Curated News: Nature (journal)

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The witness on the stand says he saw the accused at the scene of the crime. Is he sure? How sure? The jury’s verdict could hinge on that level of certainty. Many decisions we make every day are influenced by our memories and the confidence we have in them. But very little is known about how we decide whether we can trust a memory or not. Cedars-Sinai researchers have identified a unique set of neurons in the medial temporal lobe, an area of the brain where memories and memory-based decisions are processed. They show that the activity of these neurons is indicative of the confidence by which a memory will be retrieved.

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An upset in the body’s natural balance of gut bacteria that may lead to life-threatening bloodstream infections can be reversed by enhancing a specific immune defense response, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.

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The global movement patterns of all four seasonal influenza viruses are illustrated in research published today in the journal Nature, providing a detailed account of country-to-country virus spread over the last decade and revealing unexpected differences in circulation patterns between viruses.

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The results of a recent study on targeted therapy of a specific type of brain cancer were published by Nature Medicine showing specific progress in cancer treatment.

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A team of scientists have taken quantum teleportation – a method of communicating information from one location to another without having to physically move it – to a higher level by using certain high-dimensional states (which they dubbed “donut” states) for teleportation. Stony Brook University physicist Tzu-Chieh Wei, PhD, and colleagues nationally demonstrated that their method works, is more reliable than previous teleportation schemes, and could be a stepping stone toward building a quantum communications network. Their findings appear in Nature Communications.

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Comprehensive analysis of data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows that two of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra, wobble unpredictably. The results appear in the June 4 issue of the journal Nature. To learn even more, join the Hubble Hangout with Pluto scientists at 3pm EDT on Thurs., June 4 by visiting http://hbbl.us/y6E .

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Comprehensive analysis of data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows that two of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra, wobble unpredictably. The results appear in the June 4 issue of the journal Nature. To learn even more, join the Hubble Hangout with Pluto scientists at 3pm EDT on Thurs., June 4 by visiting http://hbbl.us/y6E .

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Phosphore's striking properties a step closer to being used to improve electronic and optoelectronic devices thanks to Polytechnique Montréal and Université de Montréal researchers.

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A rare eye disorder marked by color blindness, light sensitivity, and other vision problems can result from a newly discovered gene mutation identified by an international research team, including scientists from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). The findings, which were published today in the online edition of Nature Genetics, could lead to new, targeted treatments for this form of color blindness.

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People with achromatopsia, an inherited eye disorder, see the world literally in black and white. Worse yet, their extreme sensitivity to light makes them nearly blind in bright sunlight. Now, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute at UC San Diego Health System have identified a previously unknown gene mutation that underlies this disorder.

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Physicists at the University of Washington have conducted the most precise and controlled measurements yet of the interaction between the atoms and molecules that comprise air and the type of carbon surface used in battery electrodes and air filters — key information for improving those technologies.

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Just as with plants on land, a common species of ocean diatom grows faster in the presence of helpful bacteria.

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A new study, by scientists from the University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre (NOC), implies that the global climate is on the verge of broad-scale change that could last for a number of decades.

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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered for the first time a rear-end collision between two high-speed knots of ejected matter from a supermassive black hole. This discovery was made while piecing together a time-lapse movie of a plasma jet blasted from a supermassive black hole inside galaxy 3C 264, located 260 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo.

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A new study predicts that researchers could use spiraling pulses of laser light to change the nature of graphene, turning it from a metal into an insulator and giving it other peculiar properties that might be used to encode information.

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In an effort to alleviate the environmental burden of electronic devices, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has collaborated with researchers in the Madison-based U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) to develop a surprising solution: a semiconductor chip made almost entirely of wood.

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The thinnest possible linear thread that still retains a diamond-like structure was created by the extreme compression and decompression of the common chemical benzene. The threads may have outstanding mechanical and electronic properties. Further, the synthesis method opens up possible variations that could lead to new materials.

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In a new twist on the use of DNA in nanoscale construction, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators put synthetic strands of the biological material to work in two ways: They used ropelike configurations of the DNA double helix to form a rigid geometrical framework, and added dangling pieces of single-stranded DNA to glue nanoparticles in place.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have just taken a big step toward the goal of engineering dynamic nanomaterials whose structure and associated properties can be switched on demand. In a paper appearing in Nature Materials, they describe a way to selectively rearrange the nanoparticles in three-dimensional arrays to produce different configurations, or phases, from the same nano-components.

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Columbia Engineering professor Latha Venkataraman has designed a new technique to create a single-molecule diode, and, in doing so, she has developed molecular diodes that perform 50 times better than all prior designs. Venkataraman’s group is the first to develop a single-molecule diode that may have real-world technological applications for nanoscale devices.

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Removing accumulated mutant p53 protein from a cancer model showed that tumors regress significantly and survival increases. This finding, by an international team of cancer researchers led by Ute Moll, MD, Professor of Pathology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, is reported in a paper published advanced online May 25 in Nature.

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Removing accumulated mutant p53 protein from a cancer model showed that tumors regress significantly and survival increases. This finding, by an international team of cancer researchers led by Ute Moll, MD, Professor of Pathology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, is reported in a paper published advanced online May 25 in Nature.

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Prostate cancer researchers have drawn a molecular portrait that provides the first complete picture of localized, multi-focal disease within the prostate and also unveils a new gene subgroup driving it.

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It looks like a Slinky suspended in motion. Yet this photonics advancement – called a metamaterial hyperlens – doesn’t climb down stairs. Instead, it improves our ability to see tiny objects.

