Science
press releases.

Science11 Apr 2025

“Internet of nature” helps researchers explore the web of life

A novel paper led by Dr Ulrich Brose of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena is widening understanding of how species interact within ecosystems via the so-called “Internet of Nature.” Published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, the paper reveals that species not only exchange matter and energy but also share vital information that influences behaviour, interactions, and ecosystem dynamics – revealing previously hidden characteristics of natural ecosystems. Traditionally, ecological studies have ...

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Science11 Apr 2025

Development of a novel modified selective medium cefixime–tellurite-phosphate-xylose-rhamnose MacConkey agar for isolation of Escherichia albertii and its evaluation with food samples

Since cefixime and tellurite are known to inhibit most bacteria belonging to Enterobacterales, we found that addition of tellurite inhibited E. albertii growth in Luria Bertani broth but not in tryptic soy broth (TSB), and addition of phosphate and soy peptone enhanced E. albertii growth in TSB in presence of tellurite. Subsequently, to find the positive factor present in TSB, E. albertii growth was examined in tryptone, soy peptone, glucose, or phosphate deficient tryptic soy agar plates. Phosphate, soy peptone, and/or ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Increase in alcohol deaths in England an ‘acute crisis’

The persistent higher rate of alcohol deaths in England since the pandemic in 2020 is an “acute crisis” requiring urgent action from government, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and the University of Sheffield. For the study, published in Lancet Public Health, researchers analysed Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures of deaths caused solely by alcohol in England. They found that death rates were stable between 2009 and 2019, but increased by a fifth in 2020, rising by a further 13.5% between 2020 and 2022. The team estimated that 3,911 more people had died solely because of alcohol in England ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Light boosts exciton transport in organic molecular crystal

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; 10.29026/oea.2025.240207, discusses how light boosts exciton transport in organic molecular crystal. Organic semiconductors, composed of organic molecules or polymers, offer advantages such as low cost, flexibility, lightweight design, and tunable structural-functional properties. They have significant applications in OLED displays (e.g., smartphones, TVs), organic photovoltaic cells (flexible solar panels), and flexible sensors. In organic semiconductors, excitons—carriers of excited-state ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

The generation of avoided-mode-crossing soliton microcombs

A new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI 10.29026/oea.2025.240257 , discusses generation of avoided-mode-crossing soliton microcombs. Optical frequency combs refer to spectra composed of a series of frequency components that are uniformly spaced, resembling the teeth of a comb, thus the term "optical frequency comb." In recent years, optical frequency combs generated in microresonators (known as microcombs) have attracted significant attention due to their high repetition rates, broad bandwidths, ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Shouldering the burden of how to treat shoulder pain

Shoulders are, in many ways, a marvel. One shoulder has four separate joints, packed with muscles, that allow us to move our arm in eight different major ways, giving us the most degrees of freedom of any joint in the body. We can swim, toss, hug, and even punch because of the movement our shoulders enable. But the same complexity that allows us such motion also presents opportunities for pain when something goes wrong. Another complication: shoulders change as we age, and new types of injuries come with it. Clinical practitioners ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Genotype-to-phenotype map of human pelvis illuminates evolutionary tradeoffs between walking and childbirth

A combined study on the morphology of the human pelvis – leveraging genetics and deep learning on data from more than 31,000 individuals – reveals genetic links between pelvic structure and function, locomotion, and childbirth outcomes, researchers report. The findings offer fresh insights into how our species evolved to balance the competing demands of bipedalism and childbirth. The transition to bipedalism in hominins led to significant changes in pelvic morphology, including a shorter and wider pelvis, which facilitated an upright posture and efficient locomotion. However, ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Pleistocene-age Denisovan male identified in Taiwan

A fossil Pleistocene-age hominin jawbone discovered in Taiwan has now been identified as belonging to a Denisovan, according to a new paleoproteomic analysis of the remains. The findings provide direct molecular evidence that Denisovans occupied diverse climates, from the cold Siberian mountains to the warm, humid subtropical latitudes of Taiwan, and offer new morphological insights into this enigmatic hominin lineage. Recent research has revealed a surprising variety of ancient human relatives that lived in eastern Asia during the Pleistocene before modern humans arrived. One of the most important discoveries is the Denisovans, a distinct group identified through DNA ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

