Science
press releases.

Science5 Mar 2024

The many faces of a zinc anode: Configurations can make a difference in performance

Sometimes the solution to a problem can be as simple as changing the way the components are structured Researchers have proposed a reconfiguration of zinc anodes, a component of renewable energy sources, to help improve the battery and reduce the reliance society has on fossil fuels. The potential that different configurations of a zinc anode can have could reduce costs and side reactions while increasing the safety of the rechargeable zinc metal battery (RZMB) and, of course, improve its “green” rating. The results were published in Energy Materials and Devices ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Sprinting ‘like a jet’ will produce Premier League strikers of tomorrow

Sprinting “like a jet plane taking off” will help produce Premier League star strikers of tomorrow, new research has revealed. A University of Essex study of Tottenham Hotspur’s academy has shown that just a few words can instantly boost sprinting speed by 3 per cent over 20 metres. It would normally take weeks of targeted training to achieve such a large increase. These short bursts of acceleration are largely seen in goal-scoring situations and could be the difference in beating a defender and finding the net. Dr Jason Moran, from the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences, discovered simple analogies increased ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Dive into the future of molecular life sciences at #DiscoverBMB 2024

Which natural products are helping solve biotech challenges? How can enzymes supercharge biodegradation for a greener tomorrow? What role does RNA play in cancer and other diseases? You’ll find the answers to these questions and more at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to be held March 23–26 in San Antonio. Secure your front-row seat to cutting-edge findings, approaches and technologies in the biological sciences by registering for a complimentary ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Food web flexibility through time

A theoretical experiment characterized the network architecture of a species-rich ecosystem over 8 months. Predator–prey interaction networks play a key role in structuring ecosystems, but ecological research has often treated such networks as static, despite the broadly accepted understanding of ecosystems as dynamic. Hirokazu Toju and colleagues followed the complex food webs between 50 predatory spider species and 974 prey species, including midges, springtails, mosquitoes, and aphids, for eight months. The studied ecosystem is a warm-temperate grassland ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

One way to improve a fusion reaction: Use weaknesses as strengths

In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original. That idea is inspiring a new approach to managing plasma, the super-hot state of matter, for use as a power source. Scientists are using the imperfections in magnetic fields that confine a reaction to improve and enhance the plasma in an approach outlined in a new paper in the journal Nature Communications. “This approach allows you to maintain ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Predicting who will experience aesthetic chills

Researchers built a model that can predict with 73.5% accuracy when a person will experience aesthetic chills: shivers, goosebumps, or a feeling of cold down the neck or spine elicited by aesthetic stimuli, such as beautiful music or an inspirational speech. Felix Schoeller and colleagues surveyed 2,937 people from Southern California, through an online platform, gathering data on their personalities, demographic backgrounds, and emotional state. The authors then exposed survey respondents to 40 emotion-evoking audiovisual clips sourced from social media, selected because commenters had reported experiencing aesthetic chills while watching and listening. ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Ammonia-powered engines: A path to cleaner and more efficient transportation

While the transportation sector has witnessed a dramatic shift toward electric vehicles (EVs), the idea of using hydrogen as a clean and efficient fuel for transportation has been explored for many decades. These vehicles emit water on combustion, and since they are based on the production of existing engine vehicles, they are expected to have a lower manufacturing carbon footprint than EVs. However, storing and transporting hydrogen requires high pressures and low temperatures, which are energy-intensive processes. To address this, ammonia has ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Running performance helped by mathematical research

How to optimise running? A new mathematical model1 has shown, with great precision, the impact that physiological and psychological parameters have on running performance and provides tips for optimised training. The model grew out of research conducted by a French-British team including two CNRS researchers2, the results of which will appear on March 5th 2024 in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. This innovative model was developed thanks to extremely precise data3 from the performances of Matthew Hudson-Smith (400m), Femke Bol (400m), and ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Sweetened drinks linked to atrial fibrillation risk

