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This composite image of the Perseverance rover’s first borehole (2.7 centimetres wide) suggests that the rock sample was probably pulverized.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Why NASA’s Mars rover failed to get a core
NASA’s Perseverance rover couldn’t get to grips with a coveted first rock-core sample from Mars because the stone was too crumbly. An attempt earlier this month failed to snag a core: the rover pulverized the rock and dropped the fragments, says NASA. Perseverance will roll onwards to try to collect another type of rock that is more like those that it practised with on Earth. “This is just another reminder that there are still a lot of unknowns about Mars,” says planetary scientist Meenakshi Wadhwa. “This planet still has the capacity to surprise us when we least expect it.”
Iran’s home-grown vaccines
Iran is one of few Middle Eastern nations with the capacity to develop COVID-19 vaccines, and it has been doing so in earnest: around ten are under development, says Kayhan Azadmanesh, the head of the virology research division at the Pasteur Institute of Iran in Tehran. Two have already been given emergency authorization for use in the country: COVIran Barekat, developed by the Iranian state-owned Shifa Pharmed Industrial Group, and Pasteurcovac (or Soberana 02 in Cuba), developed in a collaboration between Cuba’s Finlay Institute of Vaccines in Havana and the Pasteur Institute of Iran. The efforts build on a long history of vaccine production in Iran and contend with the country’s estrangement from the international community. “The sanctions [imposed by the United States] have caused a lot of difficulty, because they make it hard for us to buy materials and equipment,” says Azadmanesh. “But somehow, we find a way.”
Tortured phrases point to dodgy papers
Strange turns of phrase with the whiff of automated translation have revealed hundreds of fabricated papers in the scientific literature. Researchers ran a search for several of these tortured phrases — ‘colossal information’ instead of ‘big data’, for example — in journal articles indexed in the citation database Dimensions. They found hundreds of publications that included at least one of the phrases, many of which were published in a single journal: Microprocessors and Microsystems. The journal’s publisher has since added expressions of concern to more than 400 papers that appeared across 6 special issues of the journal.
Reference: arXiv preprint
Smart chain mail stiffens on demand
Researchers have developed a new kind of material with adjustable and reversible properties. This new smart fabric is 3D printed with interlinked particles, like chain mail. Applying pressure jams the particles together, and the fabric becomes stiff and solid until the pressure is released. This unusual property could be useful for reusable casts and other medical applications.
Features & opinion
Electric cars need green batteries
On the road to a world dominated by electric vehicles, materials scientists are focusing on the metals that are integral to the lithium-ion batteries that power them. Despite the extreme environmental and social costs of producing materials such as cobalt, it is still less expensive, in most instances, to mine metals than to recycle them. Creating batteries that are easier to take apart, new techniques to separate the materials inside, and economies of scale will all play a part in making recycling more widespread, say experts. The case of old-fashioned lead-acid batteries shows that there is hope: over 98% of them are already recycled.
Hashtags bringing Black scientists together
Black researchers in dozens of scientific fields took to social media in 2020 to find, connect with and promote one another using hashtags such as #BlackinCancer, #BlackinPhysics, #BlackBotanists or #BlackinSTEM. With each field of research taking centre stage for its own week of social-media events, the results challenged institutions to take meaningful steps to recruit more people of colour, and create a more welcoming academic environment to retain them. As the second year of such events gets under way, five researchers who organized and took part in the #BlackinSTEM weeks discuss the impacts and rewards, including career opportunities, collaborations and meaningful institutional actions.
Infographic of the week
Source: Zeke Hausfather/Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6
