The Abell 520 galaxy cluster is an unusual structure resulting from a major merger of far off galaxies. It has been popularly nicknamed “The Train Wreck Cluster”, due to its chaotic structure. Five years ago, SF State researcher Andisheh Mahdavi and his colleagues observed an unexpected dark core at the center of Abell 520, a…

Spiders use their sticky webs to catch their food. So why do they not stick? Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and University of Costa Rica studying why spiders do not stick to their own sticky webs have discovered that a spider’s legs are protected by a covering of branching hairs and by a…

Ground-based observations have revealed previously seasonal variations in cloud cover. Over the course of Saturn’s 30-year orbit, Titan’s cloud systems appear to manifest for 25 years, and then fade for four to five years before reappearing again. A set of recent papers, many of which draw on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, reveal new details…

There is always concern when something radioactive is released as to what its downwind effects might be. Certainly there are effects at the actual site but thousands of miles away? Fallout from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power facility in Japan was measured in minimal amounts in precipitation in the United States in about 20…

Science has changed the world. It has created new products and ease of service. What the future will bring is, of course, always uncertain. “It’s not every day you have robots running through your house,” Barack Obama quipped last week at the White House science fair, a showcase for student exhibitors that also gave the…

A unique group of fish that has evolved to live in Antarctic waters thanks to anti-freeze proteins in their blood and body fluids is threatened by rising temperatures in the Southern Ocean, according to a new study by Yale. The development of antifreeze glycoproteins by notothenioids, a fish family that adapted to newly formed polar…

The Chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, is the largest species in the pacific (Oncorhynchus) salmon family. Other commonly used names for the species include King salmon, Quinnat salmon, Spring salmon and Tyee salmon. Chinook are an anadromous fish native to the north Pacific Ocean and the river systems of western North America ranging from California to…

Yellow-cedar, a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia, has been dying off across large expanses of these areas for the past 100 years. But no one could say why. “The cause of tree death, called yellow-cedar decline, is now known to be a form of root freezing…

Rice University scientists have created a nano-infused oil that could greatly enhance the ability of devices as large as electrical transformers and as small as microelectronic components to shed excess heat. Research in the lab of Rice materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, which appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, could raise the efficiency…

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple monosaccharide found in many plants. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed directly into the bloodstream during digestion. Fructose is generally regarded as being 1.73 times as sweet as sucrose. Fructose is a common sweetener used in many products…