Curated News: Nature (journal)

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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.

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The physics behind antimatter is one of the world’s greatest mysteries. Looking as far back as The Big Bang, physics has predicted that when we create matter, we also create antimatter.

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Insects react sensitively when temperature and precipitation deviate from the long-term average. In an unusually dry and warm winter, their survival probabilities are reduced; in a wet and cold spring, hatching success is impaired.

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His mind might have been set on finding water or on perfecting a song he learned as a chick from his dad. But all of that gets pushed down the to-do list for an adult male zebra finch when he notices a female has drawn nigh.

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Stanford Medicine investigators and their colleagues sifted through a jumble of genes implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders and identified dozens of disparate troublemakers with similar effects.

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Protecting large swaths of Earth’s land can help stem the tide of biodiversity loss—including for vertebrates like amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, according to a new study published in Nature Sept. 27.

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A study reveals genetic subtypes, biomarkers, gene and pathway targets for the development of new treatments for this liver disease

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Researchers tracked the brain’s dopamine reward system and found – for the first time ­– this system flexibly retunes toward the most important goal when faced with multiple competing needs.

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Researchers discover that heart cells in developing zebrafish start beating suddenly and all at once

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Patterns of chemical interactions are thought to create patterns in nature such as stripes and spots. This new study shows that the mathematical basis of these patterns also governs how sperm tail moves.

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New research, reported in Nature Ecology & Evolution, (25 September 2023) has for the first time validated at scale, one of the theories that has underpinned ecology for over half a century.

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Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, the University of Liverpool, the University of Cape Town and UKHSA have uncovered a link between an antiviral drug for COVID-19 infections called molnupiravir and a pattern of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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A team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Cancer Institute has developed a new algorithm for genetic risk-scoring for major diseases across diverse ancestry populations that holds promise for reducing health care disparities.

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Research conducted at Mount Sinai and Yale confirms long COVID is a biological disease by showing blood biomarkers that can predict who has it

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A new study shows unprecedented heat is likely to lead to the next mass extinction since the dinosaurs died out, eliminating nearly all mammals in some 250 million years time.

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Researchers have unravelled for the first time a fundamental shift in the way American politicians communicate on social media, which helps explain the proliferation of compelling misinformation.

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A new objective examination of almost a quarter-of-a-century of ocean acidification research shows that, despite challenges, experts in the field can have confidence in their research.

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A receding hairline, a total loss of hair from the crown, and ultimately, the classical horseshoe-shaped pattern of baldness.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) can help plant scientists collect and analyze unprecedented volumes of data, which would not be possible using conventional methods.

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A study has revealed new details about a key population of immune system cells critical to successful vaccination against the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2.

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As renewable energy sources like wind and solar ramp up, they can be used to sustainably generate hydrogen fuel. But implementing such a strategy on a large scale requires land and water dedicated to this purpose.