Science
press releases.

Science19 Jun 2024

Interaction with insects accelerates plant evolution

A team of researchers at the University of Zurich has discovered that plants benefit from a greater variety of interactions with pollinators and herbivores. Plants that are pollinated by insects and have to defend themselves against herbivores have evolved to be better adapted to different types of soil. Plants obtain nutrients and water from the soil. Since different soil types differ in their chemical and physical composition, plants need to adapt their physiology to optimize this process on different soil types. This evolutionary ...

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Science19 Jun 2024

Heavy resistance training around retirement preserves vital leg strength years later

Twelve months of heavy resistance training—exercise that makes muscles work against a force—around retirement preserves vital leg strength years later, show the follow up results of a clinical trial, published online in the open access journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. Depletion of leg muscle strength is regarded as a strong predictor of death in older people, so is important to maintain, say the researchers. Skeletal muscle mass and function naturally decline with advancing age, ultimately often interfering with mobility and autonomy in older people, note the researchers. Resistance training, which ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

UCSB's Haewon Jeong receives an NSF Early CAREER Award

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Haewon Jeong, an assistant professor in UC Santa Barbara’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, experienced a pivotal moment in her academic career when she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. She was investigating how machine learning (ML) models can discriminate against students in education-related applications. Discrimination, or bias, occurs when a model used to train algorithms makes incorrect predictions that systematically disadvantage a group of people. Bias in ML models can lead to inaccurate or unfair predictions, which can have serious consequences in fields such as healthcare, finance and criminal justice. ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Fred Hutch announces eight recipients of 2024 Dr. Eddie Méndez Scholar Award

SEATTLE — June 18, 2024 — Fred Hutch Cancer Center announced the recipients of the 2024 Dr. Eddie Méndez Scholar Award, which recognizes outstanding early-career scientists from underrepresented backgrounds who are studying cancer, infectious diseases and basic sciences. The eight postdoctoral awardees come from research institutions across the U.S. and are experts in a range of subjects including cancer immunology, fungal model systems and craniofacial development. “We enthusiastically congratulate this year’s recipients who were chosen from a very competitive pool of candidates,” said Christina Termini, PhD, MM, co-director ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

ACM recognizes innovators who solve real world problems

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced the recipients of four prestigious technical awards. These four awards in diverse categories celebrate the hard work and creativity which underpin many of today’s most important technologies. Prateek Mittal, Princeton University, is the recipient of the 2023 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for foundational contributions to safeguarding Internet privacy and security using a cross-layer approach. The unifying theme in Mittal’s ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Wooden surfaces may have natural antiviral properties

Viruses, including the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, can get passed from person to person via contaminated surfaces. But can some surfaces reduce the risk of this type of transmission without the help of household disinfectants? As reported in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, wood has natural antiviral properties that can reduce the time viruses persist on its surface — and some species of wood are more effective than others at reducing infectivity. Enveloped viruses, like the coronavirus, can live up to five days on surfaces; nonenveloped viruses, including enteroviruses linked to the common cold, can live for weeks, in some cases even if the ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Dr. Felice J. Levine to step down as AERA Executive Director in June 2025

AERA President Janelle T. Scott and Executive Director Felice J. Levine issued the following joint letter on June 18, 2024. Dear AERA Members, Colleagues in the Field, and Leaders in Research and Education: We are writing this joint letter to announce that Felice has decided to step down as Executive Director (ED) effective June 15, 2025. As she entered her fifth consecutive term, she signaled that she wished to move to an Emerita status next June and would not seek a further term of office. We both want to communicate this news now to provide sufficient lead time to conduct a search and ensure a smooth transition. As ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

When does a melanoma metastasize? Implications for management

“[...] immunotherapy is more likely to be effective at eliminating metastatic disease if the tumor burden is low, making it more logical to treat patients with high-risk melanomas at the earliest possible time [...]” BUFFALO, NY- June 18, 2024 – A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 15 on June 13, 2024, entitled, “When does a melanoma metastasize? Implications for management.” In this new perspective, researchers John F. Thompson and Gabrielle J. Williams from The University of Sydney, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and the University ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

New study explores how local firms should adopt market and nonmarket strategies in the face of foreign direct investment