Research Highlights: An analysis of health data in the UK Biobank found a 20% higher risk of irregular heart rhythm, known as atrial fibrillation, among people who said they drank two liters or more per week (about 67 ounces) of artificially sweetened drinks. The risk was 10% higher among people who said they drank similar amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages. Drinking one liter (about 34 ounces) or less of pure juice per week, such as 100% orange or vegetable juice, was associated with an 8% lower risk of atrial fibrillation. The observational study could not confirm that sweetened drinks cause irregular heart rhythms. Embargoed ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Special insecticide paint may help curb zika and dengue fever outbreaks

Malaria and other illnesses caused by parasites, viruses, and bacteria transmitted by organisms that spread infectious pathogens account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases worldwide. These vector-borne diseases, typically transmitted by insects like mosquitoes, flies, and ticks, disproportionally affect the poorest populations in tropical and subtropical regions. In Cabo Verde, an island nation off west Africa, vector-borne disease has been prevalent for centuries, in part due to the island’s geographical location ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

Proceed with caution – the meteoric rise of zero-alcohol drinks

New research from Flinders University has revealed that parents are feeling conflicted, confused and concerned when it comes to zero-alcohol beer, wine and spirts and adolescents. In recent years alcohol-free alternatives have flooded the Australian drinks market, reaching into the millions of dollars and heralding a new - but ever more confusing - era for parents across the country. With such a meteoric rise in choice and popularity, the rules, regulations and wider implications of these drinks for adolescents are still being studied. Non-alcoholic beer, wine, and spirits, sometimes known as ...

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Science5 Mar 2024

USC collaborates with startup supporter Techstars to encourage intellectual property development

USC will spark new startups and innovation under a new collaboration with Techstars, a leading pre-seed investor. The collaboration is also promising for the local economy as ideas generated at USC are converted into products and businesses that will enhance the university’s economic footprint at “Silicon Beach.” The budding tech corridor spans Los Angeles County and portions of Orange County, and it hosts several tech and biotech industry leaders, including the USC Information Sciences Institute in Marina del Rey and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles. “Our mission is to ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

SRI relaunches the PARC Forum event series as it celebrates the first anniversary of acquiring the storied Palo Alto Research Center

Menlo Park, CA: SRI announced today the relaunch of PARC Forum, an event and program series that brings together some of the world’s leading thinkers for thought-provoking conversations at the intersection of technology and society. The first PARC Forum event marks the first anniversary of SRI’s acquisition through a donation from Xerox of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC ). The acquisition brought together two iconic Silicon Valley organizations that have created and delivered technologies, services, and ideas that have had a profound impact on every one of our lives. SRI’s ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

UC Irvine receives $15 million NSF grant for integrative movement research

Irvine, Calif. March 4, 2024 — The National Science Foundation has granted $15 million to the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute at the University of California, Irvine. This six-year funding, part of the NSF’s Biology Integration Institutes program, will support groundbreaking research led by Monica Daley, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at the UCI School of Biological Sciences. The research funded by this grant aims to understand the intricate mechanics of muscle control during rapid, unsteady movements in complex environments. Muscle ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

PrEP discontinuation in a US national cohort of sexual and gender minority populations, 2017–22

In the U.S., sexual and gender minority populations are disproportionately affected by HIV. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a key prevention method, but its effectiveness relies on consistent usage. While a significant body of research has addressed PreP initiation and adherence, far less attention has been paid to the reasons for and consequences of PrEP discontinuation. A team of investigators conducted a four-year U.S. national cohort study exploring PrEP discontinuation among sexual and gender minority people who initiated PrEP. “Our cohort was entirely comprised of individuals ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Global study unveils "problematic" use of porn

A major international study led by a Canadian psychologist sheds light on a hidden phenomenon: how problematic use of pornography is affecting people in different parts of the world, across various genders and sexual orientations. Published in the journal Addiction, the research stands out because, among the 82,000 people in 42 countries studied, it looks at groups that were often overlooked in the past, including women and individuals who don't fit traditional gender categories. In their findings, largely based on ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

