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the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa

If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean

then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa's potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice

This would actually be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes

The first one to be discovered was Saturn's moon Enceladus

First detected in 2005 by NASA's Cassini orbiter, the plumes also possess dust and ice particles

So far, though, only water vapor gases have been detected in Europa.

It's possible that these plumes could be vented from long cracks on Europa's surface

Cassini has actually seen similar fissures that host the Enceladus

Europa plumes are similar to Enceladus in another way. They seem to also vary depending on the moon's orbital position; active jets have only been seen when Europa is farthest from Jupiter

supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean

Once the plumes are confirmed, scientists can take a closer look at their composition and may even be able to find out more about the potential subsurface sea of Europa

Dec. 14

the country’s first ever attempt to conduct a landing on an extraterrestrial body

landing on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST or 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time

The Chang’e-3 lander transmitted its first images of the moon in real time during its approach to the lunar surface during the

landing operation

Chinese national flag

After rolling all six wheels into the dirt, Yutu

drove to a location about nine meters north of the lander, according to CCTV commentators

then turned around so that the red Chinese flag emblazoned on the front side would be facing the lander’s high resolution color cameras for the eagerly awaited portraits of one another

Yutu is nearly the size of a golf cart. It measures about 1.5 m x 1 m on its sides and stands about 1.5 m (nearly 5 feet) tall

Yutu will depart the landing site

and begin its own lunar trek that’s expected to last at least 3 months. Remove this ad

equipped with eight science instruments including multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, ground penetrating radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition

The radar instrument installed at the bottom of the rover can penetrate 100 meters deep below the surface to study the Moon’s structure and composition in unprecedented detail, according to

senior advisor of China’s lunar probe project,

A UV camera will study the earth and its interaction with solar wind and a telescope will study celestial objects

will also investigate the moon’s natural resources for use by potential future Chinese astronauts

Most of the science instruments are working including at least three cameras and the ground penetrating radar

the extremely cold lunar night and temperature fluctuations of more than 300 degrees Celsius – a great engineering challenge.

The rover will hibernate during the two week long lunar night

A radioisotopic heater will provide heat to safeguard the rovers computer and electronics

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

The same strategy could lead to many new therapies that disable cancer-causing genes no current drugs can stop, and it also can be used to find therapies for other diseases

The findings open up the possibility of someday treating patients who have a genetic propensity

idea would be start giving it early on and sustain treatment throughout life to prevent cancer development or progression

more women than ever are undergoing early tests that reveal precancerous breast tissue

early diagnosis could potentially save lives; however, few of those lesions go on to become tumors and doctors have no good way of predicting which ones will

many women currently undergo surgery, chemotherapy and radiation who might never develop the disease.

some women with a high hereditary risk of breast cancer have chosen to undergo preemptive mastectomies.

A therapy that heals rather than kills cancerous tissue could potentially help all these patients, as well as men who develop the disease

to date the only way to stop cancer cells has been to kill them.

he treatments that accomplish that, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, often damage healthy tissue, causing harsh side effects

First they had to identify the culprit genes among the thousands that are active in a cell at any moment

Molecular biologists typically

looking for cancer-causing genes, they search for individual genes that become active as cancer develops.

But because genes in cells work in complex networks

innocent genes being fingered for crimes they did not commit.

To improve the odds of finding the real culprits,

a systems biology expert who has developed a sophisticated mathematical and computational method to reverse-engineer bacterial gene networks.

honed the computational network to work for the first time on the more complex gene networks of mice and humans

The refined method helped the scientists spot more than 100 genes that acted suspiciously just before milk-duct cells in the breast begin to overgrow

The team narrowed their list down to six genes that turn other genes on or off, and then narrowed it further to a single gene called HoxA1 that had the strongest statistical link to cancer

researchers wanted to know if blocking the HoxA1 gene could reverse cancer in lab-grown cells

grew healthy mouse or human mammary-gland cells in a nutrient-rich, tissue-friendly gel

Healthy cells ensconced in the gel formed hollow spheres of cells akin to a normal milk duct

cancerous cells, in contrast, packed together into solid, tumor-like spheres.

treated cancerous cells with a short piece of RNA called a small interfering RNA (siRNA) that blocks only the HoxA1 gene

The cells reversed their march to malignancy, stopping their runaway growth and forming hollow balls as healthy cells do

they specialized as if they were growing in healthy tissue

The siRNA treatment also stopped breast cancer in a line of mice genetically engineered to have a gene that causes all of them to develop cancer