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Scientists for the first time have precisely measured a protein’s natural “knee-jerk” reaction to the breaking of a chemical bond – a quaking motion that propagated through the protein at the speed of sound.

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Extremely small batteries built inside nanopores show that properly scaled structures can use the full theoretical capacity of the charge storage material. The batteries are part of assessing the basics of ion and electron transport in nanostructures for energy storage.

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Scientists devised a way of directly detecting and visualizing biomolecules and their changing association states in solution by measuring their size and charge characteristics while confined in a single-molecule trap.

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Atoms and the electrons that hold them together store energy in their electronic bonding structure and in their atomic vibrations. X-ray laser scattering techniques have been used to measure and track the transfer of energy from one atomic-scale storage mode to another.

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In a first, the Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Karina Yaniv and a team of scientists have determined how the lymphatic system develops in the embryo … and grown lymphatic cells in the lab. Using zebrafish, they showed that the cells originate in a vein niche that harbors angioblasts. Besides solving this century-old puzzle, their work can shed light on disease.

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Using a "roadmap" of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations performed by Berkeley Lab's Daniel Kasen, astronomers observed a flash of light caused by a supernova slamming into a nearby star, allowing them to determine the stellar system from which a Type Ia supernova was born. This finding confirms one of two competing theories about Type Ia supernovae birth.

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A new class of magnets that expand their volume when placed in a magnetic field and generate negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting, has been discovered.

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A new process has been developed for spontaneously incorporating and assembling carbon nanotubes and oxygen-scavenging nanoparticles into chloroplasts, the part of plant cells that conduct photosynthesis. Incorporation enhanced electron flow associated with photosynthesis.

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U.S. residents' exposure to extreme heat could increase four- to six-fold by mid-century, due to both a warming climate and a population that's growing especially fast in the hottest regions of the country, according to new research by NCAR scientists.

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Utah engineers have developed an ultracompact beamsplitter — the smallest on record — for dividing light waves into two separate channels of information. The device brings researchers closer to producing silicon photonic chips that compute and shuttle data with light instead of electrons.

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A team of NYU neuroscientists has identified a part of the brain exclusively devoted to processing speech, helping settle a long-standing debate about role-specific neurological functions.

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Climate change may be the driving force behind fewer, yet more powerful hurricanes and tropical storms, says a Florida State geography professor.

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In a study using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists found that our inherent risk-taking preferences affect how we view and act on information from other people.

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Researchers have developed a microfluidic chip that can capture rare clusters of circulating tumor cells, which could yield important new insights into how cancer spreads. The work was funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health.

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New results provide an important benchmark for researchers, helping to define the most accurate methods for identifying somatic mutations in cancer genomes.

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A new metal oxide was discovered whose atomic structure includes highly ordered arrays of missing oxygen atoms. This structure allows oxygen ions to move through the material quickly and easily at low temperatures.

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Chewing, breathing, and other regular bodily functions that we undertake “without thinking” actually do require the involvement of our brain, but the question of how the brain programs such regular functions intrigues scientists. Arlette Kolta, a professor at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Dentistry, has shown that astrocytes play a key role. Astrocytes are star-shaped glial cells in our brain. Glial cells are not neurons – they play a supporting role.

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Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, have combined their results and observed a previously unseen subatomic process.

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If you walk into a dark room, you can still find your way to the light switch. That’s because your brain keeps track of landmarks and the direction in which you are moving. Fruit flies also boast an internal compass that works when the lights go out, scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus have discovered. Their findings suggest that dissecting how fruit flies navigate through the world could help researchers understand how humans and other mammals perform similar tasks.

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A new technique invented at MIT can measure the relative positions of tiny particles as they flow through a fluidic channel, potentially offering an easy way to monitor the assembly of nanoparticles, or to study how mass is distributed within a cell. With further advancements, this technology has the potential to resolve the shape of objects in flow as small as viruses, the researchers say.

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Scientists at South Dakota State University analyzed a half-mile slice of Western Antarctica ice core to help determine that climate change begins in the Arctic and moves southward, according to chemistry professor Jihong Cole-Dai of the SDSU Ice Core and Environmental Chemistry Lab. Since 2006, the SDSU research team have been part of a National Science Foundation project to uncover the secrets within the 2-mile long Western Antarctica Ice Sheet Divide ice core.

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Understanding how to overrule a signaling pathway that can cause treatments to fail in metastatic melanoma patients should help physicians extend the benefits of recently approved immunity-boosting drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors to more patients.

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The culmination of two decades of research, a new study reveals the genetic causes of a curious, rare syndrome that manifests as hypertension (high blood pressure) accompanied by short fingers (brachydactyly type E). Six, unrelated families with the syndrome come from across the globe – United States, Turkey, France, South America, and two from Canada – yet share mutations that cluster in a small region of phosphodiesterase 3A (PDE3A). Functional studies imply the mutations change resistance of blood vessels, an underappreciated mechanism for regulating blood pressure. The findings, published in Nature Genetics, suggest new directions for investigating causes of hypertension in the general population.

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Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA), a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome is typically treated with glucocorticoids that cause a host of often dangerous side effects. Using a mouse model, Whitehead scientists have determined that combining the drug fenofibrate with glucocorticoids could allow for dramatically lower steroid doses in the treatment of DBA and other erythropoietin-resistant anemias. These promising results are the foundation for a clinical trial that will begin soon.

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Climate helps drive the erosion process that exposes economically valuable copper deposits and shapes the pattern of their global distribution, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Idaho and the University of Michigan.

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A new population genetics model developed by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health could explain why the genetic composition of Finnish people is so different from that of other European populations.