On board the International Space Station since May 2018 is a mini-fridge-size facility called the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), capable of chilling atoms in a vacuum down to temperatures one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero. It is, for all intents and purposes, one of the coldest spots in the known universe. And according to a new study published in Nature, scientists have just used it to create a rare state of matter for the first time ever in space. From a report: Bose-Einstein condensates, sometimes called the fifth state of matter, are gaseous clouds of atoms that stop behaving like individual atoms and start to behave like a collective. BECs, as they're often called, were first predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose over 95 years ago, but they were first observed in the lab by scientists just 25 years ago. The general idea when making a BEC is to inject atoms (in the case of CAL, rubidium and potassium) into an ultra-cold chamber to slow them down. A magnetic trap is then created in the chamber with an electrified coil, which is used along with lasers and other tools to move the atoms into a dense cloud. At this point the atoms "kind of blur into one another," says David Aveline, a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the lead author of the new study.

To run experiments using a BEC, you need to turn down or release the magnetic trap. The cloud of crowded atoms will expand, which is useful because BECs need to stay cold, and gases tend to cool off as they expand. But if the atoms in a BEC get too far apart, they no longer behave like a condensate. This is where the microgravity of low Earth orbit comes into play. If you try to increase the volume on Earth, says Aveline, gravity will just pull the atoms in the center of the BEC cloud down to the bottom of the trap until they spill out, distorting the condensate or ruining it entirely. But in microgravity, the tools in the CAL can hold the atoms together even as the trap's volume increases. That makes for a longer-lived condensate, which in turn allows scientists to study it longer than they could on Earth (this initial demonstration ran for 1.118 seconds, although the goal is to be able to detect the cloud for up to 10 seconds). Though only a first step, the CAL experiment could one day allow BECs to form the basis of ultra-sensitive instruments that detect faint signals from some of the universe's most mysterious phenomena, like gravitational waves and dark energy. From a more practical perspective, Aveline believes the team's work could pave the way for better inertial sensors. "The applications range from accelerometers and seismometers to gyroscopes," he says.

The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's follow-on instrument to the wildly successful Hubble Space Telescope, will not meet its current schedule of launching in March 2021, according to the chief of NASA's science programs. Ars Technica reports: "We will not launch in March," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the space agency's associate administrator for science. "Absolutely we will not launch in March. That is not in the cards right now. That's not because they did anything wrong. It's not anyone's fault or mismanagement." Zurbuchen made these comments at a virtual meeting of the National Academies' Space Studies Board. He said the telescope was already cutting it close on its schedule before the COVID-19 pandemic struck the agency and that the virus had led to additional lost work time.

"This team has stayed on its toes and pushed this telescope forward at the maximum speed possible," he said. "But we've lost time. Instead of two shifts fully staffed, we could not do that for all the reasons that we talk about. Not everybody was available. There were positive cases here and there. And so, perhaps, we had only one shift." NASA and the telescope's prime contractor, Northrop Grumman, are evaluating the schedule going forward. This will include an estimate of when operations can completely return to normal -- Zurbuchen said telescope preparation and testing activities are nearing full staffing again -- and set a new date for a launch. This schedule review should conclude in July. "I'm very optimistic about this thing getting off the launch pad in 2021," Zurbuchen said. "Of course, there is still a lot of mountain to climb."

Software developer Danny Bittman tweeted about how he's convinced that his eyesight was damaged from wearing a VR headset for hours a day. The BBC reports: Danny Bittman, who has worked as a virtual reality developer for four years, suggested it could have affected his eyesight. "Just had my first eye doctor visit in three years. Now I'm very worried about my future VR use. I have a new eye convergence problem that acts like dyslexia. The doc, a headset owner, is convinced my VR use caused this. He said "these glasses we usually prescribe to 40-year-olds," he tweeted. He went on to describe the problem: "My eyes jump when I read things like a screen or books. I've always had a small level of this but it's greatly intensified now. It's also linked to headaches and vertigo."

He said that the issue was about "prolonged use," and admitted that he could spend up to six hours a day wearing a headset, split into 30-minute sessions. Ceri Smith-Jaynes, from the Association of Optometrists, told the BBC: "We currently do not have any reliable evidence that VR headsets cause permanent deterioration in eyesight in children or adults. There have been some studies looking into the effects of short-term use of VR headsets only; these did not reveal a deterioration in eyesight. "However, some people do suffer from temporary symptoms such as nausea, dry, irritable eyes, headache or eyestrain." But she did have some advice about usage: "If you spend all day in VR without a break, you'll need time to readjust to the light and the different visual environment of the real world. I would suggest taking a five-to-ten minute break each hour, using that time to move about, blink and look out of a window, or take a short walk.

