From Italy and the World

Climate impacts such as dry, hot summers reduce the growth and increase the mortality of trees in the Black Forest because they negatively influence the climatic water balance, i.e., the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. That is the central finding of a long-term study of the influence of climate…

A University of South Florida geoscientist led an international team of researchers to create a new method that can reconstruct the drift path and origin of debris from flight MH370, an aircraft that went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014 with 239 passengers and crew. Associate Professor Gregory Herbert…

Figuring out how hundreds of different kinds of brain cells develop from their unique expression of thousands of genes promises to not only advance understanding of how the brain works in health, but also what goes wrong in disease. A new MIT study that precisely probes this “molecular logic” in…

Parents should be taught how to better understand the increasingly volatile social media landscape that is deploying sophisticated algorithms, according to a new study from the University of Surrey. The study investigated how parents interpret and navigate social media algorithms that are central to their children’s digital experiences. The research…

Researchers from Austria and USA have designed a new type of quantum computer that uses fermionic atoms to simulate complex physical systems. The processor uses programmable neutral atom arrays and is capable of simulating fermionic models in a hardware-efficient manner using fermionic gates. The team led by Peter Zoller demonstrated…

The squash bug carries a gut bacterium that is essential for the bug’s development into an adult. But when they hatch from their eggs, squash bug nymphs do not have the bacteria in their systems. That left scientists who study the interplay between insects and their internal microbes wondering: How…

Fossils of primitive cousins of T. rex that had short, bulldog snouts and even shorter arms have been discovered by scientists in Morocco. The two new dinosaur species belong to the Abelisauridae, a family of carnivorous dinosaurs that were counterparts to the tyrannosaurs of the Northern Hemisphere. They lived at…

The mass slaughter of North American bison by settlers of European descent is a well-known ecological disaster. An estimated eight million bison roamed the United States in 1870, but just 20 years later fewer than 500 of the iconic animals remained. The mass slaughter provided a brief economic boon to…

Hot weather can have a big impact on dairy cattle health, well-being, and overall milk production for a herd. Dairy producers use a variety of effective cooling strategies to prevent heat stress including shade, fans, sprinklers, or a combination of all of these measures — and there is an increasing…

Regulatory genes — genes that control how other genes are used — are responsible for 69% of the heritability of dairy cattle traits such as milk production and fertility, according to a study published August 23 in the journal Cell Genomics. This contribution is 44% more than expected and much…

For centuries, human activity has intentionally or unintentionally driven the spread of plant species to areas far outside their native habitat. On average, about 10 percent of non-native species worldwide become invasive, often causing large ecological and economic consequences for affected regions. For the first time, a global team of…

Gold and mineral mining in and near rivers across the tropics is degrading waterways in 49 countries, according to a Dartmouth-led study. Published in Nature, the findings represent the first physical footprint of river mining and its hydrological impacts on a global scale. River mining often involves intensive excavation, which…

A new study led by the University of Southampton in the UK has revealed why coral reefs can thrive in seemingly nutrient poor water, a phenomenon that has fascinated scientists since Charles Darwin. The research shows that corals farm and feed on their photosynthetic symbionts — microscopic algae that live…

The Pacific Ocean covers 32% of Earth’s surface area, more than all the land combined. Unsurprisingly, its activity affects conditions around the globe. Periodic variations in the ocean’s water temperature and winds, called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, are a major meteorologic force. Scientists know that human activity is affecting this…

Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that has enabled a woman with severe paralysis from a brainstem stroke to speak through a digital avatar. It is the first time that either speech or facial expressions have been synthesized from brain signals. The…

What was once the final frontier of the human genome — the Y chromosome — has just been mapped out in its entirety. Led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and many other organizations used…

A study led by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and Weill Cornell Medicine discovered a new relationship between cancer cells and the immune system, and shows how cancer can selfishly hijack a normally helpful immune pathway. Usually, activation of this key immune pathway — called the STING…

Researchers from The University of Warwick and the University of Manchester have finally solved the long-standing puzzle of why graphene is so much more permeable to protons than expected by theory. A decade ago, scientists at The University of Manchester demonstrated that graphene is permeable to protons, nuclei of hydrogen…

A growing repertoire of cell and molecule-based immunotherapies is offering patients with indomitable cancers new hope by mobilizing their immune systems against tumor cells. An emerging class of such immunotherapeutics, known as T cell bispecific antibodies (TCBs), are of growing importance with several TCBs that the U.S. Food and Drug…

Many plants and crops rely on insects to pollinate them so they can reproduce. A new study has shown that several flowering plants from the group Euonymus are pollinated by fungus gnats, a dipteran insect. Specifically, they pollinate Euonymus plants which have red-petaled flowers with short stamens and yogurt-like scent.…

A tailsitter is a fixed-wing aircraft that takes off and lands vertically (it sits on its tail on the landing pad), and then tilts horizontally for forward flight. Faster and more efficient than quadcopter drones, these versatile aircraft can fly over a large area like an airplane but also hover…

Hours of inactivity during childhood could be setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes later in life, according to research presented at ESC Congress 2023.1 The study found that sedentary time accumulated from childhood to young adulthood was associated with heart damage — even in those with normal weight…

A recent UNSW-led paper published in Nature Communications presents an exciting new way to listen to avalanches of atoms in crystals. The nanoscale movement of atoms when materials deform leads to sound emission. This so-called crackling noise is a scale-invariant phenomenon found in various material systems as a response to…

New Yorkers can apparently breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now. Their exposure to the smoke in June 2023 from Canadian wildfires led to only a slightly higher bump in visits to New York City hospital emergency departments for breathing problems or asthma attacks than what is seen…

CNN  —  A mountain guide found the body of a man believed to have died more than 20 years ago on a glacier in Austria, police announced on Tuesday. The guide discovered the body on Friday on East Tyrol’s Schlatenkees glacier at an altitude of approximately 2,900 meters (9,500 feet)…

CNN  —  A top Russian general who went missing after the mercenary group Wagner’s insurrection in June has been fired from his role as head of the country’s aerospace forces, Russian state media reported Wednesday citing unnamed sources. Gen. Sergey Surovikin had spent four decades as part of the Russian…

Ukrainian forces appear to have stepped up their efforts to weaken Russian air superiority in the war by attacking bases that house supersonic warplanes deep inside Russian territory. Kyiv said it had carried out a drone strike on the Shaykovka Russian military air facility some 200 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of the Ukrainian…

In the United States and other western countries, a form of esophageal and stomach cancer has risen dramatically over the last five decades. Rates of esophageal adenocarcinoma, or EAC, and gastric cardia adenocarcinoma, or GCA, are both highly fatal. However, Joel Rubenstein, M.D., M.S., a research scientist at the Lieutenant…