Elsevier and the Integrated Earth Data Applications facility at Columbia University have announced a competition to improve preservation of and access to research data in the earth sciences. 

Members of the international geosciences community who have worked on preservation and improved access of research data, particularly dark data, can share their work and advise on ways that these data are being processed, stored and used. 

Brown and white fat cells in a living organism can be converted from one cell type to the other, according to a study using mice as a model organism.

A drug developed by Gilead Sciences and tested in an animal model at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio suppresses hepatitis B virus infection by stimulating the immune system and inducing loss of infected cells.  

Cancer cells that can break out of a tumor and invade other organs are more aggressive and nimble than nonmalignant cells. Such cells exert greater force on their environment and can more easily maneuver small spaces, researchers write, due to a systematic comparison of metastatic breast-cancer cells to healthy breast cells which revealed dramatic differences between the two cell lines in their mechanics, migration, oxygen response, protein production and ability to stick to surfaces.

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is the beginning to one of the world's most popular hymns, yet while millions of people can oddly identify Nicki Minaj, almost no one knows the name of Charles Wesley or his Hymns and Sacred Poems. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” became regarded as one of the Great Four Anglican Hymns and was published as number 403 in "The Church Hymn Book". It has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to the kids on "Charlie Brown"(1) and now the private letters of the composer have been edited by Dr. Gareth Lloyd of The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library and Professor Kenneth Newport of Liverpool Hope University and published by Oxford University Press. They provide a rare glimpse into both the man and the birth of Methodism.

Betelgeuse is visible to nighttime viewers as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge, 1,000 times larger than our Sun, but from 650 light years away it is a tiny dot in the sky even though it is one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth. 

Getting into the details of the star and the region around it requires a combination of different telescopes and astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse 
taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire
 and it reveals the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.