NASA's Chandra discovers possible supernova remnant in galactic center

Some barley beers labeled "gluten-free" contain small amounts of gluten residues that may trigger celiac disease but are not detected by the standard antibody-based tests currently in use, according to a study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich. In the study, researchers compared two antibody-based testing methods with a mass spectrometric detection method newly developed at the institute. The results show that modern food analytical methods c

A new study reveals that, for the first time, areas of Canada's boreal peatlands damaged by oil and gas exploration have failed to recover as scientists and companies predicted and instead have led to a tripling of methane emissions, with global implications. The study, "Increased methane emissions from boreal peatlands following linear disturbances," appears in Communications Earth & Environment.

Engineers often treat impurities as a problem to eliminate to improve material performance. But new research from Osaka Metropolitan University and Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM suggests that in some cases, a little chemical messiness is exactly what helps materials slide more smoothly. The findings were published in Advanced Science.

Early biological systems likely relied on RNA molecules to copy themselves and drive simple chemical reactions. Any system that could generate guanosine-triphosphate (GTP)—which is necessary for RNA synthesis—from prebiotic chemicals would gain a crucial advantage toward self-replication. Now, researchers from the University of California San Diego report a version of an RNA enzyme (ribozyme) that makes GTP synthesis more efficient than its predecessor.