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Researchers Discover Four Dinosaurs in Montana: Fieldwork Pieces Together Life at the End of “Dinosaur Era”

Lead image: A team of University of Washington students, volunteers, and staff excavate the Flyby Trike Triceratops in northeastern Montana. Credit: Rachel Ormiston/Burke Museum/University of Washington A team of paleontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer. All fossils will be brought back to the Burke Museum where the public can watch paleontologists remove the surrounding rock in the fossil preparation laboratory. The four dinosaur fossils are: the ilium — or hip bones — of an ostrich-sized theropod, the group of meat-eating, two-legged dinosaurs that…

STAMPScreen Pipeline: Taking the Guesswork Out of Genetic Engineering

Lead image: Mammalian cells that have been successfully genetically engineered using the STAMPScreen method. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University STAMPScreen Pipeline Helps Streamline Genetic Studies in Mammalian Cells Today’s genetic engineers have a plethora of resources at their disposal: an ever-increasing number of massive datasets available online, highly precise gene editing tools like CRISPR, and cheap gene sequencing methods. But the proliferation of new technologies has not come with a clear roadmap to help researchers figure out which genes to target, which tools to use, and how to interpret their results. So, a team of scientists and engineers at…

Global Cancer Risk From Burning Organic Matter Comes From Unregulated Chemicals

Lead image: Whenever organic matter is burned, such as in a wildfire, a power plant, a car’s exhaust, or in daily cooking, the combustion releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — a class of pollutants that is known to cause lung cancer. The researchers hope scientists and regulators will consider a broader class of compounds in evaluating cancer risk due to PAH exposure. Whenever organic matter is burned, such as in a wildfire, a power plant, a car’s exhaust, or in daily cooking, the combustion releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — a class of pollutants that is known to cause lung…

Exploring Alien Planets: New Cereal Box-Sized Spacecraft Has Mighty Goals

Lead image: Artist’s depiction of a “hot Jupiter” planet. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech A new miniature satellite designed and built at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is providing proof that “cute” things can take on big scientific challenges. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) is slated to launch into space on September 27, 2021. The approximately $4 million spacecraft, a smaller-than-usual type of satellite known as a “CubeSat,” is about as large as a “family-sized box of Cheerios,” said LASP researcher Kevin France, principal investigator for the mission. But it has mighty goals: Over the course of about 7…

Untangling the Formation of Planetary Systems With Heavy Hydrogen

Lead image: ALMA images of the protoplanetary disks around young stars AS 209 and HD 163296. Different molecules have different distributions. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Cataldi et al./Aikawa et al. An international research team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) revealed the distribution of heavy hydrogen, or deuterium, in planet formation sites with the highest resolution ever achieved. This provides clues to understand the physical and chemical conditions during the formation of exoplanets and Solar System objects. “The various bodies in our Solar System have a variety of chemical compositions,” says Yuri Aikawa, a professor at the University of Tokyo.…