From Italy and the World

Parents with children in adolescence know this all too well: one minute “the little ones” are just up to your shoulder, and all of a sudden, they’re growing over your head. Until now, it was assumed that such pubertal growth spurt in body length only occurs in humans, but not…

Lithium-ion batteries are the powerhouse of modern-day electronics, and fuel cells are a promising candidate for sustainable energy devices. An important factor affecting the performance of both lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells is the dispersibility of carbon slurries, suspensions made of conductive carbon particles dispersed in a solvent. They can…

Livestock farming will become increasingly difficult in many tropical countries if emissions remain high — but rapidly cutting emissions and limiting cattle expansion would reduce the impacts by 50-84%. More than 1 billion cows around the world will experience heat stress by the end of the century if carbon emissions…

The virulence of a rice-wrecking fungus — and deployment of ninja-like proteins that help it escape detection by muffling an immune system’s alarm bells — relies on genetic decoding quirks that could prove central to stopping it, says research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A Nebraska team helmed by Richard…

Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) have discovered how proteins work in tandem to regulate ‘treadmilling’, a mechanism used by the network of microtubules inside cells to ensure proper cell division. The findings are published today in the Journal of Cell Biology. Microtubules are long tubes made of…

Fungi-eating orchids were found for the first time to offer their flowers to fungi-eating fruit flies in exchange for pollination, which is the first evidence for nursery pollination in orchids. This unique new plant-animal relationship hints at an evolutionary transition towards mutualistic symbiosis. Orchids are well known to trick their…

Emperor penguin colonies experienced unprecedented breeding failure in a region of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022. The discovery supports predictions that over 90% of emperor penguin colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of the century, based on current global warming trends. In a new…

CNN  —  Ukrainian forces have carried out their most complex and ambitious operations to date against Russian military facilities in the occupied region of Crimea, officials in Kyiv have said. Special forces landed on the western shore of Crimea, near the settlements of Olenivka and Mayak, in a joint operation…

CNN  —  A Moscow court has extended the pre-trial detention of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich, who had been arrested on espionage charges, by three months. His pretrial detention has been extended until November 30, the press service of the Lefortovo Court said Thursday. It had been due to…

CNN  —  Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a failed uprising against the Kremlin exactly two months ago, was on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday, according to Russian officials – raising questions as to exactly how the disaster occurred. The crash took place northwest of Moscow and killed…

Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia on July 29. Stringer/Getty Images As reports of the plane crash poured in on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin was in the southwestern Kursk region leading a ceremony honoring both the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk and…

An innovative bimanual robot displays tactile sensitivity close to human-level dexterity using AI to inform its actions. The new Bi-Touch system, designed by scientists at the University of Bristol and based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, allows robots to carry out manual tasks by sensing what to do from a…

Whenever the precision of a measurement approaches the uncertainty limit defined by quantum mechanics, the outcomes of the measurement depend on the dynamics of the interactions with the meter used to determine a physical property of the system. This finding may explain why quantum experiments often produce conflicting results and…

Many diseases affecting the brain and nervous system are linked to the formation of protein aggregates, or solid condensates, in cells from their liquid form condensate, but little is known about this process. This liquid-to-solid transition can trigger the formation of what are called amyloid fibrils. These can further form…

Griffith University researchers are on the brink of a technological breakthrough in vaccine development with a possible new vaccine modality. Professor Bernd Rehm and Dr Shuxiong Chen from the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD) and Griffith’s Centre for Cell Factories and Biopolymers have succeeded in developing a new vaccine…

CNN  —  If Yevgeny Prigozhin’s final chapter has indeed been written, he lived as he apparently died: Violently, flamboyantly and at the center of intrigue. The facts are still only beginning to become clear. On Wednesday afternoon, an Embraer Legacy business jet registered to the Wagner mercenary boss plummeted from…

If you happened upon a witch hazel plant in the forest, you might describe it as a sweet-smelling shrub with crinkly ribbon-like petals. But to Duke University graduate student Justin Jorge, it’s a howitzer. That’s because of the impressive firepower of its fruits. When witch hazels are ready to disperse…

Like every industry, modern farming relies heavily on plastics. Think plastic mulch lining vegetable beds, PVC pipes draining water from fields, polyethylene covering high tunnels, and plastic seed, fertilizer, and herbicide packaging, to name a few. In a new review article, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers say these plastics are…

In the rural United States, an adolescent who drinks heavily has a 43% greater probability of carrying a handgun in the following year, according to a study published this month in The Journal of Rural Health. “While there has been a lot of research on this correlation in urban areas,…

Highly challenging to sequence and long overlooked, the human Y chromosome’s contributions to health and disease remain largely unknown. A new paper that presents, for the first time, the complete sequences of multiple human Y chromosomes from lineages from around the globe provides an essential step forward in understanding the…

Scientists have long assumed that national parks help conserve wildlife and protect biodiversity. But is that truly the case? Fresh research from the University of Montana, international partners and NASA-affiliated scientists suggests that parks do indeed enhance bird diversity inside their borders. Large parks also support higher diversity of both…

An understanding of how words can be broken down into smaller units of meaning plays a key role when deaf and hard of hearing children learn to read, analysis shows. This knowledge of roots, prefixes, and suffixes — morphological awareness — helps children to learn new words and expand their…

In 2018, researchers from NOAA’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Nautilus Live observed thousands of octopus nesting on the deep seafloor off the Central California coast. The discovery of the “Octopus Garden” captured the curiosity of millions of people around the world, including MBARI scientists. For three years, MBARI…

A team of researchers led by the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research in collaboration with The Sarawak Museum Department have become the first to date drawings of Gua Sireh Cave in Sarawak, uncovering a sad story of conflict in the process. The limestone cave of Gua Sireh in…

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have made a discovery that could change our understanding of the universe. In their study published in Science Advances, they reveal, for the first time, that there is a range in which fundamental constants can vary, allowing for the viscosity needed for life…