Representation theory was initially dismissed. Today, it's central to much of mathematics. From a report: When representation theory emerged in the late 19th century, many mathematicians questioned its worth. In 1897, the English mathematician William Burnside wrote that he doubted that this unorthodox perspective would yield any new results at all. "Basically what [Burnside was] saying is that representation theory is useless," said Geordie Williamson of the University of Sydney in a 2015 lecture. More than a century since its debut, representation theory has served as a key ingredient in many of the most important discoveries in mathematics. Yet its usefulness is still hard to perceive at first. "It doesn't seem immediately clear that this is a reasonable thing to study," said Emily Norton of the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany.

Representation theory is a way of taking complicated objects and "representing" them with simpler objects. The complicated objects are often collections of mathematical objects -- like numbers or symmetries -- that stand in a particular structured relationship with each other. These collections are called groups. The simpler objects are arrays of numbers called matrices, the core element of linear algebra. While groups are abstract and often difficult to get a handle on, matrices and linear algebra are elementary. "Mathematicians basically know everything there is to know about matrices. It's one of the few subjects of math that's thoroughly well understood," said Jared Weinstein of Boston University.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Babylon Health has acknowledged that its GP video appointment app has suffered a data breach. The firm was alerted to the problem after one of its users discovered he had been given access to dozens of video recordings of other patients' consultations. A follow-up check by Babylon revealed a small number of further UK users could also see others' sessions. The firm said it had since fixed the issue and notified regulators. Babylon allows its members to speak to a doctor, therapist or other health specialist via a smartphone video call and, when appropriate, sends an electronic prescription to a nearby pharmacy. It has more than 2.3 million registered users in the UK. "On the afternoon of Tuesday June 9 we identified and resolved an issue within two hours whereby one patient accessed the introduction of another patient's consultation recording," it said in statement. "Our investigation showed that three patients, who had booked and had appointments today, were incorrectly presented with, but did not view, recordings of other patients' consultations through a subsection of the user's profile within the Babylon app."

Researchers around the world are developing more than 135 vaccines against the coronavirus. Vaccines typically require years of research and testing before reaching the clinic, but scientists are racing to produce a safe and effective vaccine by next year. The New York Times: Work began in January with the deciphering of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The first vaccine safety trials in humans started in March, but the road ahead remains uncertain. Some trials will fail, and others may end without a clear result. But a few may succeed in stimulating the immune system to produce effective antibodies against the virus. The story outlines the status of all the vaccines that have reached trials in humans, along with a selection of promising vaccines still being tested in cells or animals. The closest to developing the vaccine currently is a joint collaboration between the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, and their vaccine is based on a chimpanzee adenovirus called ChAdOx1. The vaccine has gone through Phase I testing and is beginning Phase II/III testing in England and Brazil. Supported by Operation Warp Speed, the project may deliver emergency vaccines by October.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Flat solar panels still face big limitations when it comes to making the most of the available sunlight each day. A new spherical solar cell design aims to boost solar power harvesting potential from nearly every angle without requiring expensive moving parts to keep tracking the sun's apparent movement across the sky. The spherical solar cell prototype designed by Saudi researchers is a tiny blue sphere that a person can easily hold in one hand like a ping pong ball. Indoor experiments with a solar simulator lamp have already shown that it can achieve between 15 percent and 100 percent more power output compared with a flat solar cell with the same total surface area, depending on the background materials reflecting sunlight into the solar cells. The research group hopes its nature-inspired design can fare similarly well in future field tests in many different locations around the world.

