Curated News: Nature (journal)

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Running sophisticated simulations on a powerful supercomputer, an international research team has glimpsed the unique turbulence that fuels stellar explosions.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found evidence that a mutant protein responsible for most cases of cystic fibrosis is so busy “talking” to the wrong cellular neighbors that it cannot function normally and is prematurely degraded.

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New theoretical physics research shows that swirling particles known as skyrmions, which have been found in magnetic systems, can also exist in ferroelectrics.

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New research from The University of Manchester and the Babraham Institute has revealed how gaps between genes interact to influence the risk of acquiring diseases such as arthritis and type 1 diabetes.

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• The Weizmann Institute Quantum Optics team has devised a way to pluck a single photon from a pulse of light. This breakthrough can both aid further basic research into the nature of light and help advance quantum communication systems, which will likely be based on single photons.

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The Weizmann Institute of Science’s Dr. Ayelet Erez, an MD/PhD who has treated rare childhood diseases, found that a protein that is missing in one such disease is also silenced by many cancers. Looking at how the lack of the protein affects the sick children also provides a “lens” on cancer.

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Radiotherapy and Immunotherapy in Combination Found to Enhance Tumor Response to Treatment

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A study published in the journal, Nature, adds to growing evidence that the people of Europe’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color with the spread of agriculture.

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Bombarding and stretching an important industrial catalyst opens up tiny holes on its surface where atoms can attach and react, greatly increasing its activity as a promoter of chemical reactions, according to a study by scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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Study suggests that the common belief that the Earth’s rigid tectonic plates stay strong when they slide under another plate, known as subduction, may not be universal.

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A team from the University of York has published research unveiling the 3-D structure of human heparanase, a sugar-degrading enzyme which has received significant attention as a key target in anti-cancer treatments.

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Most people probably think that we perceive the five basic tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami (savory)—with our tongue, which then sends signals to our brain “telling” us what we’ve tasted. However, scientists have turned this idea on its head, demonstrating in mice the ability to change the way something tastes by manipulating groups of cells in the brain.

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Whether you're territorial, a girlfriend stealer, or a cross dresser - when it comes to finding a partner, scientists have discovered that for some birds it's all in the genes. Individual animals usually exhibit flexibility in their behaviour, but some behaviours are genetically determined.

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A new type of symmetry operation developed by Penn State researchers has the potential to quicken the search for new advanced materials that range from tougher steels to new types of electronic, magnetic, and thermal materials.

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Researchers used a powerful, custom-built X-ray microscope at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to directly observe the magnetic version of a soliton, a type of wave that can travel without resistance. Scientists are exploring whether such magnetic waves can be used to carry and store information in a new, more efficient form of computer memory that requires less energy and generates less heat.

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Scientists have found the "fourth strand" of European ancestry. This population, discovered in the Caucasus mountains of Western Georgia survived for thousands of years, isolated from the rest of Europe due to the Ice Age. A small but significant portion of Europe's genome is derived from this unique population of hunter-gatherers, who came out of hiding, and mixed with the Yamnaya culture, which swept into Western Europe about 5,000 years ago.

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Taking genetic engineering to the next level, Colorado State University researchers are creating modular, programmable genetic circuits that control specific plant functions.

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An international team of researchers, led by Queen’s University Belfast, has devised a high-precision method of examining magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere, representing a significant leap forward in the investigation of solar flares and potentially catastrophic ‘space weather’.

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Scientists at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) have determined how the body responds during times of emergency when it needs more blood cells. In a study published in Nature, researchers report that when tissue damage occurs, in times of excessive bleeding, or during pregnancy, a secondary, emergency blood-formation system is activated in the spleen.

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A new study in Nature Communications by Luis Ossa, Jorge Mpodozis and Alexander Vargas, from the University of Chile, provides a careful re-examination of ankle development in 6 different major groups of birds, selected specifically to clarify conditions in their last common ancestor.

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The sensitivity of marine communities to ocean warming rather than rising ocean temperatures will have strong short-term impacts on biodiversity changes associated with global warming, according to new research.

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A study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center may explain why chemotherapy drugs such as gemcitabine are not effective for many pancreatic cancer patients, and perhaps point to new approaches to treatment including enhancing gemcitabine’s ability to stop tumor growth.

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Pediatric oncology researchers have pinpointed a crucial change in a single DNA base that both predisposes children to an aggressive form of the childhood cancer neuroblastoma and makes the disease progress once tumors form. The gene change results in a "super-enhancer" that drives the cancer.

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New research led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center helps explain the role of an immunosuppressive pathway associated with irritable bowel disease, a condition that develops in genetically susceptible individuals when the body's immune system overreacts to intestinal tissue, luminal bacteria or both.

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The anticipated melting of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be slowed by two big factors that are largely overlooked in current computer models, according to a new study.