Studies have shown how inward foreign direct investment (FDI) increases the productivity or innovation of local firms in emerging markets, but little research has explored how local firms have to strategically cope with this competition. Upon exploring these connections, a new article in the Global Strategy Journal recommends that local firms adopt a balanced approach to contend with these competition challenges: Companies should adopt both market and nonmarket strategies to maximize benefits, as relying solely on political connections may not be the most effective option. FDI refers to when a company purchases a business or sets up new operations in a country different from the one of ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Researchers leverage shadows to model 3D scenes, including objects blocked from view

Imagine driving through a tunnel in an autonomous vehicle, but unbeknownst to you, a crash has stopped traffic up ahead. Normally, you’d need to rely on the car in front of you to know you should start braking. But what if your vehicle could see around the car ahead and apply the brakes even sooner? Researchers from MIT and Meta have developed a computer vision technique that could someday enable an autonomous vehicle to do just that. They have introduced a method that creates physically accurate, 3D models of an entire scene, including areas blocked from view, ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Is coffee good for you or bad for you?

Coffee drinking is a heritable habit, and one that carries a certain amount of genetic baggage. Caffeinated coffee is a psychoactive substance, notes Sandra Sanchez-Roige, Ph.D., an associate professor in the University of California San Diego School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. She is one of an international group of researchers that compared coffee-consumption characteristics from a 23andMe database with an even larger set of records in the United Kingdom. She is the corresponding author of a study recently published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. Hayley ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Argonne’s South Side STEM Opportunity Landscape Project dedicated to STEM equity wins Societal Impact Award

The Argonne in Chicago South Side STEM Opportunity Landscape Project was awarded the Societal Impact Award by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology (C2ST) for its commitment to advancing equity and opportunity in STEM education and careers across underserved communities. C2ST is a nonprofit that works to inspire and engage all segments of society about science and technology and their contributions to society. The South Side STEM Opportunity Landscape Project is part of Argonne in Chicago, which is focused on driving inclusive innovation to advance economic and societal impacts for underserved and underrepresented communities. The ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

New NOvA results add to mystery of neutrinos

The international NOvA collaboration presented new results at the Neutrino 2024 conference in Milan, Italy, on June 17. The collaboration doubled their neutrino data since their previous release four years ago, including adding a new low-energy sample of electron neutrinos. The new results are consistent with previous NOvA results, but with improved precision. The data favor the “normal” ordering of neutrino masses more strongly than before, but ambiguity remains around the neutrino’s oscillation properties. The latest NOvA data provide a very precise measurement ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

State cannabis legalization and trends in cannabis-related disorders in older adults

About The Study: Rates of cannabis-related disorder encounters increased from 2017 through 2022 among Medicare-insured older adults. This study observed the highest rates in states or territories that legalized adult and medical use of cannabis. The results also suggest higher average annual increases in states or territories that legalized medical cannabis. Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Silvia Perez-Vilar, Ph.D., Pharm.D., email silvia.perezvilar@fda.hhs.gov To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Pew supports 22 researchers leading scientific innovation

PHILADELPHIA—The Pew Charitable Trusts today announced the 22 researchers who have been selected to join the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. These early-career scientists will receive four years of funding to explore some of the most pressing questions in human health and medicine. “Pew believes that supporting promising early-career researchers is key to scientific innovation, and for nearly 40 years our scholars have helped change the world—creating lifesaving therapies and responding to emerging health crises around the globe,” ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Investigating the causes of fetal growth disorders

Common complications of pregnancy affecting fetal size may be caused by irregularities in the transport of amino acids across the placenta—a finding with therapeutic implications. Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and fetal overgrowth affect 15-20% of pregnancies worldwide. Abnormal fetal growth is strongly linked to the development of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease in later life. Placental transport of essential amino acids is decreased in human IUGR and increased in fetal overgrowth, but whether this was a cause or consequence was unclear. Fredrick Rosario-Joseph and colleagues created a line of mice ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Enzymes instead of cyanide: Researchers develop biocatalytic process for nitrile production