KATRIN experiment sets most precise upper limit on neutrino mass: 0.45 eV

Researchers from the KATRIN (Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino) experiment report the most precise measurement of the upper mass limit of the neutrino to date, establishing it as 0.45 electron volts (eV) – less than one-millionth the mass of an electron. The findings tighten the constraints on one of the universe’s most elusive fundamental particles and push the boundaries of physics beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinos – electrically neutral elementary particles – are the most abundant particles in the universe and ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

How the cerebellum controls tongue movements to grab food

By studying the skilled movements of marmoset tongues, researchers have discovered that Purkinje cells (P-cells) in a brain region called the cerebellum signal to stop protrusion as the tongue approaches its target, according to a study published April 10th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Reza Shadmehr from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, U.S., and colleagues. We use our tongue to shape the air and generate sounds to communicate, and we use our tongue to evaluate food morsels and transport them through the oral cavity when eating. These skillful acts involve coordination of more ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Drawing board rather than salt shaker

Bioinformaticians from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the university in Linköping (Sweden) have established that the genes in bacterial genomes are arranged in a meaningful order. In the renowned scientific journal Science, they describe that the genes are arranged by function: If they become increasingly important at faster growth, they are located near the origin of DNA replication. Accordingly, their position influences how their activity changes with the growth rate. Are genes distributed randomly along the bacterial chromosome, as if scattered from a salt shaker? This opinion, which is held by a majority of researchers, has ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Researchers identify factors in early-life linked to body fat in South Asian children

Researchers at McMaster University have identified six key factors in the first three years of life that influence the trajectory of obesity in South Asian children. The findings offer parents, primary care practitioners and policymakers new insights into addressing childhood obesity for a group of children who have a higher prevalence of abdominal fat and cardiometabolic risk factors, as well as a predisposition to diabetes. “We know that current measures of childhood obesity such as the body mass index (BMI) don’t work well for South Asians because of the so called ‘thin-fat’ phenotype: South Asian newborns are characterized as low birth weight, but proportionally ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

A new approach to differentiating large granular lymphocytic leukemias and their mimics in light of current updates in the 5th Edition of the WHO Classification

Large granular lymphocytic leukemias (LGLLs) are a heterogeneous group of rare chronic lymphoproliferative disorders characterized by the clonal proliferation of cytotoxic lymphocytes. Among them, T-cell LGLL (T-LGLL) and NK-cell LGLL (NK-LGLL) are the most prominent. Due to overlapping morphological, clinical, and immunophenotypic characteristics, distinguishing these disorders from related entities such as T-prolymphocytic leukemia (T-PLL), adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL), Sézary syndrome (SS), and aggressive NK-cell leukemia (ANKL) presents a significant diagnostic challenge. This review integrates recent molecular insights and updates from the WHO 5th edition ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Simple and cost-effective reporter assay for evaluating chemical-induced epigenetic changes

Chemicals used as food preservatives, flavoring agents, dyes, pesticides, cosmetics, cleaners, and other industrial materials are being increasingly recognized as a health hazard. Their rampant use has led to an increase in the prevalence of various chemical toxicity-induced diseases, including hormonal disruption, cancer, neurological disorders, skin conditions, and occupational poisoning. Numerous chemicals are known to trigger “carcinogenesis” or cancer development by exerting genotoxic effects (direct or indirect interference with DNA replication and damage repair processes ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Guinea pigs: A promising animal model to study the human embryo

The first few days of a human embryo’s development, known as pre-implantation, are important. It’s when the first cells are formed, and these decide if the embryo can survive, how it will implant in the womb and how the tissues of the fetus will develop. Today there are still logistical, ethical and legal limitations to using human embryos for research purposes, so scientists use alternative models including stem cell-based and animal models. In a new study published in Nature Cell Biology, Sophie Petropoulos, a researcher ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

How mothers adapt to the metabolic demands of nursing

Nursing poses major metabolic demands on mothers, to which they respond by eating more and saving energy to sustain milk production. There are significant hormonal changes during lactation, but how they lead to metabolic adaptations in nursing mothers remained unclear. In this study, which appeared in Nature Metabolism, leading researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Pennington Biomedical Research Center uncovered a mechanism that connects prolactin, estrogen, the brain and metabolic adaptations during lactation. “We worked with animal models to investigate ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Hidden potential in multiple disabilities

