Reporting world updates to you
Cancer cells can evade the body’s immune defenses by exploiting a normally helpful and ubiquitous group of molecules known as mucins. Now, Stanford researchers have engineered a biomolecule that removes mucins specifically from cancer cells — a discovery that could play a significant role in future therapies for cancer. Mucins…
A new study published in the journal Science by an international team finds that past changes in atmospheric CO2 and corresponding shifts in climate and vegetation played a key role in determining when and where early human species interbred. Modern-day people carry in their cells a small quantity of DNA…
A new study published in the journal Science finds that around 1.12 million years ago a massive cooling event in the North Atlantic and corresponding shifts in climate, vegetation and food resources disrupted early human occupation of Europe. The study published by an international group of scientists from the UK,…
Scientists at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health led an international research team that published two articles detailing changes in DNA — changes that researchers found are shared by humans and other mammals throughout history and are associated with life span and numerous other traits. “We’ve discovered…
Plants orient their organs in response to the gravity vector, with roots growing towards gravity and shoots growing in the opposite direction. The movement of statoliths responding to the inclination relative to the gravity vector is employed for gravity sensing in both plants and animals. However, in plants, the statolith…
Physicists now have a brand-new measurement of a property of the muon called the anomalous magnetic moment that improves the precision of their previous result by a factor of 2. An international collaboration of scientists working on the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator…
For now, cyborgs exist only in fiction, but the concept is becoming more plausible as science progresses. And now, researchers are reporting in ACS’ Nano Letters that they have developed a proof-of-concept technique to “tattoo” living cells and tissues with flexible arrays of gold nanodots and nanowires. With further refinement,…
Scientists can finally hunt down a harmful kind of human T cell, thanks to new research led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) at Augusta University. Immune cells called ex-T regulatory cells (exTregs) tend to be rare in the body…
Long COVID can persist for at least a year after the acute illness has passed, or appear months later, according to the most comprehensive look yet at how symptoms play out over a year. The multicenter study, a collaboration between UC San Francisco, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
A change in just one letter in the code that makes up a cancer-causing gene can significantly affect how aggressive a tumor is or how well a patient with cancer responds to a particular therapy. A new, very precise gene-editing tool created by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators will enable scientists…
As butterflies flit among flowers, they don’t all view blossoms the same way. In a phenomenon called sexually dimorphic vision, females of some butterfly species perceive ultraviolet color while the males see light and dark. University of California, Irvine biologists have discovered that in at least one species, the variation…
A vacuum chamber is never perfectly empty. A small number of atoms or molecules always remain, and measuring the tiny pressures they exert is critical. For instance, semiconductor manufacturers create microchips in vacuum chambers that must be almost entirely devoid of atomic and molecular contaminants, and so they need to…
Pushing into a new chapter of technologically advanced biological sensors, scientists from the University of California San Diego and their colleagues in Australia have engineered bacteria that can detect the presence of tumor DNA in a live organism. Their innovation, which detected cancer in the colons of mice, could pave…
CNN — A mandatory evacuation has been ordered for the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk and its surrounding areas, as Russia intensified shelling of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region and claimed to have captured Ukrainian positions near the city on Thursday. Kupyansk, which lies close to the Russian border, fell to Moscow’s…
Concealed guns significantly impact homicide rates and public safety, according to a Rutgers study that found an increase in homicides based on the number of concealed carry weapons licenses issued. In a new study published in the Journal of Urban Health, researchers examined the reciprocal county-level relationship between the number…
New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London has demonstrated the safety and tolerability of a new drug treatment designed as a therapeutic intervention for spinal cord injury (SCI). The research, published in British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, found that the KCL-286 drug…
Bringing ultrafast physics to structural biology has revealed the dance of molecular ‘coherence’ in unprecedented clarity. How molecules change when they react to stimuli such as light is fundamental in biology, for example during photosynthesis. Scientists have been working to unravel the workings of these changes in several fields, and…
Over the past decade, the gut microbiome has gained significant interest by scientists and non-scientists alike. Recent research has shown that the bacteria and other microbes in our gut play a supporting role in immunity, metabolism, digestion, and the fight against “bad bacteria” that try to invade our bodies. However,…
Two distinct neurodevelopmental abnormalities that arise just weeks after the start of brain development have been associated with the emergence of autism spectrum disorder, according to a new Yale-led study in which researchers developed brain organoids from the stem cells of boys diagnosed with the disorder. And, researchers say, the…
Random Telegraph Noise (RTN), a type of unwanted electronic noise, has long been a nuisance in electronic systems, causing fluctuations and errors in signal processing. However, a team of researchers from the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea has made an intriguing…
Legal restrictions placed on the amount of time young people in China can play video games may be less effective than originally thought, a new study has revealed. To investigate the effectiveness of the policy, a team of researchers led by the University of York, analysed over 7 billion hours…
Hokkaido University researchers found that tiny nematode worm larvae surf electric fields to hitch rides on passing insects. Many living organisms are known to make use of electric fields. Some fish species use them to detect predators or prey, and insects such as bees use them to attract pollen while…
A research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed a novel technique to self-assemble a thin layer of amino acids with ordered orientation over a large area that demonstrates high piezoelectric strength, making the manufacturing of biocompatible and biodegradable medical microdevices, such as…
Atherosclerosis is a disease in which fat, cholesterol, and other substances build up inside artery walls. This can lead to plaque formation, which can block arteries and cause heart attacks and strokes. Immune cells play a key role in cleaning the blood, by interacting with red blood cell extracellular vesicles…
Unlike previously thought, speech production and singing are supported by the same circuitry in the brain. Observations in a new study can help develop increasingly effective rehabilitation methods for patients with aphasia. The neural network related to speech is mostly located in the left cerebral hemisphere, while singing has been…
New research confirms fracking causes slow, small earthquakes or tremors, whose origin was previously a mystery to scientists. The tremors are produced by the same processes that could create large, damaging earthquakes. Fracking is the high-pressure injection of fluids underground to extract oil and natural gas. Though it is typically…
Restaurants can persuade patrons to choose healthier foods by adjusting the font size of numbers attached to nutritional information on menus, according to a study headed by a Washington State University researcher. Lead researcher Ruiying Cai, an assistant professor in the WSU School of Hospitality Business Management, said U.S. restaurants…
Researchers at the University of Bristol have made a remarkable step forward in finding a potential cure for a type of childhood kidney disease. The research project has shown that just one dose of gene therapy targeting cells in the kidney has the potential to cure a condition known as…
New research from The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London has successfully reversed hearing loss in mice. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used a genetic approach to fix deafness in mice with a defective Spns2 gene, restoring their hearing…
Platelets, or thrombocytes, are specialized cellular fragments that form blood clots when we get scrapes and traumatic injuries. Viral infections, autoimmune disease, and other conditions can cause platelet levels to drop throughout the body, termed thrombocytopenia. After a robust clinical and research collaboration, Stephan Moll, MD, and Jacquelyn Baskin-Miller, MD,…