Testing with the solar simulator lamp showed that the spherical solar cell provided 24 percent more power output over a traditional flat solar cell upon immediate exposure to sunlight. That power advantage jumped to 39 percent after both types of solar cells had begun to heat up and suffered some loss in power efficiency -- an indication that the spherical shape may have some advantages in dissipating heat. The spherical solar cell also delivered about 60 percent more power output than its flat counterpart when both could collect only scattered sunlight under a simulated roof rather than receiving direct sunlight. Additional experiments with different reflective backgrounds -- including an aluminum cup, aluminum paper, white paper, and sand -- showed that the hexagonal aluminum cup background helped the spherical solar cell outperform the flat solar cell by 100 percent in terms of power output. The new work is detailed in a paper submitted for review to the journal MRS Communications.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Our lungs, bones, blood vessels and other major organs are made up of cells, and one way our bodies keep us healthy is by using protein messengers known as ligands that bind to receptors on the surfaces of cells to regulate our biological processes. When those messages get garbled, it can make us ill with a host of different diseases. Now a team led by Stanford bioengineer and department chair Jennifer Cochran has tweaked one ligand in slightly different ways to produce two startlingly different results. One set of alterations caused neuronal cells to regenerate, while different tweaks to the same protein inhibited lung tumor growth. The experiments her team described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were performed on rat and human cells or in mice that model actual diseases and are still far from being tested in humans. But the results show how scientists are becoming increasingly adept at tinkering with the body's protein-based control mechanisms to help vital organs heal themselves.

California counties, including Los Angeles County, could decide to reopen movie theaters as early as Friday. The Los Angeles Times reports: Each local health officer has the authority to decide whether to move forward with relaxing restrictions on reopening theaters. While the state provides guidance on how businesses can reopen, counties decide when they occur. The new rules would limit the number of guests in a movie theater to 25% of theater capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower. Also, theaters would need to implement a reservation system to limit the number of attendees entering the theater at a time when possible. "Designate arrival times as part of reservations, if possible so that customers arrive at and enter the theater in staggered groups," the state's rules say.

To keep guests six feet away from others, theaters are to close or otherwise remove seats from use, which may require seating every other row or blocking off seats in a checkerboard style, in which no one is sitting directly behind other patrons. The rules would ask patrons to wear face coverings when not eating or drinking. Staff would need to be available to help usher people before the show begins and at its conclusion to reduce crowding when entering or exiting. The guidelines also suggest using disposable or washable seat covers in theaters, "particularly on porous surfaces that are difficult to properly clean. Discard and replace seat covers between each use," the guidelines say.

Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura are among 51 California counties that will be given the option by the state to allow movie theaters to reopen. All but seven of California's 58 counties have filed attestation paperwork to reopen their economies at an accelerated pace. Six of the counties that have not done so are in the San Francisco Bay Area -- Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara -- and the seventh is Imperial County east of San Diego, which is facing a bad outbreak. Deadline notes that while some independently owned cinemas could open their doors again, "many notable chains won't."

Not only do movie theaters need more time to prep, but many have paused their leases with landlords. "Also, while a 30%-50% capacity auditorium level is doable financially for most theater owners, a 25% cap is stretching it for some," the report adds. "Chains in California we hear aren't reopening Friday include AMC, Regal, Cinemark (which has outlined a three-phase approach beginning June 19 in Dallas), Alamo Drafthouse, Arclight Cinemas, Laemmle, Cinepolis and Landmark."

Beijing dismissed as "ridiculous" a Harvard Medical School study of hospital traffic and search engine data that suggested the new coronavirus may already have been spreading in China last August, and scientists said it offered no convincing evidence of when the outbreak began. From a report: The research, which has not been peer-reviewed by other scientists, used satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan -- where the disease was first identified in late 2019 -- and data for symptom-related queries on search engines for things such as "cough" and "diarrhea." The study's authors said increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in December 2019.

"While we cannot confirm if the increased volume was directly related to the new virus, our evidence supports other recent work showing that emergence happened before identification at the Huanan Seafood market (in Wuhan)," they said. Paul Digard, an expert in virology at the University of Edinburgh, said that using search engine data and satellite imagery of hospital traffic to detect disease outbreaks "is an interesting idea with some validity." But he said the data were only correlative and -- as the Harvard scientists noted -- cannot identify cause.

A top expert at the World Health Organization on Tuesday walked back her earlier assertion that transmission of the coronavirus by people who do not have symptoms is "very rare." From a report: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, who made the original comment at a W.H.O. briefing on Monday, said that it was based on just two or three studies and that it was a "misunderstanding" to say asymptomatic transmission is rare globally. "I was just responding to a question, I wasn't stating a policy of W.H.O. or anything like that," she said. Dr. Van Kerkhove said that the estimates of transmission from people without symptoms come primarily from models, which may not provide an accurate representation. "That's a big open question, and that remains an open question," she said.

