Curated News: PNAS

• share
• favorite_border

A new study in rats shows the extent of brain damage in newborn rodents from even short-term abuse by their mother.

• share
• favorite_border

Research led by the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester has made a connection between the way baby wallabies produce male hormones and how some human girls are born with genitalia that resemble those of a boy.

• share
• favorite_border

Yale Cancer Center scientists have built a powerful genomic research platform to study cervical cancer, a disease that often is untreatable if it progresses after surgery or primary chemo-radiation treatment.

• share
• favorite_border

A new Stony Brook University-led study, to be published in PNAS, provides a biophysical model that reveals how damage accumulates in proteins with age and is a trigger to death. The finding opens a door to a better understanding of the molecular origins of age-related neurodegenerative diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by biologists at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina explains how sexual cooperation in species that form long-term pair bonds.

• share
• favorite_border

In continuing efforts to find novel ways to kill cancer cells, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have identified a new pathway that leads to the destruction of cancer cells. The new finding, published this week in the journal PNAS, could pave the way for the broader use of a class of anticancer drugs already on the market.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah electrical and computer engineering researchers have developed a new kind of optical lens that is much thinner and lighter than conventional camera lenses that also works with night imaging. That could be a boon for smartphone cameras with those unsightly lens bumps as well as for drones and night vision cameras for soldiers.

• share
• favorite_border

ORNL story tips: Reaching the boiling point for HVACs; showcasing innovation for technology transfer; using neutrons to lend insight into human tissue; and heating the core in a fusion prototype experiment.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have revealed how the electrical patterns formed within an embryo initiate a cascade of molecular changes that culminate in the development of cartilage and bone. The study demonstrates that voltage gated calcium channels ‘read’ the electrical pattern, setting off the expression of genes that guide differentiation to mature cells

• share
• favorite_border

Engineers developed silk materials that can wrinkle into nanotextured patterns – including words, textures and images as intricate as a QR code or a fingerprint. The patterns are stable, but can be erased by flooding the surface of the silk with vapor, allowing the it to be printed again. Researchers see many applications in optical electronics

• share
• favorite_border

Using the Titan supercomputer and the Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists have created the most accurate 3D model yet of an intrinsically disordered protein, revealing the ensemble of its atomic-level structures.

• share
• favorite_border

Species have few good options when it comes to surviving climate change--they can genetically adapt to new conditions, shift their ranges, or both.

• share
• favorite_border

Common herbs, including lavender, fennel and chamomile, have a long history of use as folk medicines used to lower blood pressure. In a new study, University of California, Irvine researchers explain the molecular mechanisms that make them work.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis appear to have solved a decades-long mystery regarding the precise biochemical pathway leading to a fatal genetic disorder in children that results in seizures, developmental regression and death, usually around age 3. Studying a mouse model with the same human illness — called Krabbe disease — the researchers also identified a possible therapeutic strategy.

• share
• favorite_border

Being good at math relates to better financial and medical outcomes – unless you don’t have confidence in your own abilities with numbers, new research suggests.

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Florida microbiologist's latest research found that disease-causing bacteria are competing with their human hosts for a key micronutrient.

• share
• favorite_border

ORNL story tips: ORNL’s project for VA bridges computing prowess, VA health data to speed up suicide risk screenings for U.S. veterans; ORNL reveals ionic liquid additive lubricates better than additives in commercial gear oil; researchers use neutron scattering to probe colorful new material that could improve sensors, vivid displays; unique 3D printing approach adds more strength, toughness in certain materials.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have revealed that chimpanzees and bonobos share the contrasting colour pattern seen in human eyes, which makes it easy for them to detect the direction of someone’s gaze from a distance.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the biotech startup VaxNewMo have developed a vaccine that is effective, in mice, against hypervirulent strains of Klebsiella that can cause life-threatening infections in healthy adults.

• share
• favorite_border

An innovative graphene-based film helps shield people from disease-carrying mosquitos, according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

• share
• favorite_border

Targeted damage to mitochondria produces a "Chernobyl effect" inside cells, pelting the nucleus with harmful reactive oxygen species and causing chromosomal damage.

• share
• favorite_border

How do cells generate and use energy? This question might seem simple, but the answer is far from simple.

• share
• favorite_border

New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) published Aug. 19, 2019, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides evidence of the formation and abundance of abiotic methane—methane formed by chemical reactions that don’t involve organic matter—on Earth and shows how the gases could have a similar origin on other planets and moons, even those no longer home to liquid water. Researchers had long noticed methane released from deep-sea vents. But while the gas is plentiful in the atmosphere where it’s produced by living things, the source of methane at the seafloor was a mystery.

• share
• favorite_border

Study shows chemical weathering is the cause of CO2 consumption in glacier-fed freshwater systems

• share
• favorite_border

A University of California, Irvine-led study has found that online brain game exercises can enable people in their 70s and even 80s to multitask cognitively as well as individuals 50 years their junior. This is an increasingly valuable skill, given today’s daily information onslaught, which can divide attention and be particularly taxing for older adults.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have revealed how E. coli seeks out the most oxygen-free crevices of your colon to cause the worst infection possible. The discovery could one day help doctors prevent the infection from taking hold by allowing E. coli bacteria to pass harmlessly through your body. The new discovery shows just how the foodborne pathogen knows where and when to begin colonizing the colon on its way to making you sick.

