Curated News: Nature (journal)

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An international team of scientists has identified nearly a dozen genes that contribute to calcium buildup in our coronary arteries that can lead to life-threatening coronary artery disease, a condition responsible for up to one in four deaths in the United States. Doctors may be able to target these genes with existing medications – or possibly even nutritional supplements – to slow or halt the disease’s progression.

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Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors are special materials that have long fascinated researchers with their unique properties.

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Through a novel approach detailed in Nature, a massive computational analysis of microbiome datasets more than doubled the number of known protein families. This is the first time protein structures have been used to help characterize the vast array of microbial “dark matter.”

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A chance social media post by an eagle-eyed amateur astronomer sparked the discovery of an explosive collision between two giant planets, which crashed into each other in a distant space system 1,800 light years away from planet Earth.

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EVEscape predicts future viral mutations, new variants using evolutionary, biological information

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Under normal conditions, the floating macroalgae Sargassum spp. provide habitat for hundreds of types of organisms. However, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) that emerged in 2011 has since then caused unprecedented inundations of this brown seaweed on Caribbean coastlines, with harmful effects on ecosystems while posing challenges to regional economies and tourism, and concerns for respiratory and other human health issues.

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Since Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun among the solar system planets, it is strongly influenced by the solar wind, a high-speed (several hundred km/s) stream of plasma blowing from the Sun.

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Researchers have long recognized the therapeutic potential of using magnetoelectrics ⎯ materials that can turn magnetic fields into electric fields ⎯ to stimulate neural tissue in a minimally invasive way and help treat neurological disorders or nerve damage.

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Cornell researchers took a novel approach to explore the way microstructure emerges in a 3D-printed metal alloy: They bombarded it with X-rays while the material was being printed.

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A study led by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys suggests an entirely new approach to treat pancreatic cancer. The research shows that feeding tumors a copycat of an important nutrient starves them of the fuel they need to survive and grow.

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A new combination of treatments safely decreased growth of pancreatic cancer in mice by preventing cancer cells from scavenging for fuel, a new study finds.

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Liquid biopsies are blood tests that can serially measure circulating tumor DNA (cell-free DNA that is shed into the bloodstream by dying cancer cells). When used in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer undergoing immunotherapy, they may identify patients who could benefit from treatment with additional drugs, according to a phase 2 clinical trial in the U.S. and Canada. The trial is led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and its Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, BC Cancer and the Canadian Cancer trials Group (CCTG).

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The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. A new study published today in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023.

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Intense tropical cyclones are one of the most devastating natural disasters in the world due to torrential rains, flooding, destructive winds, and coastal storm surges.

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The Grand Canyon’s valleys and millions of years of rock layers spanning Earth’s history have earned it a designation as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

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Details of past climate conditions are revealed to researchers not only by sediment samples from the ocean floor, but also by the surface of the seafloor, which is exposed to currents that are constantly altering it.

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Palaeontologists at University College Cork (UCC) have found the first molecular evidence of phaeomelanin, the pigment that produces ginger colouration, in the fossil record.

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Dr. Song, Kahye of the Intelligent Robotics Research Center at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), along with Professor Lee, Dae-Young of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), have jointly developed a soft gripper with a woven structure that can grip objects weighing more than 100 kg with 130 grams of material.

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The brain circuitry that is disrupted in Alzheimer’s disease appears to influence memory through a type of brain wave known as theta oscillation, a team led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. The findings, published in Nature Communications, could help researchers design and evaluate new treatments for Alzheimer’s, a condition that affects millions of people around the globe and has no cure.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have used single-cell sequencing to identify a potential new treatment for cocaine addiction and shed new light on the molecular underpinnings of addiction.

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Argonne researchers have tapped into the power of AI to create a new form of autonomous microscopy.

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This asynchronous beating comes from how the flight muscles interact with the physics of the insect’s springy exoskeleton. This decoupling of neural commands and muscle contractions is common in only four distinct insect groups. For years, scientists assumed these four groups evolved these ultrafast wingbeats separately, but research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) shows that they evolved from a single common ancestor. This discovery demonstrates evolution has repeatedly turned on and off this particular mode of flight. The researchers developed physics models and robotics to test how these transitions could occur.

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Robots built by engineers at the University of California San Diego helped achieve a major breakthrough in understanding how insect flight evolved, described in the Oct. 4, 2023 issue of the journal Nature. The study is a result of a six-year long collaboration between roboticists at UC San Diego and biophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Mining brings huge social and environmental change to communities: landscapes, livelihoods and the social fabric evolve alongside the industry. But what happens when the mines close? What problems face communities that lose their main employer and the very core of their identity and social networks?

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UNLV-led team explores relationship between warming post-Ice Age temperatures and intensifying summer monsoon rains on groundwater reserves.

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Catalysts are key to turning carbon dioxide into useful fuel products such as hydrocarbons, but most catalysts for this process are either costly or require large amounts of energy. A team of researchers investigated a catalyst made of di-tungsten carbide.

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The ability to have access to the Internet or use a mobile phone anywhere in the world is taken more and more for granted, but the brightness of Internet and telecommunications satellites that enable global communications networks could pose problems for ground-based astronomy.

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People frequently exposed to racial or ethnic discrimination may be more susceptible to obesity and related health risks in part because of a stress response that changes biological processes and how we process food cues according to UCLA research.

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Research from SMU fire anthropologist shows Fiji grassland fires predate human settlement by thousands of years. Study calls for greater consideration of climate as a factor contributing to fires.

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The behavior of electrons in liquids plays a big role in many chemical processes that are important for living things and the world in general. For example, slow electrons in liquid have the capacity to cause disruptions in the DNA strand.

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An international team of scientists from Sweden, Norway, Japan, and Switzerland, has presented research findings that reveal a crucial role of biological particles, including pollen, spores, and bacteria, in the formation of ice within Arctic clouds.

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A discovery of a mutation in the gene ACTA2 has given researchers, led by Dianna Milewicz, MD, PhD, with UTHealth Houston, insight into understanding the cause of a rare and progressive problem with arteries in the brain and a cause of strokes in young children, called moyamoya disease.

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Recent research uncovers the resilience of certain soil microorganisms in the face of increasing drought conditions. While many bacteria become inactive during dry spells, specific groups persist and even thrive.

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Scientists have demonstrated “multielement ink” – the first “high-entropy” semiconductor that can be processed at low-temperature or room temperature. The new material could enable cost-effective and energy-efficient semiconductor manufacturing.

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Earbuds can be turned into a tool to record the electrical activity of the brain and levels of lactate in the body with two flexible sensors screen-printed onto a flexible surface.

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St. Jude researchers shed light on a key player in cancer development by exploring the ability of fusion oncoproteins to form condensates in cells.

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Case Western Reserve physics professor Giuseppe Strangi is leading a research group developing new optical coatings, which are as thin as a few atomic layers. They can simultaneously transmit and reflect narrow-banded light with unparalleled vividness and purity of the colors.

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Protecting large areas of land from human activity can help stem the tide of biodiversity loss, especially for vertebrates like amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, according to a new study in Nature.