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Scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (UNC) and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have created a general tool to probe the activity of these orphan receptors, illuminating their roles in behavior and making them accessible for drug discovery

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Building on wireless technology that has the potential to interfere with pain, scientists have developed flexible, implantable devices that can activate -- and, in theory, block -- pain signals in the body and spinal cord before those signals reach the brain. The researchers, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the implants one day may be used in different parts of the body to fight pain that doesn't respond to other therapies.

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Using a high-tech imaging method, a team of biomedical engineers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis was able to see early-developing cancer cells deeper in tissue than ever before with the help of a novel protein from a bacterium.

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For decades, biologists have been trying to find the crucial sensor protein in nerve endings that translates muscle and tendon stretching into proprioceptive nerve signals. Now, a team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has identified this sensor protein in mice.

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Scientists at the University of North Carolina and UC-San Francisco created a general tool to probe the activity of orphan receptors, illuminating their roles in behavior and making them accessible for drug discovery for the first time.

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NYU Abu Dhabi researchers have developed a map of genetic changes across the genome of date palms. They have also established genetic differences between Middle Eastern and North African date palms, an important discovery that sheds light on that long elusive question.

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Australopithecus deyiremeda is the name of the new fossil hominid species discovered in the site of Woranso-Mille —in the central region of Afar, in Ethiopia— by an international team of scientists led by Professor Yohannes Haile-Selassie (Case Western Reserve University, United States).

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Australopithecus deyiremeda is the name of the new fossil hominid species discovered in the site of Woranso-Mille —in the central region of Afar, in Ethiopia— by an international team of scientists led by Professor Yohannes Haile-Selassie (Case Western Reserve University, United States).

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Peering at the debris from particle collisions that recreate the conditions of the very early universe, scientists have for the first time measured the force of interaction between pairs of antiprotons. Like the force that holds ordinary protons together within the nuclei of atoms, the force between antiprotons is attractive and strong. The experiments were conducted at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and will publish in Nature.

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A team led by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the University of Pittsburgh has shown for the first time how one set of specialized cells survives under stress by manipulating the behavior of key immune system cells.

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A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory computed distributions in calcium-48, and revealed that the difference between the radii of neutron and proton distributions (called the “neutron skin”) is considerably smaller than previously thought.

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University of Georgia scientist Aron Stubbins joined a team of researchers to determine how hydrothermal vents influence ocean carbon storage. Originally, the researchers thought the vents might be a source of the dissolved organic carbon. Their research showed just the opposite.

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Multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease, is triggered by self-reactive T cells that successfully infiltrate the brain and spinal cord where they launch an aggressive autoimmune attack against myelin, the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates nerve fibers. In their latest study, published in the Nov. 2, 2015, advance online issue of Nature Immunology, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology report that these disease-causing autoimmune T cells are lured into the nervous system by monocytes and macrophages, a subset of immune cells better known as the immune system’s cleanup crew.

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When cancer cells compete with immune cells for glucose, the cancer wins. As a result, the immune T cells are not healthy and don’t have the weapons to kill the cancer.

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The first-ever images of the protein complex that unwinds, splits, and copies double-stranded DNA reveal something rather different from the standard textbook view. The electron microscope images, created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory with partners from Stony Brook University and Rockefeller University, offer new insight into how this molecular machinery functions.

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Researchers from the University of Southampton have established that eggs have a protective ‘checkpoint’ that helps to prevent DNA damaged eggs being fertilised.

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An inexpensive method for generating clean fuel is the modern-day equivalent of the philosopher’s stone. One compelling but challenging idea is to use solar energy to split water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen and then harvest the hydrogen for use as fuel.

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The brain cells of patients with bipolar disorder, a manic-depressive illness characterized by severe swings in mood, energy and ability to carry out daily tasks, are more sensitive to stimuli than other people’s brain cells, reports an international team of scientists headed by researchers at Salk Institute for Biological Studies and University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

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Catalysts that power chemical reactions to produce the nylon used in clothing, cookware, machinery and electronics could get a lift with a new formulation that saves time, energy and natural resources.

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Researchers have made another important step in the progress towards being able to block the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases.

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Autophagy, the degradation of unwanted cellular bits and pieces by the cell itself, has been shown for the first time to also work in the cell nucleus. In this setting it plays a role in guarding against the start of cancer.

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Berkeley Lab researchers have developed metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) that feature flexible gas-adsorbing pores, giving them a high capacity for storing methane. This capability has the potential to help make the driving range of adsorbed-natural-gas (ANG) cars comparable to that of a typical gasoline-powered car.

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The microenvironment of a tumor cell has significant impact on cancer metastasis, according to a discovery by Siyuan Zhang at the University of Notre Dame and a team at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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• Prof. Yardena Samuels and her team at the Weizmann Institute of Science have found a tumor suppressor gene, RASA2, that drives a particularly deadly form of melanoma as well as regulates a key protein, RAS, that is a major oncogene. The discovery is “highly likely to have direct clinical relevance.”

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According to a study published the journal Nature Climate Change, by 2100, parts of the Persian Gulf could be hit by waves of heat and humidity so severe that simply being outside for several hours could be life threatening.