of drugs during pregnancy on fetal kidneys. In the meantime, he said, it's frustrating to watch as patients' chronic kidney disease worsen into end-stage renal disease. 'Then we need to give them a kidney transplant or to put them on dialysis, which is really a very poor solution,' he said. New findings help explain why experimental treatments for cancers caused by human papillomavirus infections have been less than effective, researchers say. The most common cancer-causing strain of HPV undermines the body's defenses by reprogramming immune cells surrounding the tumor, earlier research has shown. Blocking this process can boost the ability of experimental treatments for HPV to eliminate cancer cells, according to a report published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, opens new tab. While vaccines exist to prevent HPV infections, researchers have failed to develop effective 'therapeutic vaccines' for use after HPV infections have occurred – and the new study helps explain why. Experimental therapeutic vaccines target HPV-infected cells with immune cells known as T-cells. But in tests in mice and cell cultures, researchers found that two HPV proteins, E6 and E7, prompt nearby cells to release a protein called IL-23 that prevents the body's T-cells from attacking the tumor. 'In order to eliminate the cancer, T-cells need to proliferate and destroy infected cells. But IL-23 stops them from working effectively, so the tumor keeps growing,' study leader W. Martin Kast of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California said in a statement. Drugs that inhibit IL-23 are already approved for treating psoriasis and other conditions, the researchers said. 'The fact that these antibodies are already FDA-approved for something else makes this approach promising — and it also allows for rapid translation into the clinic,' Kast said. He and his team are now developing their own therapeutic vaccine, which they will test in combination with antibodies that block IL-23. IL-23 is also found at high levels in testicular and bladder cancers, the researchers noted, adding that further research is needed to clarify what role IL-23 plays in those diseases. Hearing loss is a known risk factor for dementia, but early intervention might lower that risk, a new study suggests. Researchers performed hearing tests in nearly 3,000 volunteers without dementia who were at least 60 years old. Over the next 20 years, the researchers saw a 61% lower risk for eventual dementia among those with newly diagnosed hearing loss who started wearing hearing aids before age 70, compared to participants diagnosed with hearing impairment at a similar age who did not get hearing aids, they reported in JAMA Neurology, opens new tab. Hearing aid use did not appear to protect against dementia in people diagnosed with a hearing problem after age 70, however. 'Only 17% of individuals with moderate to severe hearing loss use hearing aids,' the researchers noted. 'Our study underscores the importance of early intervention' to reduce the risk of dementia associated with hearing loss, they concluded. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here.