Scientists had sharply criticized the W.H.O. for creating confusion on the issue, given the far-ranging public policy implications. Governments around the world have recommended face masks and social distancing measures because of the risk of asymptomatic transmission. A range of scientists said Dr. Van Kerkhove's comments did not reflect the current scientific research. "All of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19," scientists at the Harvard Global Health Institute said in a statement on Tuesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS NewsHour: The head of the World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus pandemic is worsening globally, even as the situation in Europe is improving. At a press briefing on Monday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus noted that about 75% of cases reported to the U.N. health agency on Sunday came from 10 countries in the Americas and South Asia. He noted that more than 100,000 cases have been reported on nine of the past 10 days -- and that the 136,000 cases reported Sunday was the biggest number so far. Tedros said most countries in Africa are still seeing an increase in cases, including in new geographic areas even though most countries on the continent have fewer than 1,000 cases. "At the same time, we're encouraged that several countries around the world are seeing positive signs," Tedros said. "In these countries, the biggest threat now is complacency." There was some good news to come from the media briefing. "From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual," said Maria Van Kerkhove on Monday. "We have a number of reports from countries who are doing very detailed contact tracing. They're following asymptomatic cases, they're following contacts and they're not finding secondary transmission onward. It is very rare -- and much of that is not published in the literature," she said. "We are constantly looking at this data and we're trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question. It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward."

Tedros also dedicated time to addressing protests across the globe fighting against police brutality and systemic racism. "WHO fully supports equality and the global movement against racism," Tedros said during the briefing. "We reject discrimination of all kinds. We encourage all those protesting around the world to do so safely."

According to a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the orbit of Saturn's moon Titan is expanding at a rate about 100 times faster than expected. "The research suggests that Titan was born much closer to Saturn and migrated out to its current distance of 1.2 million kilometers (about 746,000 miles) over 4.5 billion years," reports Phys.Org. From the report: In the work detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, two teams of researchers each used a different technique to measure Titan's orbit over a period of 10 years. One technique, called astrometry, produced precise measurements of Titan's position relative to background stars in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The other technique, radiometry, measured Cassini's velocity as it was affected by the gravitational influence of Titan. "By using two completely independent data sets -- astrometric and radiometric -- and two different methods of analysis, we obtained results that are in full agreement," says the study's first author, Valery Lainey formerly of JPL (which Caltech manages for NASA), now of Paris Observatory, PSL University. Lainey worked with the astrometry team.

The results are also in agreement with a theory proposed in 2016 by Fuller, who predicted that Titan's migration rate would be much faster than standard tidal theories estimated. His theory notes that Titan is expected to gravitationally squeeze Saturn with a particular frequency that makes the planet oscillate strongly, similarly to how swinging your legs on a swing with the right timing can drive you higher and higher. This process of tidal forcing is called resonance locking. Fuller proposed that the high amplitude of Saturn's oscillation would dissipate a lot of energy, which in turn would cause Titan to migrate outward away from the planet at a faster rate than previously thought. Indeed, the observations both found that Titan is migrating away from Saturn at a rate of 11 centimeters per year, more than 100 times faster than previous theories predicted.

This is the first story in a new occasional article series we're calling Slashback. We'll be covering a topic that may not be breaking news, but is interesting to us. Today's Slashback story features an article from Scientific American highlighting the profound effect of severe social isolation on the brain. From the report: The feeling of "wanting" something has repeatedly been shown to increase dopamine transmission in the brain reward circuit (see here and here). This circuit consists of the dopamingeric midbrain and the striatum. These areas are particularly active in response to images of food when hungry, to drug-related images for those who are addicted, and people with Internet Gaming Disorder who are deprived of gaming (see here, here, and here). What about social interactions? For social animals, it would make sense that social interactions would be a primary reward. However, so far such research has primarily been conducted on mice. In 2016, Gillian Matthews and colleagues published a paper showing that after 24 hours of social isolation, dopamine neurons in the midbrain were activated when mice sought social interaction. These dopamine neurons showed similar activation patterns to other cravings. It appears that the acute social isolation in these mice led to an aversive "loneliness-like" state that increased motivation for social engagement. Nevertheless, researchers have questioned whether these findings would apply to humans, especially since it's not possible to assess whether a mouse subjectively feels lonely.

