NASA's Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) has successfully completed its global flight test after an impressive 39-day, 14-hour journey. The mission, which was launched from Wnaka Airport in New Zealand, which functions as the launch site for NASA's long-duration balloon program, concluded on Thursday, May 25, at 9:27 a.m. EDT. The flight, considered the most successful to date, saw the balloon maintain a consistent float altitude in the stratosphere, a significant accomplishment for NASA's Balloon Program Office. Prolonged Balloon Flight Debbie Fairbrother, chief of NASA's Balloon Program Office at the Wallops Flight Facility, expressed her satisfaction, stating, "Achieving long-duration balloon flight through day and night conditions is an important obje...

The sprayers get out of their truck and carry their metal pesticide tanks through the town. They look like Ghostbusters with their drab overalls, boots, and backpacks. They spray each chamber with milky chemical to fight insects and malaria. Similar teams have treated Boane, an hour outside Mozambique's capital, Moputo. Due to a sickness recurrence, they returned early. Cyclone Freddy's catastrophic floods earlier this year altered malaria's seasonal cycle, the latest evidence of climate change-induced extreme weather events. Mosquitoes are everywhere due to standing water. One sprayer, Neli Machoi, says there are numerous mosquitoes and malaria cases. After the campaign, we were summoned back because malaria cases were rising. The mosquito-borne disease has increase...

We know one insect's cerebral circuitry. Neurons fill brains. Neurons continually communicate. The brain works that way, allowing animals to walk, breathe, and think. A neuron? Studying human brains with over 80 billion neurons is difficult. Many animals have smaller brains with fewer neurons. They help understand brains. Scientists have mapped all newborn fruit fly brain neurons for the first time. Researchers discovered cell-cell communication. Connectomes map neuronal connections. This is the most intricate brain wiring diagram ever. Science reported the findings on March 10. Complex brains This degree of brain diagramming has only been done on three species. Sea squirts were one. Two others were worms. However, their bodies have little more than 1,500 neurons. Th...

Bristol scientists found that animals utilizing the most effective ways of resource hunting may die. Today's Behavioural Ecology discoveries explain why animals don't always adopt the best search method. How animals travel through their ecosystem, especially to get food, is a key biology subject that affects how they adapt to environmental change. Numerous studies have shown that Lévy mobility, which involves long-distance travels between search regions and intense searches in one area, improves resource discovery. Many animals employ this movement. Three-spined stickleback Wikimedia Commons This study shows that prey employing Lévy motion are targeted twice as often as prey using Brownian motion, the movement of molecules in a gas and a baseline expectation. “We sho...

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope found a rare main belt comet's water vapor signal for the first time. This month's Nature article explains Earth's plentiful water and for the first time finds water from the early solar system between Mars and Jupiter. “Our water-soaked world, teeming with life and unique in the universe as far as we know, is something of a mystery – we’re not sure how all this water got here,” study coauthor Stefanie Milam, Webb deputy project scientist for planetary science, said in a press statement. “Understanding the history of water distribution in the solar system will help us understand other planetary systems and whether they could host an Earth-like planet,” she said. Water Vapor in Rare Main Belt Comet Found by NASA's Webb Telescope Study coau...

Aside from spending on space programs, the South African scientific budget for 2023-24 indicates that further cuts are on the way. A banner year for science, but one that brought very few advantages to the field as a whole, both in terms of research and innovation. This is the forecast that was given during the voting and discussion on South Africa's science budget for 2023-2024, which took place on May 23. A considerable increase from its previous allocation of R9.1 billion in 2022-23, the Department of Science and Innovation will be given 10.9 billion rands, which is equivalent to 570 million US dollars. The majority of this increase, on the other hand, is going into the field of space science, and more specifically, the nation's Space Infrastructure Hub and the Square Kilomet...