Why are there gender-specific roles in caring for offspring? Weizmann Institute scientists used optogenetics to change maternal behavior and levels of male aggression in mice – work that could reveal how male and female brains function in conventional gender-related activities and shed new light on disorders such as postpartum depression and autism.
Researchers working at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered that a mere 9-trillionths-of-a-meter reduction in the length of a chemical bond dramatically boosts the reactivity of a family of molecules that helps keep humans and many other organisms healthy.
Bringing closer a mass market for environmentally friendly hydrogen-powered cars, Sandia researchers are upgrading $0.37/gram molybdenum disulfide, "molly" for short, to take the place of $1,500/gram catalyst platinum. Unlike gasoline, hydrogen as fuel releases water, not carbon, into the air.
Scientists aspire to build nanostructures that mimic the complexity and function of nature’s proteins. These microscopic widgets could be customized into incredibly sensitive chemical detectors or long-lasting catalysts. But as with any craft that requires extreme precision, researchers must first learn how to finesse the materials they’ll use to build these structures. A discovery by Berkeley Lab scientists is a big step in this direction. The scientists discovered a design rule that enables a recently created material to exist.
Astronomers studying images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope were surprised to uncover fast-moving, large-scale, wave-like features embedded in the vast disk of gas and dust surrounding the young, nearby star AU Microscopii. The features are unlike anything ever observed. These results will be published in the Oct. 8 issue of Nature. Learn even more about AU Mic by joining a live Hubble Hangout discussion with astronomers at 3:00 pm EDT on Thurs., Oct. 8 at http://hbbl.us/y6M.
New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) — including data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland — provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.
Pools of fatty molecules self-assemble around treated water droplets to create a cell-like bioreactor that could offer substantial advantages for carrying out complex synthesis processes.
he whimsically named sonic hedgehog gene, best known for controlling embryonic development, also maintains the normal physiological state and repair process of an adult healthy lung, if damaged.
The first simulation of the individual crystals in volcanic mush, a mix of liquid magma and solid crystals, shows the mixing to help understand pressure buildup deep inside a volcano.
After eight years of analysis, scientists from around the world have completed an unprecedented project to delineate a wide spectrum of human genetic variation. This enormous catalog of data, known as the 1000 Genomes Project, will yield insights for decades. Scientists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine played a key role in the consortium, and co-authored two papers published this week about the effort in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Using pieces of human tumors grafted into mice, a team led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers and their colleagues from the University of Torino has identified new mutations in six genes related to drug resistance and sensitivity in late-stage colorectal cancer.
If you have two faulty copies of the CFTR gene, you will have cystic fibrosis. But the severity of your disease will depend partly on many other genes. Now, researchers report that five regions of the human genome are home to the genetic variations that play major roles in disease severity.
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists advance understanding of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, a liver disorder that leaves infants born to affected mothers at risk for severe respiratory distress
A team of scientists at the University of Washington and the biotechnology company Illumina have created an innovative tool to directly detect the delicate, single-molecule interactions between DNA and enzymatic proteins.
In a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from three universities show that products made in China are associated with significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions than the same products made elsewhere.
Public and private entities that fund biomedical research face difficult choices on how to allocate a finite level of capital, and scientists often take risks in selecting research topics multiple times in their academic careers. UNC Charlotte data scientist Lixia Yao, in a recently published article in Nature Biotechnology titled “Health ROI as a Measure of Misalignment of Biomedical Needs and Resources,” suggests a better method for those funding agencies and scientists.
A study of influenza infection in animals broadens understanding of the immune response to flu virus, showing that the process is more dynamic than usually described. The findings may offer key insights for developing better vaccines.
Imperfections running through liquid crystals can be used as miniscule tubing, channeling molecules into specific positions to form new materials and nanoscale structures, according to engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The discovery could have applications in fields as diverse as electronics and medicine.
A detailed nano-mechanical study of mechanical degradation processes in silicon structures containing varying levels of lithium ions offers good news for researchers attempting to develop reliable next-generation rechargeable batteries using silicon-based electrodes.
Scientists from UC San Francisco describe capturing and studying individual metastatic cells from human breast cancer tumors implanted into mice as the cells escaped into the blood stream and began to form tumors elsewhere in the body.
A team of scientists at the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has become the first to use a tissue-clearing technique to localize a rare stem cell population, in the process cracking open a black box containing detailed information about where blood-forming stem cells are located and how they are maintained.
Deploying a set of tools called “exometabolomics,” a Berkeley Lab team harnessed the analytical capabilities of mass spectrometry techniques to quantitatively measure how individual microbes and the biocrust community transform complex mixtures of metabolites from soil. The study published September 22, 2015 in Nature Communications.
Invention of the first integrated circularly polarized light detector on a silicon chip opens the door for development of small, portable sensors could expand the use of polarized light for drug screening, surveillance, etc.
Working with tissue, blood and DNA from six people with precancerous and cancerous lung lesions, a team of Johns Hopkins scientists has identified what it believes are among the very earliest “premalignant” genetic changes that mark the potential onset of the most common and deadliest form of disease.
