Recently, NASA's Curiosity rover achieved a momentous accomplishment by marking 4,000 Martian days since its touchdown on the Red Planet in 2012.

In the last two decades, NASA has sent five robotic vehicles – rovers to Mars, according to the space agency.

Sojourner was the initial rover to explore the celestial planet, succeeded by Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance.

At the Centre for Chronobiology of the University of Basel, [Dr Christine] investigates the effects of light on humans and is the first author of a study investigating the effects of different light colors on the internal clock and sleep. The team of researchers from the University of Basel and the TUM has now published its findings in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Night mode on screens—useful or not?
We often hear that the short-wavelength component of light from smartphone and tablet screens affects biological rhythms and sleep. The recommendation is therefore to put your mobile phone away early in the evening or at least use the night shift mode, which reduces the short-wavelength light proportions and looks slightly yellowish. Dr. Blume confirms this. However, the yellowish color adjustment is a by-product that could be avoided.

"Technologically, it is possible to reduce the short-wavelength proportions even without color adjustment of the display; however, this has not yet been implemented in commercial mobile phone displays," says the sleep researcher.

When humans get involved in places they weren’t invited, things start to
change. The Moon is no different.

A team of researchers at the University of Kansas believes that human involvement—including the more than 100 spacecraft interactions we have had with our natural satellite over the past 64 years—makes us one of the most dominant forces shaping the Moon.

That’s enough, they believe, to declare a new epoch on the Moon—the “Lunar Anthropocene.”

An experimental and controversial stem cell transplant, which aims to treat traumatic spinal cord injury, has shown promising new results in a phase I clinical trial.

Not only was the single-dose spinal injection safe and well-tolerated by all 10 patients with paralysis, it also resulted in some improved movement and sensation for 7 volunteers.

While that's seriously hopeful, the type and degree of injury seems to matter. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US admit that in all likelihood, only about five percent of patients with a complete injury to their thoracic spine would regain any feeling or movement with this therapy, based on their results.

Nevertheless, neurosurgeon Mohamad Bydon says: "In spinal cord injury, even a mild improvement can make a significant difference in that patient's quality of life."

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Masahito Moriyama have signed an agreement to advance sustainable human exploration of the Moon.

Japan will design, develop, and operate a pressurized rover for crewed and uncrewed exploration on the Moon. NASA will provide the launch and delivery of the rover to the Moon as well as two opportunities for Japanese astronauts to travel to the lunar surface.

There is currently no treatment to slow or halt Parkinson's disease. Available drugs don't slow disease progression and can treat only certain symptoms. Medications that work early in the disease, however, such as Levodopa, generally become ineffective over the years, necessitating increased doses that can lead to disabling side effects.

Without understanding the fundamental molecular cause of Parkinson's, it's improbable that researchers will be able to develop a medication to stop the disease from steadily worsening in patients.

Many factors may contribute to the development of Parkinson's, both environmental and genetic. Until recently, underlying genetic causes of the disease were unknown. Most cases of Parkinson's aren't inherited but sporadic, and early studies suggested a genetic basis was improbable.

Nevertheless, everything in biology has a genetic foundation. As a geneticist and molecular neuroscientist, I have devoted my career to predicting and preventing Parkinson's disease.

In our newly published research, my team and I discovered a new genetic variant linked to Parkinson's that sheds light on the evolutionary origin of multiple forms of familial parkinsonism, opening doors to better understand and treat the disease.

While cellular networks and Wi-Fi systems are more advanced than ever, they are also quickly reaching their bandwidth limits. Scientists know that in the near future they'll need to transition to much higher communication frequencies than what current systems rely on, but before that can happen there are a number of—quite literal—obstacles standing in the way.

Researchers from Brown University and Rice University say they've advanced one step closer to getting around these solid obstacles, like walls, furniture and even people—and they do it by curving light.

In a new study published in Communications Engineering, the researchers describe how they are helping address one of the biggest logjams emerging in wireless communication.

The first technique capable of measuring the pull of gravity on a particle just microns in diameter could aid the quest for a quantum theory of gravity – a longstanding goal in physics. The new experiment uses a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to detect the force on the particle at ultralow temperatures and suppresses vibrations that might interfere with motion due to gravity.

Gravity differs from the other fundamental forces because it describes a curvature in space-time rather than straightforward interactions between objects. This difference explains, in part, why theoretical physicists have long struggled to reconcile gravity (as described by Einstein’s general theory of relativity) with quantum mechanics. One of the main sticking points is that while the latter assumes space-time is fixed, the former states that it changes in the presence of massive objects. Since experiments to determine which denoscription is correct are extremely difficult to perform, a theory of quantum gravity remains out of reach despite much theoretical effort in areas such as string theory and loop quantum gravity.