They packed the siRNA into nanoparticles called lipidoids that allow for genes to be silenced for weeks inside the body

they injected these nanoparticles

The treated mice remained healthy, while untreated mice developed breast cancer

the second-brightest star in the southern constellation Pictor

a distant planet 63 light-years away and several times more massive — as well as 60% larger — than Jupiter

many exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed over the past couple of decades using various techniques, very few have actually been directly imaged

Most planets that we know about to date are only known because of indirect methods that tell us a planet is there

With GPI we directly image planets around stars

doesn’t just image distant Jupiter-sized exoplanets; it images them quickly

early first-light images are almost a factor of ten better than the previous generation of instruments

In one minute, we were seeing planets that used to take us an hour to detect

Beta Pictoris b is a very young planet — estimated to be less than 10 million years old (the star itself is only about 12 million

presence is a testament to the ability of large planets to form rapidly and soon around newly-formed stars

saw this on only the first week after the instrument was put on the telescope

what it will be able to do once we tweak and completely tune its performance

Another

images captured light scattered by a ring of dust that surrounds the young star HR4796A , about 237 light-years away

“Some day, there will be an instrument that will look a lot like GPI, on a telescope in space. And the images and spectra that will come out of that instrument will show a little blue dot that is another Earth.” – Bruce Macintosh, GPI team leader

Stimulation Therapy for Apnea Reduction (STAR) trial

conducted at 22 medical centers in the United States and Europe

OSA, which affects more than 8 million men and 4 million women in the U.S. and is twice as common in men

is characterized by repeated episodes of upper airway collapse during sleep, due to narrowing or blockage

Patients with OSA stop breathing, known as apnea, frequently during sleep, often for a minute or longer

Repeated episodes of apnea can lead to daytime fatigue, and increase a person's risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure and even death.

Treatments for OSA include weight loss, upper airway surgeries, oral appliances, and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which is considered the primary treatment for OSA

CPAP is a successful treatment when used on a regular basis, as many as half of the patients who have been prescribed CPAP are unable to use it regularly

largely due to discomfort with the mask and/or the lack of desire to be tethered to a machine

Inspire UAS therapy

differs from other traditional sleep apnea devices and surgical procedures

targets the muscle tone of the throat rather than just the anatomy

Two thirds of patients using the Inspire UAS therapy device had successful control of their OSA

even more reported improvement in snoring, daytime sleepiness and quality of life measures

Eighty-six percent of patients were still using the device every night at the one year mark, which compares very favorably to CPAP

From 724 candidates initially screened, the STAR trial implanted and prospectively evaluated 126 moderate-to-severe OSA patients who had difficulty using or adhering to CPAP therapy:

83 percent of the participants were men, the mean age was 54.5 years, and the mean body-mass index was 28.4.

All patients underwent surgery to implant the device.

The device stimulates the nerve of the tongue during sleep, thereby enlarging and stabilizing the airway and improving control of breathing.

Surgical implantation of the upper-airway stimulation system was performed by otolaryngologists at 22 academic and private centers

The device was implanted in three areas

stimulation electrode was placed on the hypoglossal nerve, which provides innervation to the muscles of the tongue

a sensing lead was placed between rib muscles to detect breathing effort

a neurostimulator was implanted in the upper right chest, just below the clavicle bone

Patients used a "controller" to turn on the device at night, so it is only used when the patient sleeps

device is designed to sense breathing patterns and deliver mild stimulation to a patient's airway muscles to keep the airway open during sleep.

various sleep-disorder measuring systems, patients were found to experience 68 to 70 percent fewer sleep-apnea episodes per hou

In the preclinical study, researchers

developed a bio-inspired adhesive that could rapidly attach biodegradable patches inside a beating heart

in the exact place where congenital holes in the heart occur, such as with ventricular heart defects.

many creatures in nature have secretions that are viscous and repel water

enabling them to attach under wet and dynamic conditions

researchers developed a material with these properties that also is biodegradable, elastic and biocompatible

the degradable patches secured with the glue remained attached even at increased heart rates and blood pressure

it works in the presence of blood and moving structures

Pedro del Nido, MD, Chief of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, co-senior study author. "It should provide the physician with a completely new, much simpler technology and a new paradigm for tissue reconstruction to improve the quality of life of patients following surgical procedures."

the adhesive was strong enough to hold tissue and patches onto the heart equivalent to suturing

is biodegradable and biocompatible, so nothing foreign or toxic stays in the bodies of these patients

its adhesive abilities are activated with ultraviolent (UV) light, providing an on-demand, anti-bleeding seal within five seconds of UV light application

researchers note that their waterproof, light-activated adhesive will be useful in reducing the invasiveness of surgical procedures, as well as operating times, in addition to improving heart surgery outcomes.