The Unlikely Buddha

  By measuring inflated helium nuclei, physicists have challenged our best understanding of the force that binds protons and neutrons. Illustration of three balloons with spirals and glowing orbs surrounding them to symbolize helium A new measurement of the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, confirms previous hints of an uncomfortable truth: We still don’t have a solid theoretical grasp of even the simplest nuclear systems. To test the strong nuclear force, physicists turned to the helium-4 nucleus, which has two protons and two neutrons. When helium nuclei are excited, they grow like an inflating balloon until one of the protons pops off. Surprisingly, in a recent experiment, helium nuclei didn’t swell according to plan: They ballooned more than expected before they burst. A measurement describing that expansion, called the form factor, is twice as large as theoretical predictions. “The theory should work,” said Sonia Bacca, a theoretical physicist at...

  Campus Galli is a Carolingian monastic community under construction in Meßkirch, Baden-Württemberg, Germany . The construction project includes plans to build a medieval monastery according to the early ninth-century Plan of Saint Gall using techniques from that era. The long-term financing of the project is to come from revenue generated from the site's operation as a tourist attraction. The construction site has been open for visitors since June 2013. The construction of a wooden church was started in 2014, and the main structure was completed in 2015. Construction continues on the interior and details of the exterior. The Carolingian monastery town is located in a wooded area approximately four kilometers north of the small town of Meßkirch in southern Germany. The buildings follow the designs in the Plan of Saint Gall , the only surviving major architectural drawing from the Middle Ages, and uses as much as possible the materials and methods contemporary to the time of Cha...

  Scientists from the Keck School of Medicine at USC have published the first detailed description of the interplay between two cell types that allow lizards to regenerate their tails. Their study, "Single-cell analysis of lizard blastema fibroblasts reveals phagocyte-dependent activation of Hedgehog-responsive chondrogenesis," which was funded by the NIH and appears in Nature Communications, focused on lizards' unusual ability to rebuild cartilage, which replaces bone as the main structural tissue in regenerated tails after tail loss. The discovery might eventually offer insights for researchers studying how to rebuild cartilage damaged by osteoarthritis in humans, a degenerative and debilitating disease that affects about 32.5 million adults in the U.S., according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is currently no cure for osteoarthritis. The study's lead author, Thomas Lozito, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery and stem cell biology and reg...