Livia Tomova, a postdoctoral fellow in the Saxelab at MIT, was inspired by this earlier research on mice and pitched to Rebecca Saxe the idea of trying to replicate the findings in humans. [...] What did the researchers find? After only ten hours of social isolation-- and even despite people knowing exactly when their deprivation would end-- people reported substantially more social craving, loneliness, discomfort, dislike of isolation, and decreased happiness than they did at baseline. Similarly, the same findings were seen after ten hours of food fasting. Critically, the researchers found similar midbrain activity in response to food cues after fasting and social cues after isolation. The response was variable across participants, and those who reported more social craving after the social isolation period showed a larger brain response to the social stimuli. Interestingly, the variability across participants was also partially explained by the variability in pre-existing chronic levels of loneliness. Participants with higher levels of chronic loneliness at baseline reported less craving for social contact after 10 hours of isolation in response to the social stimuli, and showed a muted response in their midbrain in response to the social cues after social isolation (they also showed reduced midbrain responses to food cues after fasting). This finding is consistent with prior research showing that chronic loneliness is associated with reduced motivation to engage socially with others.

These results are exciting because they are consistent with the results from earlier research on mice and the "social homeostasis" hypothesis developed based on animal models. According to this hypothesis, since social connection is an innate need, animals evolved neural system to regulate "social homeostasis." The current findings suggest that there is a similar mechanism underlying social craving in humans, and that people who are forced to be isolated crave social interactions in a similar way as a hungry person craves food. As the researchers note, these findings are also encouraging for translating mouse models of mental health disorders that affect social motivation, such as autism spectrum disorder, social anxiety disorder, or depression. While the article makes little to no mention of the coronavirus, it does make one ponder how the mandated period of isolation associated with it will affect us, especially as local governments around the country begin to lift restrictions and reopen.

What happens when a person starved of food is suddenly presented with the ability to eat? They gorge themselves. What about when a person who has been socially isolated for weeks suddenly gets to socialize? Perhaps they'll jump on the chance to surround themselves with others. We're already starting to see more people booking local holidays...

With dozens of digital contact tracing apps already rolled out worldwide, and many more on the way, how many people need to use them for the system to work? One number has come up over and over again: 60%. From a report: That's the percentage of the population that many public health authorities documented by MIT Technology Review's Covid Tracing Tracker say they are targeting as they attempt to protect their communities from covid-19. The number is taken from an Oxford University study released in April. But since no nation has reached such levels, many have criticized "exposure notification" technologies as essentially worthless. But the researchers who produced the original study say their work has been profoundly misunderstood, and that in fact much lower levels of app adoption could still be vitally important for tackling covid-19.

"There's been a lot of misreporting around efficacy and uptake ... suggesting that the app only works at 60% -- which is not the case," says Andrea Stewart, a spokeswoman for the Oxford team. In fact, she says, "it starts to have a protective effect" at "much lower levels." The Oxford models found that "the app has an effect at all levels of uptake" as illustrated by this graph which shows every level of adoption slowing to pandemic to some extent. Because of the way such digital contacting tracing and exposure notification apps work -- by notifying users if their phone has been in proximity to the phone of somebody who later gets a diagnosis of covid-19 -- blanket coverage is preferable. The greater the number of users, the higher the likelihood that it will help at-risk people to self-quarantine before they can infect others.

The search habits of thousands of South Korean senior citizens "are being monitored through virtual-assistant smart speaker technology," writes Slashdot reader shirappu. The AP reports that around 3,200 people across the country, "mostly older than 70 and living alone, have so far allowed the SK Telecom speakers to listen to them 24 hours a day since the service launched in April 2019."

It's part of a larger look at whether technology has become too invasive, in a country where health authorities have also "aggressively used credit-card records, surveillance videos and cellphone data to find and isolate potential virus carriers." Locations where patients went before they were diagnosed are published on websites and released through cellphone alerts. Smartphone tracking apps are used to monitor around 30,000 individuals quarantined at home... [E]ntertainment venues in Seoul, Incheon and Daejeon will be required to register customers with smartphone QR codes so they can be easily located if needed. The requirement expands nationwide on June 10. But there's a dark side. People here have often managed to trace back the online information to the unnamed virus carriers, exposing embarrassing personal details and making them targets of public contempt...

President Moon Jae-in's administration has said data-driven industries will be critical in boosting a pandemic-hit economy. Officials are preparing regulations for revised data laws that lawmakers passed in January after months of wrangling. They aim to allow businesses greater freedom in collecting and analyzing anonymous personal data without seeking individual consent. If they work as intended, optimists say the laws would allow artificial intelligence to truly take off and pave the way for highly customized financial and health care services after they start in August.

But activist Oh Byoung-il said the changes could bring excessive privacy infringements unless robust safeguards are installed. "Companies will always have an endless thirst for data, but you can't give it to them all," he said.

