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Astronomers detect new worlds unlike any detected thus far  

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Graduate students supported by the National Science Foundation helped helm two separate exoplanet discoveries that could expand researchers' understanding of how planets form and orbit stars. K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date and makes a complete orbit around its star in about five days. These two characteristics combined provide exciting new directions for planet-formation theories. K2-33b could have formed on a farther out orbit and quickly migrated inward. Alternatively, it could have formed in situ, or in place.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt

 
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Ultrashort cell-free DNA reveals health of organ transplants  

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When cells die, whether through apoptosis or necrosis, the DNA and other molecules found in those cells don't just disappear. They wind up in the bloodstream, where degraded bits and pieces can be extracted. This cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is degraded due to its exposure to enzymes in the blood but is nonetheless a powerful monitoring tool in cancer, pregnancy and organ transplantation. One fairly recent breakthrough is prenatal testing for conditions such as Down syndrome, as fragments of fetal cfDNA can be detected in a mother's bloodstream. Now, borrowing a genomics technique used in the study of the ancient past, a Cornell graduate student has come up with a diagnostic tool that can open a window into a transplant recipient's immediate future through the analysis of cfDNA.

Image credit: Sarah Nickerson/Biomedical Engineering

 
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SETI mulls reboot: believing the strangest things, loving the alien  

Radio? Just because we like it doesn't mean ET phones home

SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is both exciting and disappointing: exciting because of peoples' eternal wish for someone else to be out there; and disappointing because life proves so hard to find.…

 
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Cormorants watch for trout beneath the mirror surface of the lake  

Watendlath Tarn, Borrowdale At my approach the soot-black, long-necked bird opens its hook-tipped bill, and utters a harsh croak

Watendlath Tarn shines like a burnished mirror. Perfect reflections of the surrounding hills and a Chelsea blue sky are disrupted only by the occasional splash of mallards and greylag geese and jumping trout. Black buzzer flies (chironomids or non-biting midges) on the surface are hatching from the tarn bed.

I think of Judith Paris, the historical novel by Hugh Walpole, which was a bestseller in the 1930s, though little read these days. It is partly set in revolutionary Paris and partly in Watendlath, with tales of passion and murder played out against vivid descriptions of the Cumbrian countryside.

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Long Buried By Bad Reputation, Philistines Get New Life With Archaeological Find  

They're one of the Hebrew Bible's greatest villains, but not much is known about the ancient Philistines. An uncovered cemetery, which researchers say is the first of its kind, could change all that.

 
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