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The future of sustained space habitation depends on our ability to grow fresh food away from Earth. The revolutionary new collaborative Moon-Rice project is using cutting-edge experimental biology to create an ideal future food crop that can be grown in future deep-space outposts, as well as in extreme environments back…
A research team led by Eske Willerslev, professor at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge, has recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia. The study shows, among other things, that the earliest known evidence of zoonotic diseases — illnesses transmitted from…
The Moon’s near and far sides exhibit striking asymmetry — from topography and crustal thickness to volcanic activity — yet the origins of these differences long puzzled scientists. China’s Chang’e-6 mission, launched on May 3, 2024, changed this by returning 1,935.3 grams of material from the lunar farside’s South Pole-Aitken…
New research into the anatomy of blue sharks (Prionace glauca) reveals a unique nanostructure in their skin that produces their iconic blue coloration, but intriguingly, also suggests a potential capacity for color change. “Blue is one of the rarest colors in the animal kingdom, and animals have developed a variety…
In the last year, there has been a surge in proteins developed by AI that will eventually be used in the treatment of everything from snakebites to cancer. What would normally take decades for a scientist to create — a custom-made protein for a particular disease — can now be…
Pain isn’t just a physical sensation — it also carries emotional weight. That distress, anguish, and anxiety can turn a fleeting injury into long-term suffering. Researchers at the Salk Institute have now identified a brain circuit that gives physical pain its emotional tone, revealing a new potential target for treating…
It turns out color isn’t just fashionable for guppies: According to a new UBC study, the more orange a male, the more virile it is. The research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution shines light on an enduring evolutionary mystery: why male guppies have such vibrant and varied colors and…
What can lemurs tell us about inflammation and aging, aka “inflammaging” in humans? That’s the question Elaine Guevara, a biological anthropologist who studies the evolution of life history and aging in primates, set out to understand. In newly published research on age-related inflammation in ring-tailed and sifaka lemurs, Guevara discovered…
The rapid rise in AI applications has placed increasingly heavy demands on our energy infrastructure. All the more reason to find energy-saving solutions for AI hardware. One promising idea is the use of so-called spin waves to process information. A team from the Universities of Münster and Heidelberg (Germany) led…
For people with Type 1 diabetes, developing hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is an ever-present threat. When glucose levels become extremely low, it creates a life-threatening situation for which the standard treatment of care is injecting a hormone called glucagon. As an emergency backup, for cases where patients may not…
When the Empire State Building was constructed, its 102 stories rose above midtown one piece at a time, with each individual element combining to become, for 40 years, the world’s tallest building. Uptown at Columbia, Oleg Gang and his chemical engineering lab aren’t building Art Deco architecture; their landmarks are…
It’s been recognized for some time that Alzheimer’s disease affects brain regions differently and that tau — a protein known to misbehave — plays an important role in the disease. Normally, tau helps stabilize neurons, but in Alzheimer’s disease, it begins to misfold and tangle inside neurons. It spreads across…
New preliminary research suggests that a combination of higher atmospheric CO2 and hotter temperatures contribute to a reduction in nutritional quality in food crops, with serious implications for human health and wellbeing. Most research into the impact of climate change on food production has focused on crop yield, but the…
The international team, led by Dr. Marc Buckley from the Hereon Institute of Coastal Ocean Dynamics, has achieved a breakthrough in high-resolution imaging of the ocean surface. Using a specially developed laser measurement system aboard the research platform FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform) in the Pacific Ocean, they were able to…
People’s intuitive perception of biodiversity through visual and audio cues is remarkably accurate and aligns closely with scientific measures of biodiversity. This is according to new research published in the British Ecological Society journal, People and Nature. In a new study led by researchers at the German Centre for Integrative…
Have you ever wondered what kind of video content would most grab the attention of monkeys? A new study of long-tailed macaques suggests the monkeys seem to like some of the same kind of content that humans do: videos featuring aggression and individuals they know. “Humans and macaques are both…
Creatine is popularly known as a muscle-building supplement, but its influence on human muscle function can be a matter of life or death. “Creatine is very crucial for energy-consuming cells in skeletal muscle throughout the body, but also in the brain and in the heart,” said Chin-Yi Chen, a research…
Focusing solely on achieving weight loss for people with a high body mass index (BMI) may do more harm than good, argue experts in The BMJ. Dr Juan Franco and colleagues say, on average, people with high weight will not be able to sustain a clinically relevant weight loss with…
Finding motivation to exercise can be the greatest challenge in working out. This might be part of the reason why less than a quarter of people achieve the activity goals recommended by the World Health Organization. But what if working out could be more enjoyable? One way of achieving this…
During the menopause transition, only 1 in 5 women have optimal scores using the American Heart Association’s health-assessment tool, known as Life’s Essential 8 (LE8). Among the tool’s eight components, four of them — blood glucose, blood pressure, sleep quality and nicotine use — are key in driving future cardiovascular…
A Los Alamos collaboration has replicated an important but largely forgotten physics experiment: the first deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion observation. As described in Physical Review C, the reworking of the previously unheralded experiment confirmed the role of University of Michigan physicist Arthur Ruhlig, whose 1938 experiment and observation of deuterium-tritium fusion…
A fascinating glimpse into how a solar system like our own is born has been revealed with the detection of planet-forming ‘pebbles’ around two young stars. These seeds to make new worlds are thought to gradually clump together over time, in much the same way Jupiter was first created 4.5…
Researchers have found clouds of cold gas embedded deep within larger, superheated gas clouds — or Fermi bubbles — at the Milky Way’s center. The finding challenges current models of Fermi bubble formation and reveals that the bubbles are much younger than previously estimated. “The Fermi bubbles are enormous structures…
“Space ice” contains tiny crystals and is not, as previously assumed, a completely disordered material like liquid water, according to a new study by scientists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Cambridge. Ice in space is different to the crystalline (highly ordered) form of ice on Earth.…
During photosynthesis, an enzyme called rubisco catalyzes a key reaction — the incorporation of carbon dioxide into organic compounds to create sugars. However, rubisco, which is believed to be the most abundant enzyme on Earth, is very inefficient compared to the other enzymes involved in photosynthesis. MIT chemists have now…
Melting glaciers may be silently setting the stage for more explosive and frequent volcanic eruptions in the future, according to research on six volcanoes in the Chilean Andes. Presented today (July 8) at the Goldschmidt Conference in Prague, the study suggests that hundreds of dormant subglacial volcanoes worldwide – particularly…
Fish make hanging motionless in the water column look effortless, and scientists had long assumed that this meant it was a type of rest. Now, a new study reveals that fish use nearly twice as much energy when hovering in place compared to resting. The study, led by scientists at…
The key to sticking to and reaping the rewards of exercise over the long term may be as simple as doing something you enjoy, say the authors of a new study from UCL. Previous research has shown that the personalities of people who engage in different types of organized sport…
Ongoing research into the effect of environmental change on the buzzing of bees reveals that high temperatures and exposure to heavy metals reduces the frequency (and audible pitch) of non-flight wing vibrations, which could have consequences on the effectiveness of bee communication and their role as pollinators. “People have been…
A Smithsonian-led team of researchers have discovered North America’s oldest known pterosaur, the winged reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs and were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. In a paper published on July 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers led by paleontologist Ben Kligman, a…