University at Buffalo researchers and their colleagues at other institutions are publishing a paper online in Nature Communications on Sept. 18 about a new method they developed to more precisely capture how brain cells interact.
According to a study published1 on 14 September in Nature Climate Change, snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is its lowest level in 500 years. Snowpack is crucial for the water supply of California.
A pair of supermassive black holes appeared to be spiraling together toward a cataclysmic collision that could have big repercussions.
Scientists have identified the precise nerve cells that allow the brain to make a split-second change of course, like jamming on the brakes.
New research on sickle cell disease (SCD) has found that using antibiotics to deplete the body’s microbiome may prevent acute sickle cell crisis and could offer the first effective strategy for warding off the disease’s long-term complications, such as organ failure. The study, conducted by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System, could also lead to better treatment for other inflammatory blood-vessel disorders including septic shock. The findings were published online today in Nature.
BRD4 inhibitors are among the most promising new agents in cancer therapy that are currently evaluated in clinical trials. In a study published in NATURE, a team of researchers at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and Boehringer Ingelheim in Vienna reveals how leukemia cells can evade the deadly effects of BRD4 inhibition. Understanding this adaptation process could aid the development of sequential therapies to outsmart
University of Vermont scientists have invented a new way to create what they are calling “an electron superhighway” in an organic semiconductor that promises to allow electrons to flow faster and farther--aiding the hunt for flexible electronics, organic solar cells, and other low-cost alternatives to silicon.
Scientists used high-power laser beams at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to simulate the shock effects of a meteorite impact in silica, one of the most abundant materials in the Earth’s crust. They observed, for the first time, its shockingly fast transformation into the mineral stishovite – a rare, extremely hard and dense form of silica.
Bacteria aren’t the only nonhuman invaders to colonize the gut shortly after a baby’s birth. Viruses also set up house there, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study is one of the first surveys of viruses that reside in the intestine, providing a first look at a healthy gut virome.
Three antibiotics that, individually, are not effective against a drug-resistant staph infection can kill the deadly pathogen when combined as a trio, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They have killed the bug — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) — in test tubes and laboratory mice, and believe the same strategy may work in people.
"In the hydrogen evolution reaction, the whole game is coming up with inexpensive alternatives to platinum and the other noble metals," says Song Jin, a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the online edition of Nature Materials that appears today, Jin's research team reports a hydrogen-making catalyst containing phosphorus and sulfur — both common elements — and cobalt, a metal that is 1,000 times cheaper than platinum.
Researchers at Cardiff University have devised a way of increasing the yield of biodiesel by using the waste left over from its production process.
Researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology have developed a relatively inexpensive and simple way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen through a new electrodeposition method.
Using metallic osmium (Os) in experimentation, an international group of researchers have demonstrated that ultra-high pressures cause core electrons to interplay, which results in experimentally observed anomalies in the compression behavior of the material.
A team of Stony Brook University and international researchers have found that biogenic materials in sea spray may affect ice cloud formation and thus climate on a global scale.
Astronomers using ALMA have discovered an unexpected population of compact interstellar clouds hidden within the nearby dwarf irregular galaxy WLM.
New research led by NYU Langone Medical Center has uncovered why a particular strain of Staphylococcus aureus -- known as HA-MRSA -- becomes more deadly than other variations. These new findings open up possible new pathways to vaccine development against this bacterium, which the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions says accounts for over 10,000 deaths annually, mostly among hospital patients.
Astronomers from the University of California, Irvine and Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute have generated the most accurate statistical description yet of faint, early galaxies as they existed in the universe 500 million years after the Big Bang.
The study, published in Nature Genetics, paves the way for potential personalized medicine approaches for the deadly cancer type.
Multi-institutional, multidisciplinary study looks past antibiotics and sanitation to a third strategy to control infectious disease: Adjusting the landscape of the human body to remove the mechanism that allows pathogens to cause disease.
Through the use of custom-engineered synthetic proteins known as monobodies, scientists have now resolved the atomic structure of the fluoride ion. The study sheds light on the evolution of these channels and enables new approaches to modify their function, with potential applications such as the development of novel antibiotics.
In the breast, cancer stem cells and normal stem cells can arise from different cell types and tap into distinct yet related stem cell programs, according to Whitehead Institute researchers. The differences between these stem cell programs may be significant enough to be exploited by future therapeutics.
In some patients, aggressive cancers can become resistant to chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers identified a pathway that causes the resistance and a new therapeutic drug that targets this pathway.
Aggressive cancer growth and alterations in gene activity without changes in DNA sequence (epigenetics) are associated with mutant p53 proteins, which has implications for such difficult-to-treat cancers as those in the pancreas and breast.
A team led by NYIT Assistant Professor Gaberiel Bever has determined that Eunotosaurus africanus is the earliest known branch of the turtle tree of life
A new study by Florida State University is showing that rapid evolution can occur in response to environmental changes.
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