Using eye-tracking — a technique for recording and analysing eye movements — a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has shown that individuals with multiple disabilities can improve their social and emotional skills. Although these patients are often considered ‘‘untestable’’, nine young people have undergone personalised training over a period of one year, with promising results in terms of their ability to socialise. This work opens the way to new methods of assessment and support. It is published in Acta Psychologica. Multiple disabilities involve a combination of severe intellectual and motor impairments, resulting in profound dependence. ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

How to protect bumblebee colonies safe from killer moths? Keep honeybee hives away from them

Since the pandemic, we are very aware of the power of social distancing to protect against infectious disease. But can social distancing be effective if the infectious agent isn’t a virus or bacterium, but an insect powered by a brain and wings, and with the instinct to seek out new hosts? Now, a study published to Frontiers in Bee Science has shown that physical distance does play a leading role in protecting bumblebees against a flying insect parasite, the bumblebee wax moth Aphomia sociella. The source of the potentially lethal infection was another species, namely nearby hives of domestic honeybees. “Here we show that infestation with bumblebee wax moths is much greater ...

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Science10 Apr 2025

Research fine tunes tools used to search for genetic causes of asthma

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of genome regions containing thousands of genetic variants associated with asthma, but it’s still not clear which variants have an actual causal link to the disease. This “variant-to-function” gap is one of the biggest challenges to the usefulness of these genomic studies and has motivated researchers to develop new tools to make sense of GWAS results. A new study by researchers from the University of Chicago combines genetic data and improved computational tools to look more closely ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

Europe's population is adapting better to cold than to heat

A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, has shown that Europe has adapted better to low temperatures than to high temperatures over the last two decades. The research, carried out in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) and published in The Lancet Planetary Health, shows that there has been a significant decrease in cold-related mortality risk in recent years compared to the first decade of the 2000s. There has also been a reduction in the risk of heat-related ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

Ancient tools from a South African cave reveal connections between prehistoric people

In a cave overlooking the ocean on the southern coast of South Africa, archaeologists discovered thousands of stone tools, created by ancient humans roughly 20,000 years ago. By examining tiny details in the chipped edges of the blades and stones, archaeologists are able to tell how the tools were made. In a new study published in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, researchers analyzed these stone tools and discussed how the different techniques used to make them hint at the ways that prehistoric people traveled, interacted, and shared their craft. “This is an important insight into how people who lived in this region ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

European bird declines linked to range of climatic conditions experienced

New research suggests conservation efforts could more effectively identify and protect bird species at greatest risk from climate change by better understanding the range of specific conditions they need to thrive. The study, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), examined the relationship between the extent of the climatic conditions that species tolerate and in which populations can survive - known as climatic niche breadth - and their likelihood of declining in response to climate change. For species inhabiting a similar area of geographic space, those able to tolerate ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

Love songs in the sand: researchers listen in to Fiddler crab courtship

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01 BST THURSDAY 10 APRIL / 19:01 ET WEDNESDAY 9 APRIL 2025 For the first time, a study led by University of Oxford researchers has ‘listened in’ to the fascinating courtship displays of Fiddler crabs using geophones. The findings, published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, provide new insights into how the animals communicate effectively on the noisy seashore. For male fiddler crabs, vibrational signals are a crucial part of their courtship routines – produced by drumming the ground using their oversized claw, ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

Map of genetic regulation in chickens could help fight against bird flu

An international team of researchers led by Professor Huaijun Zhou from the UC Davis Department of Animal Science has created the first-ever detailed map of how genes are regulated in chickens — a breakthrough that could help scientists breed birds that are more resistant to diseases like avian influenza. The study, published April 8 in Nature Genetics, brings together a massive amount of genetic and epigenetic data of more than 100 chicken breeds from around the world. The team, which ...

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Science9 Apr 2025

3D streaming gets leaner by seeing only what matters

A new approach to streaming technology may significantly improve how users experience virtual reality and augmented reality environments, according to a study from NYU Tandon School of Engineering. The research — presented in a paper at the 16th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference on April 1, 2025 — describes a method for directly predicting visible content in immersive 3D environments, potentially reducing bandwidth requirements by up to 7-fold while maintaining visual quality. The technology is being applied in an ongoing NYU Tandon National Science Foundation-funded project to bring point cloud video to dance education, making ...

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