An evolutionary mystery 125 million years in the making

Plant genomics has come a long way since Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) helped sequence the first plant genome. But engineering the perfect crop is still, in many ways, a game of chance. Making the same DNA mutation in two different plants doesn’t always give us the crop traits we want. The question is why not? CSHL plant biologists just dug up a reason. CSHL Professor and HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman and his team discovered that tomato and Arabidopsis thaliana plants can use very different regulatory systems to control the same exact ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Firearm ownership is correlated with elevated lead levels in children, study finds

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Childhood lead exposure, primarily from paint and water, is a significant health concern in the United States, but a new study has identified a surprising additional source of lead exposure that may disproportionately harm children: firearms. A team led by researchers at Brown University found an association between household firearm ownership and elevated lead levels in children’s blood in 44 states, even when controlling for other major lead exposure ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Webb unlocks secrets of one of the most distant galaxies ever seen

Looking deeply into space and time, two teams using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have studied the exceptionally luminous galaxy GN-z11, which existed when our 13.8 billion-year-old universe was only about 430 million years old. Initially detected with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, this galaxy — one of the youngest and most distant ever observed — is so bright that it is challenging scientists to understand why. Now, GN-z11 is giving up some of its secrets. Vigorous Black Hole Is Most Distant Ever Found A team studying ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

3D-printed skin closes wounds and contains hair follicle precursors

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Fat tissue holds the key to 3D printing layered living skin and potentially hair follicles, according to researchers who recently harnessed fat cells and supporting structures from clinically procured human tissue to precisely correct injuries in rats. The advancement could have implications for reconstructive facial surgery and even hair growth treatments for humans. The team’s findings published today (March 1) in Bioactive Materials. The U.S. Patent and Trademark ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Study shows new class of antivirals that works against SARS-CoV-2

EDMONTON — A University of Alberta research team has uncovered a new class of drugs with the potential to prevent or treat infections in a future viral outbreak. In the paper, published this week in Nature, the team reports that SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — activates a pathway in cells that stops the production of peroxisomes and interferon, key parts of the normal immune response. The team successfully tested a new class of antiviral drugs that stimulate interferon production to reverse that effect. Tom ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Unraveling the mystery of chiton visual systems

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — You’d probably walk past a chiton without even seeing it. These creatures often look like nothing more than another speck of seaweed on the crusty intertidal rocks. But it sees you. At least, if it’s one of the species with eyes dotting its platemail shell. A team of scientists — led by Rebecca Varney at UC Santa Barbara’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology (EEMB) — discovered that some of these tough mollusks sport the most recently evolved eyes with a lens. What’s more, the ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Screen time and parent-child talk when children are ages 12 to 36 months

About The Study: This study found a negative association between screen time and measures of parent-child talk when children are 12 to 36 months of age. For every additional minute of screen time, children heard fewer adult words, spoke fewer vocalizations, and engaged in fewer back-and-forth interactions. Interventions aiming to promote early use of language should include support to manage screen time. Authors: Mary E. Brushe, Ph.D., of the University of Western Australia in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.6790) Editor’s ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Firearm access and gun violence exposure among American Indian or Alaska native and Black adults

About The Study: In this nationally representative survey study of 3,542 American Indian or Alaska Native and Black U.S. adults, a substantial percentage of both groups reported living in homes with firearms, storing firearms loaded and unlocked, frequently carrying firearms outside the home, and having been exposed directly and indirectly to gun violence. These findings underscore the need for nuanced public health campaigns and policies and highlight challenges for law enforcement in contexts of racial disparities ...

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Science4 Mar 2024

Low-cost liquid tames tooth decay

An inexpensive, cavity-fighting liquid called silver diamine fluoride (SDF) works as well as dental sealants to keep tooth decay at bay in a school cavity prevention and treatment program, according to a new study by researchers at NYU College of Dentistry. The study, which followed more than 4,000 elementary school students for four years and is published in JAMA Pediatrics, shows that SDF is an effective alternative to sealants, and can increase access to dental care while reducing costs. Dental cavities are the most prevalent ...

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