ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Nothing to squirm about: Space station worms help battle muscle, bone loss Posted: 13 Jan 2015 09:11 AM PST Two investigations on the space station help researchers seek clues to physiological problems found in astronauts by studying C. elegans -- a millimeter-long roundworm that is widely used as a model organism. This simple, tiny roundworm could lead to a cure for symptoms affecting millions of the aging and infirm population of Earth, and the astronauts orbiting it, potentially offering a solution to a major problem in an extremely small package, scientists say.

Decoding the gravitational evolution of dark matter halos Posted: 13 Jan 2015 08:15 AM PST Researchers have revealed that considering environmental effects such as a gravitational tidal force spread over a scale much larger than a galaxy cluster is indispensable to explain the distribution and evolution of dark matter halos around galaxies. A detailed comparison between theory and simulations made this work possible.