Lagrange Point

As our climate changes extreme weather events become more common, but what does this mean for ecosystems? Ecosystems and plants that have adapted to on extreme climate, can thrive in another. An adaption that helps you survive in extreme cold can be very helpful when there is a drought. There is a balancing act between choosing when to grow and when to conserve energy. Plants carefully manage their resources in extreme drought and extreme cold. 

1. Joan Dudney, Andrew M. Latimer, Phillip van Mantgem, Harold Zald, Claire E. Willing, Jonathan C. B. Nesmith, Jennifer Cribbs, Elizabeth Milano. The energy–water limitation threshold explains divergent drought responses in tree growth, needle length, and stable isotope ratios. Global Change Biology, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16740

Asteroid belts are harder to find than Sci-fi would have you believe. Spotting an asteroid belt is easier in the outer solar system, but closer in it gets a bit more blurry. Using the JWT we can use more than just visible light to find tricky interstellar objects. Asteroid belts are messy but they can tell us a lot about a solar system by what they leave in their wake. 

1. András Gáspár, Schuyler Grace Wolff, George H. Rieke, Jarron M. Leisenring, Jane Morrison, Kate Y. L. Su, Kimberly Ward-Duong, Jonathan Aguilar, Marie Ygouf, Charles Beichman, Jorge Llop-Sayson, Geoffrey Bryden. Spatially resolved imaging of the inner Fomalhaut disk using JWST/MIRI. Nature Astronomy, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-01962-6

How can tiny bacteria change the entire planet? Greenland is beautiful and covered in glaciers, but they are turning more and more dark and black. Black algae is tinting glaciers in Greenland darker, and causing changes in our climate. The more our climate changes, the easier it is for algae to thrive in glacier runoff and change the colours of the glaciers. Algae can survive in strange locations on earth, what can that teach us about microorganisms across the solar system? 

1. James A. Bradley, Christopher B. Trivedi, Matthias Winkel, Rey Mourot, Stefanie Lutz, Catherine Larose, Christoph Keuschnig, Eva Doting, Laura Halbach, Athanasios Zervas, Alexandre M. Anesio, Liane G. Benning. Active and dormant microorganisms on glacier surfaces. Geobiology, 2022; 21 (2): 244 DOI: 10.1111/gbi.12535

Bacteria are masters of survival, pausing and shielding themselves when times get tough. So how do they know when to wake up? The mechanisms bacteria use to survive harsh conditions are one of the reasons they're able to survive so well. The protective layers and pausing all activity inside the cell enable the bacteria, as a spore, to survive very long periods of time. After suspending themselves through a tough period of time,how do bacteria wake themselves up?

1. Yongqiang Gao, Jeremy D. Amon, Lior Artzi, Fernando H. Ramírez-Guadiana, Kelly P. Brock, Joshua C. Cofsky, Deborah S. Marks, Andrew C. Kruse, David Z. Rudner. Bacterial spore germination receptors are nutrient-gated ion channels. Science, 2023; 380 (6643): 387 DOI: 10.1126/science.adg9829

Understanding the future of the universe requires peering into the past. How quickly the universe is expanding has been an active area of science since the 1920s, with several prizes and breakthroughs. Each time we get new or more accurate measurements it forces scientists to re-evaluate the assumptions and formulas. These breakthroughs then need to be confirmed with follow up studies. The measurement of Hubble's constant using supernova won a Nobel Prize in 2011, and new gravitational lensing measurements have provided extra confirmation to those numbers. Dark matter can influence a lot in our universe, but measuring it is difficult but using lensing techniques a more accurate measurement can be derived.

1. Mauricio Cruz Reyes, Richard I. Anderson. A 0.9% calibration of the Galactic Cepheid luminosity scale based on Gaia DR3 data of open clusters and Cepheids. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2023; 672: A85 DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202244775

Electronics power the modern world, but they come at a high environmental and energy cost. E-waste a serious problem as many of the elements in modern electronics cannot be easily recycled. Is there a way to produce electronics that are more environmentally friendly? Is it possible to make a circuit board or more simply even a transistor that doesn't rely on silicon? Can you imagine a Silicon Valley without actual silicon? Its possible to make recyclable electronics without silicon and instead relying only on carbon and cellulose. How can you get away from the use of chemicals or high heat in circuit fabrication?

1. Nicholas X. Williams, George Bullard, Nathaniel Brooke, Michael J. Therien, Aaron D. Franklin. Printable and recyclable carbon electronics using crystalline nanocellulose dielectrics. Nature Electronics, 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00574-0

Your body is constantly communicating about what's happening outside and inside of it, but how can we listen in. When your immune system is responding to a virus, or a wound is healing, there are lots of signals to decode if only we could hear them. By amplifying the signals inside your body with special folding DNA and transistors we can understand how our body responds. The brain's neural networks are a treasure trove of information if we're able to blend in and listen. Using a microbot you can get precise information from on inside in the brain rather than relying on external information.

1. Xudong Ji, Xuanyi Lin, Jonathan Rivnay. Organic electrochemical transistors as on-site signal amplifiers for electrochemical aptamer-based sensing. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37402-2

How does your body pass information along to your brain? The thalamus connects those sensory inputs back to your cerebral cortex but it's a lot sparser than you'd think. The synapses that link your senses to your cortex are often weak and rare, but their diversity gives them a boost. Lots of diverse synapses with different strengths help you perceive the world more clearly. Do both your eyes get equally treated by your brain?

1. Aygul Balcioglu, Rebecca Gillani, Michael Doron, Kendyll Burnell, Taeyun Ku, Alev Erisir, Kwanghun Chung, Idan Segev, Elly Nedivi. Mapping thalamic innervation to individual L2/3 pyramidal neurons and modeling their ‘readout’ of visual input. Nature Neuroscience, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41593-022-01253-9

Building a habitat on Mars or the Moon is hard work, but it's a lot easier if you can make your own building materials. Animal blood has historically been used as a binding agent for mortar, so could human blood help on Mars? You can make your own building materials on the Moon or Mars that are far stronger than on earth especially if you add tears and blood. Maybe you don't want to use blood in when building your martian home, but would you sacrifice your potato chips? Potato chips and some extra salt will can make for super strong building materials on the Moon or Mars. Is there ways to enhance the performance of concrete by using other industries waste byproducts? All waste has to be re-used when you're in space, but here on earth using waste water and waste steel can help boost concrete.

1. Aled D. Roberts, Nigel S. Scrutton. StarCrete: A starch-based biocomposite for off-world construction. Open Engineering, 2023; 13 (1) DOI: 10.1515/eng-2022-0390

Seeing how something happens makes it much easier to understand. Biological process can be very hard to capture with images or video. Understanding how a protein requires thinking in 3D but to take images of them we often have to 'snap freeze' them in place. How can lasers, ions and quantum mechanics be used to help capture a protein in motion. PCR based diagnostics tests are accurate but require a lot of setup and expertise. Can you make a PCR test more like a point of care test using bio-luminescence.

1. Shiny Maity, Brad D. Price, C. Blake Wilson, Arnab Mukherjee, Matthieu Starck, David Parker, Maxwell Z. Wilson, Janet E. Lovett, Songi Han, Mark S. Sherwin. Triggered Functional Dynamics of AsLOV2 by Time‐Resolved Electron Paramagnetic Resonance at High Magnetic Fields. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2023; 62 (13) DOI: 10.1002/anie.202212832