Gullies carved into impact craters on Mars provide a window into climate change on the Red Planet. A new analysis suggests Mars has undergone several ice ages in the last several million years. The driver of these climate swings is likely the Red Planet's wobbly axis tilt.
New research at Brown University and in Japan suggests bacteria could be a rich source of terpenes, the natural compounds common in plants and fungi that are used to make drugs, food additives, perfumes, and other products.
Cancers often involve far more than a genetic mutation acting alone. Multiple mutations, many of which are rare, may occur in different networks of multiple genes. HotNet2 is a powerful algorithm that analyzes genes at the network level and can help cancer researchers search for genetic associations and likely sources of disease across almost unimaginable genetic complexities.
Beyond managing domain names and associated IP addresses, the Internet does not have much governance. Technical experts from around the world met recently in Berlin to discuss options. John Savage, the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at Brown, presented a working paper on approaches to the Internet governance question.
While single-celled paramecia have the ability to respond to certain external stimuli, they appear not to use that sensory system for simple navigation, new research finds. The work suggests that the ability of paramecia to navigate around flat surfaces is entirely governed by Newton’s Third Law of Motion and not by active behavior. The finding, reported in Physical Review Letters, raises interesting evolutionary questions.
How to reconcile indisputable evidence of flowing water on Mars with severely low temperatures? New research shows volcanism and greenhouse gas could have warmed the planet sufficiently, but only for tens or hundreds of years at a time.
Brown geoscientist Peter Schultz, a veteran of three NASA missions to comets and asteroids, talks about the European Space Agency’s mission to land on a comet and what the scientific community hopes to learn about these orbiting bodies.
Using its hammering drill, the Curiosity rover has bored into the Martian surface at the base of Mount Sharp and detected a higher concentration of hematite than found elsewhere on Mars. The finding confirms data from an orbiting remote sensor and is important for understanding the geological history of Mars.
New analysis, using data from NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft, has determined that the large dark patch on the western edge of the Moon’s near side is not an impact crater after all.
Scientists at Brown University’s Center for Capture and Conversion of CO2 have discovered that copper foam could provide a new way of converting excess CO2 into useful industrial chemicals, including formic acid.