If the household cleaner emits a lemon-like odour, this may be due to a nitrile called citronellyl nitrile. These versatile chemical nitrile groups are also used in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients, superglue and chemical-resistant gloves. The prevalent production process used so far has required a chemical reaction of certain molecules with highly toxic cyanide. Margit Winkler from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at TU Graz, together with Ludmila Martínková from the Institute of Microbiology at the Czech Academy of Sciences, ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Restored rat-free islands could support hundreds of thousands more breeding seabirds

Hundreds of thousands more breeding pairs of seabirds could return to remote island archipelagos if invasive rats were removed and native vegetation restored – a new paper finds. In a first of its kind study, researchers also calculated that there are enough fish in the seas surrounding the remote tropical islands that were the focus of the research within hunting range of seabirds to support these restored populations. This is an important factor that has not been considered in previous island restoration studies and could become ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Fishy parenting? Punishing offspring encourages cooperation

Osaka, Japan — While there is an increasing consensus among humans that corporal discipline of children does more harm than good, fish may disagree. Ryo Hidaka, Shumpei Sogawa, Masanori Kohda and Satoshi Awata from Osaka Metropolitan University have demonstrated that a fish species employs physical punishment to elicit helping efforts from their offspring, indicating advanced social and cognitive skills previously thought to be unique to higher vertebrates. The results of their study were published online in Animal Behaviour on April 6. For millennia, human societies have used punishment ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Rethinking English essay scores: The argument for argument over grammar

To get high scores at essay writing tests, learners of English as a foreign language need to focus on good arguments more than on complex grammar. The Kobe University finding challenges conventional approaches to test preparation and scoring rubrics. Writing essays is a well-established tool for monitoring progress in learning English as a foreign language, as it provides a snapshot of a student’s mastery of grammar and vocabulary. Especially in Japan, where English language tests are often required for university admission and students closely follow advice on how to achieve high scores on these tests, a “good essay” is often seen as one that demonstrates ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Surge in fatal opioid overdoses in Ontario shelters, report finds

Researchers from the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network (ODPRN) at St. Michael’s Hospital and Public Health Ontario analyzed health data from the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario and ICES, and found that there were 210 accidental opioid-related toxicity deaths within shelters between January 2018 to May 2022, with the number of deaths more than tripling during the study period (48 before the pandemic versus 162 during the pandemic). Statistics Canada data shows that the annual number of emergency beds in Ontario grew by only 15% (6,764 to 7,767) between 2018 and 2022. “People who use Ontario’s shelter system are not only facing housing instability, but ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Study proposes novel hypothesis to explain occupation of Brazil’s southern coast 2,000 years ago

An important chapter of the history of human occupation on the coast of Brazil is being rewritten by Brazilian researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Archeology and Ethnology (MAE-USP) and supported by FAPESP. In an article published in the journal PLOS ONE, the group, which also includes researchers in Santa Catarina state, South Brazil, and in other countries (the United States, Belgium and France), shows that the sambaqui builders of Galheta IV, an archeological ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Constrained clustering with weak label prior

Clustering is widely exploited in data mining. It has been proved that embedding weak label prior into clustering is effective to promote its performance. Previous researches mainly focus on only one type of prior. However, in many real scenarios, two kinds of weak label prior information, e.g., pairwise constraints and cluster ratio, are easily obtained or already available. How to incorporate them to improve clustering performance is important but rarely studied. To deal with this problem, a research team led by Chenping ...

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Science18 Jun 2024

Study suggests at-camera gaze can increase scores in simulated interviews

Eye-contact has a significant impact on interpersonal evaluation, and online job interviews are no exception. In addition to the quality of a resume, the direction of the interviewee’s gaze might help (or hinder) their chances of securing the job. Researchers published their results in Scientific Reports on May 31. The study simulated online job interviews. Twelve students who participated in the study as a role of interviewees presented themselves twice, once looking directly at a web camera, and the other looking towards the screen. ...

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Science17 Jun 2024

Brazilian scientists develop functional bread to help prevent asthma

Brazilian researchers have developed functional bread with the potential to prevent asthma, a respiratory disorder responsible for some 350,000 hospitalizations per year in the SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde), the nation’s public healthcare network. The formulation, for which a patent application has been filed in Brazil (BR1020210266465), is described in an article published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition. It contains Saccharomyces cerevisiae UFMG A-905, ...

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