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Categories: Ecology: Research, Space: The Solar System

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the inner workings of a dusty disk surrounding a nearby red dwarf star. These observations represent the first time the previously known disk has been imaged at these infrared wavelengths of light. They also provide clues to the composition of the disk.

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Researchers confirmed an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth's diameter.

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Amino acids make up millions of proteins that drive the chemical gears of life, including essential bodily functions in animals. Because of amino acids' relationship to living things scientists are eager to understand the origins of these molecules. After all, amino acids may have helped spawn life on Earth after being delivered here about 4 billion years ago by pieces of asteroids or comets.

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When it comes to preserving the world's coral reefs, what's going on above the surface is as important as what's going on below it, according to new research.

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A new study posits that interstellar cloud conditions may have played a significant role on the presence of key building blocks of life in the solar system.

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Astronomers were on the lookout for 'stars behaving strangely' when an automated alert from pointed them to Gaia17bpp, a star that had gradually brightened over a 2 1/2-year period. But follow-up analyses indicated that Gaia17bpp wasn't changing. Instead, the star is likely part of a rare type of binary system. Its apparent brightening was the end of a years-long eclipse by an unusual, 'dusty' stellar companion.

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Using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star -- the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet's surface. The world is 95% Earth's size and likely rocky.

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In June 2021, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew close to Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, observing evidence of magnetic reconnection. A team has used Juno data to examine the electron and ion particles and magnetic fields as the magnetic field lines of Jupiter and Ganymede merged, snapped and reoriented, heating and accelerating the charged particles in the region.

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While using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the masers around oddball star MWC 349A scientists discovered something unexpected: a previously unseen jet of material launching from the star's gas disk at impossibly high speeds. What's more, they believe the jet is caused by strong magnetic forces surrounding the star. The discovery could help researchers to understand the nature and evolution of massive stars and how hydrogen masers are formed in space.

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Climate change will reshape ecosystems through two types of events: short-term, extreme events -- or 'pulses' -- and long-term changes, or 'presses.' Understanding the effects of presses and pulses is essential as conservationists and policymakers try to preserve ecosystems and safeguard biodiversity. Researchers have discovered how different presses and pulses impacted Magellanic penguins -- a migratory marine predator -- over nearly four decades and found that, though individual presses and pulses impacted penguins in a variety of ways, both were equally important for the future survival of the penguin population. They also found that these types of climate changes, taken together, are leading to an overall population decline at their historically largest breeding site.

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Save the ... parasites? Analyzing 140 years of parasite abundance in fish shows dramatic declines, especially in parasites that rely on three or more host species. The decline is linked to warming ocean temperatures. Parasitic species might be in real danger, researchers warn -- and that means not just fewer worms, but losses for the entire ecosystem.

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Researchers suggest that rising levels of humanmade chemicals, accumulating in marine plankton, might be used to monitor the impact of human activity on ecosystem health and perhaps study links between ocean pollution and land-based rates of childhood and adult chronic illnesses.

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This study, conducted from 2015-19 in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, may be the first to specifically examine the multispecies impacts of a wide-scale plague outbreak, which reduced the area covered by prairie dog colonies from nearly 25,000 acres to only about 125 acres in the study area. The 2017 outbreak was followed by abnormally high precipitation in 2018, which caused vegetation to grow quickly and taller without the presence of prairie dogs. The researchers found that the mountain plover, birds that thrive when vegetation is kept shorter by prairie dogs, almost disappeared from the study area, while migrant songbirds such as the lark bunting, which prefer taller vegetation, increased in number. Meanwhile, species including ferruginous hawks, badgers and swift foxes declined dramatically as their prey base crashed.

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Physicists have used spacecraft data to confirm an important theory of plasma physics that improves our understanding of space weather.

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Scientists have discovered for the first time that invasive rats on tropical islands are affecting the territorial behavior of fish on surrounding coral reefs. The new study shows that the presence of invasive black rats on tropical islands is causing changes in the territorial behavior of the jewel damselfish -- a herbivorous species of tropical reef fish that 'farm' algae in the branches of corals.

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Researchers have revealed the effects of high pathogenicity avian influenza virus infection on an Ezo red fox and a Japanese raccoon dog, linking their infection to a recorded die-off of crows.

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Researchers uncover the long-hidden process that helps explain why the Sun's corona can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it.

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Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to protect Antarctic ecosystems, and population declines are likely for 65% of the continent's plants and wildlife by the year 2100, according to a new study.

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When NASA's Mars rovers found manganese oxides in rocks in the Gale and Endeavor craters on Mars in 2014, the discovery sparked some scientists to suggest that the red planet might have once had more oxygen in its atmosphere billions of years ago. But a new experimental study upends this view. Scientists discovered that under Mars-like conditions, manganese oxides can be readily formed without atmospheric oxygen.

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Ocean warming is driving an increase in the frequency and severity of marine heatwaves, causing untold damage to coral reefs. Tropical corals, which live in symbiosis with tiny single celled algae, are sensitive to high temperatures, and exhibit a stress response called bleaching when the ocean gets too hot. In the last 4 decades, marine heatwaves have caused widespread bleaching, and killed millions of corals. Because of this, a global search is underway for reefs that can withstand the heat stress, survive future warming, and act as sources of heat-tolerant coral larvae to replenish affected areas both naturally and through restoration.