The high-magnitude earthquake that struck southern Central Chile last month closed one of the two remaining seismic gaps at the South American plate boundary. After the quake in Concepción, the remaining gap in the north of Chile now holds potential for a comparable strong quake and is, thus, moving more and more into the focus of attention.

The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences has been monitoring this gap with the Integrated Plate Boundary Observatory (IPOC) in Chile since 2006, and now the duties will be taken up the Universidad de Chile and the Universidad Catolica del Norte.

In a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute suggest that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue.

The team says their findings provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division.

Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth and de-differentiation as seen in amphibians. The loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like embryonic stem cells than adult mammalian cells

Until recently, it was thought that white dwarfs could not exceed what is known as the Chandrasekhar limit, a critical mass equaling about 1.4 times that of the Sun, before exploding in a supernova.

Since 2003, four supernovae have been discovered that were so bright, cosmologists wondered whether their white dwarfs had surpassed the Chandrasekhar limit, dubbed the "super-Chandrasekhar" supernovae.