• share
• favorite_border

World War II was, by any measure, a massive undertaking that involved huge loss and suffering.  The countries involved — Allied and Axis — committed substantial resources and sacrificed an astounding number of human lives. No matter how much a particular country contributed however, the sum total of all losses cannot equal more than 100%.

• share
• favorite_border

In a new study, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have explained the ways in which two electronic arrangements compete with each other and ultimately affect the temperature at which a material becomes superconducting.

• share
• favorite_border

Violence at the hands of police is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States, finds a new study involving Washington University in St. Louis.“Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police,” said Hedwig (Hedy) Lee, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences and associate director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity.

• share
• favorite_border

Blue sharks use large, swirling ocean currents, known as eddies, to fast-track their way down to feed in the ocean twilight zone—a layer of the ocean between 200 and 1000 meters deep containing the largest fish biomass on Earth, according to new research by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington (UW). Their findings were published August 6, 2019, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Texas State University, collaborating with a team from the University of New Mexico, have discovered that fish can smell viruses, prompting fast antiviral immune responses.

• share
• favorite_border

Getting reliable precipitation data from the past has proven difficult, as is predicting regional changes for climate models in the present. A combination of isotope techniques developed by researchers at Argonne and UChicago may help resolve both.

• share
• favorite_border

Paralyzing damage in spinal cord injury is often caused by the zealous immune response to the injury. NIBIB-funded engineers have developed nanoparticles that lure immune cells away from the spinal cord, allowing regeneration that restored spinal cord function in mice.

• share
• favorite_border

University of California San Diego School of Medicine scientists say the loss of a single gene two to three million years ago in our ancestors may have resulted in a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease in all humans as a species, while also setting up a further risk for red meat-eating humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Contrary to what many think, a comprehensive and sweeping review of all fatal police shootings across the nation reveals

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a one-parameter measure that makes selecting the correct electrolyte for potassium-air batteries an exercise in rationality, rather than patience.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study describes the way mosquito immune systems fight malaria parasites using various waves of resistance. The study could lay the groundwork for future research to combat the transmission of malaria, which sickens millions of people across the globe every year.

• share
• favorite_border

The world’s wood products — all the paper, lumber, furniture and more — offset just 1 percent of annual global carbon emissions by locking away carbon in woody forms, according to new University of Wisconsin–Madison research.

• share
• favorite_border

Monarch butterflies purchased from a commercial breeder did not fly in a southward direction, even in offspring raised outdoors, in a new study conducted by scientists at the University of Chicago.

• share
• favorite_border

From Berkeley Lab: groundbreaking study maps out paths to new nitride materials; new framework for artificial photosynthesis; TMDCs don’t have to be perfect to shine bright.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists seeking to understand the mechanism underlying superconductivity in “stripe-ordered” cuprates—copper-oxide materials with alternating areas of electric charge and magnetism—discovered an unusual metallic state when attempting to turn superconductivity off. They found that under the conditions of their experiment, even after the material loses its ability to carry electrical current with no energy loss, it retains some conductivity—and possibly the electron (or hole) pairs required for its superconducting superpower.

• share
• favorite_border

Bioengineers used bone engineered in 3D-printed mold and grown alongside the ribs of sheep to successfully replace a portion of the animals’ jaw bones. They hope to develop the tissue regenerative procedure for human application .

• share
• favorite_border

The ability to hear depends on proteins to reach the outer membrane of sensory cells in the inner ear. But in certain types of hereditary hearing loss, mutations in the protein prevent it from reaching these membranes.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah biologists demonstrated real-time adaptation in their lab that triggered reproductive isolation in just four years. They began with a single population of parasitic feather lice, split the population in two and transferred them onto different-sized hosts—pigeons with small feathers, and pigeons with large feathers. The pigeons preened at the lice and populations adapted quickly by evolving differences in body size. When paired together, males and females that were too different or too similar in size laid zero eggs.

• share
• favorite_border

Analysis of the first fully-sequenced genome of the Siberian hamster shows how these small, seasonal breeders adapt their bodies and energy usage to survive the winter. The study shows that shifting day length alone was enough to trigger these changes, regardless of temperature or how much food is available.

• share
• favorite_border

Huge floating solar islands on the ocean that produce enough energy to enable CO2-neutral global freight traffic - what sounds like "science fiction" researchers from ETH Zurich, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Empa, the Universities of Zurich and Bern and the Nowegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim have now calculated for the first time, as they write in the latest issue of the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS).

• share
• favorite_border

Tuberculosis is the most lethal infectious disease in the world. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Umea University in Sweden have found a compound that can prevent and even reverse antibiotic resistance in TB bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

A decade ago researchers announced development of a cancer immunotherapy called CAR (for chimeric antigen receptor)-T, in which a patient is re-infused with their own genetically modified T cells equipped to mount a potent anti-tumor attack.

• share
• favorite_border

Gross Primary Production (GPP) in forests tells scientists how much CO2 these systems are breathing in. Evergreen trees retain their green needles year round, preventing scientists from detecting GPP on large scales. A study linked GPP with solar-induced fluorescence in evergreens, which can be tracked by satellites.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry have predicted fascinating new properties of lithium; a powerful combination of experiment and theory has revealed atomic-level details about how silver helps transform carbon dioxide gas into a reusable form; new study reports the first comprehensive