Long-time Slashdot reader heretic108 writes: Following its "go early and go hard" lockdown regime, New Zealand's active COVID-19 case count has now reached zero. Stringent border quarantine rules remain in place, however, and New Zealand is just now starting to count the economic cost.
New Zealand has now marked 17 days in a row without a new case, according to the article. Throughout a population of 4.8 million, to date there have been just 1,504 "confirmed and probable cases," and the death toll remains at 22.

"Laboratories across the country have completed 294,848 tests."

Writing for Quanta magazine, an adjunct professor of neuroscience at the University of Maryland described an intriguing study led by MIT neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai: Incredible as it may sound, the researchers improved the brains of animals with Alzheimer's simply by using LED lights that flashed 40 times a second. Even sound played at this charmed frequency, 40 hertz, had a similar effect.... Exposing the mice to both stimuli, a light show synchronized with pulsating sound, had an even more powerful effect, reducing amyloid plaques [a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease] in regions throughout the cerebral cortex, including the prefrontal region, which carries out higher-level executive functions that are impaired in Alzheimer's.

I was amazed, so just to make sure I wasn't getting unduly excited about the possibility of using flashing lights and sounds to treat humans, I talked to Hiroaki Wake, a neuroscientist at Kobe University in Japan who was not involved with the work. "It would be fantastic!" he said. "The treatment may also be effective for a number of neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's disease and ALS," where microglia also play a role... Tsai's team has just begun assessing their strobe-light method on patients, and they're sure to be joined by others as more researchers learn of this promising work.
According to the article, another study at the Georgia Institute of Technology is investigating a specific mechanism with which doctors "could potentially treat different diseases just by varying the light and sound rhythms they use.

"The different stimuli would rock the neurons into producing appropriate brain wave frequencies, causing nearby microglia to release specific types of cytokines, which tell microglia in general how to go to work repairing the brain."

A reader quotes MIT's Technology Review: Three thousand light-years from Earth sits Kepler 160, a sun-like star that's already thought to have three planets in its system. Now researchers think they've found a fourth. Planet KOI-456.04, as it's called, appears similar to Earth in size and orbit, raising new hopes we've found perhaps the best candidate yet for a habitable exoplanet that resembles our home world. The new findings bolster the case for devoting more time to looking for planets orbiting stars like Kepler-160 and our sun, where there's a better chance a planet can receive the kind of illumination that's amenable to life.

Most exoplanet discoveries so far have been made around red dwarf stars. This isn't totally unexpected; red dwarfs are the most common type of star out there. And our main method for finding exoplanets involves looking for stellar transits — periodic dips in a star's brightness as an orbiting object passes in front of it. This is much easier to do for dimmer stars like red dwarfs, which are smaller than our sun and emit more of their energy as infrared radiation. The highest-profile discovery of this type is near our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri — a red dwarf with a potentially habitable planet called Proxima b (whose existence was, incidentally, confirmed in a new study published this week).

Data on the new exoplanet orbiting Kepler 160, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics on Thursday, points to a different situation entirely. From what researchers can tell, KOI 456.04 looks to be less than twice the size of Earth and is apparently orbiting Kepler-160 at about the same distance from Earth to the sun (one complete orbit is 378 days). Perhaps most important, it receives about 93% as much light as Earth gets from the sun.

sciencehabit quotes Science magazine: In a famous Siberian experiment carried out the 1950s, scientists turned foxes into tame, doglike canines by breeding only the least aggressive ones generation after generation. The creatures developed stubby snouts, floppy ears, and even began to bark.

Now, it appears that some rural red foxes in the United Kingdom are doing this on their own. When the animals moved from the forest to city habitats, they began to evolve doglike traits, new research reveals, potentially setting themselves on the path to domestication...

Most significantly, the urban foxes, like those in the Russian experiment, had noticeably shorter and wider muzzles, and smaller brains, than their rural fellows. And males and females had very similar skull shapes. All of these changes are typical of what Charles Darwin labeled domestication syndrome. Overall, urban foxes' skulls seemed to be designed for a stronger bite than were those of rural foxes, which are shaped for speed.

Perhaps that's because in the city, a fox can simply stand at a human trash pile and feed on the food we've tossed out, where they may encounter more bones that can only be crushed with stronger jaws, Parsons speculates. Still, he emphasizes that the urban red foxes are not domesticated. But the study does show how exposure to human activity can set an animal down this path, says Melinda Zeder, an emeritus archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.