Science
press releases.

Science15 Dec 2023

New red galaxies turn out to be already known blue galaxies

Not all discoveries turn out to be actual new discoveries. This was the case for the extremely red objects (EROs) found in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data. Analysis shows that they are very similar to blue-excess dust obscured galaxies (BluDOGs) already reported in Subaru Telescope data. Quasars, some of the brightest objects in the Universe, are driven by a supermassive black hole with a mass that can reach more than a billion times that of the Sun. These objects are the focus of much research, but how ...

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Science15 Dec 2023

Advanced GNSS technique enhances accuracy in landslide monitoring

In a new study published on 13 November 2023, in the journal Satellite Navigation, researchers from Chang’an University have developed a novel approach using the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique combined with a cumulative sum control chart (CUSUM) method. This method enables the analysis of reference station stability and compensates for deformation at monitoring stations. In the study conducted at the Tengqing landslide in Liupanshui, Guizhou Province, Southwest China, an innovative method was applied, showcasing a significant leap in landslide monitoring using GNSS PPP technology. ...

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Science15 Dec 2023

How an overlooked study over a century ago helped fuel the Colorado River crisis

When it comes to the Colorado River, history often repeats itself—but it doesn’t have to. That’s the take-home message from CU Boulder hydrologist Shemin Ge, who will present a little-known piece of history from the river this Thursday at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco. The story of hydrologist Eugene Clyde La Rue, Ge said, may help to explain the current water crisis facing many states in the American West. Ge’s presentation centers around a decision ...

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Science15 Dec 2023

Basic monthly income trial at USC shows promise with significant reduction in homelessness

Researchers at the Center for Homelessness, Housing, and Health Equity Research at the University of Southern California released an interim report on the first six months of a randomized controlled trial to study the impact of a basic income and social support intervention for 103 individuals experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Two key findings so far are that participants in the Miracle Money study who received $750 per month were less likely to remain unsheltered and closer ...

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Science15 Dec 2023

Transportation planning goes virtual

Freight transportation is a backbone of the US economy — and a significant contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, freight accounts for nearly 10% of annual U.S. emissions,ISE Dan Doulet Faculty Fellow and Professor Xueping Li points out. Li and an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team have been awarded funding from the US Department of Energy to launch a first-of-its-kind, national-scale undertaking to address freight’s impact on climate change — and climate change’s impact on this vital sector. Funding from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is highly competitive. “Any ...

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Science15 Dec 2023

Zhou’s new tech has low-income housing covered

When looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, most people think of first of their car, not their house. Surprisingly, however, buildings make up one of the largest energy-consuming sectors of the US economy, accounting for 39 percent of the country’s total energy use. “Heating and cooling are among the most energy-intensive parts of building operations,” said Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Nick Zhou, who leads UT’s Sustainable and Adaptive Built Environment Group in ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Rubber that doesn’t grow cracks when stretched many times

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have increased the fatigue threshold of particle-reinforced rubber, developing a new, multiscale approach that allows the material to bear high loads and resist crack growth over repeated use. This approach could not only increase the longevity of rubber products such as tires but also reduce the amount of pollution from rubber particles shed during use. The research is published in Nature. Naturally occurring rubber latex is soft and stretchy. For a range of applications, including tires, hoses, and dampeners, rubbers are reinforced by ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Can you change a chicken into a frog, a fish or a chameleon?

Gastrulation is one of the most important phases in early embryonic development. Before gastrulation, vertebrate embryos are simple two-dimensional sheets of cells. By the end of gastrulation, an embryo will have begun to differentiate distinct cell types, set up the basic axes of the body and internalize some of the precursors for organs in a three-dimensional structure. Amniotes, like chickens and humans, will have developed a primitive streak, the precursor to the brain and skin, while fish and amphibians will have developed a spherical-shaped ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Can an app improve your romantic relationship?

Half of all marriages in the United States are likely to fail by the time the spouses reach their 50s. Understandably, many couples are looking for ways to avoid becoming part of that statistic, well aware of a divorce’s possible wide-reaching detrimental effects on families, children, personal finances, individual well-being—and direct and indirect costs to society. Ronald Rogge, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, has been researching the complex dynamics ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Researchers, Coast Salish people analyze 160-year-old indigenous dog pelt in the Smithsonian’s collection

Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History led a new analysis that sheds light on the ancestry and genetics of woolly dogs, a now extinct breed of dog that was a fixture of Indigenous Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. Anthropologist Logan Kistler and evolutionary molecular biologist Audrey Lin analyzed genetic clues preserved in the pelt of “Mutton,” the only known woolly dog fleece in the world, to pinpoint the genes responsible for their ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Ancient genomics and Indigenous Knowledge reveal history of Coast Salish “woolly dogs”

DNA analysis of a 19th-century dog, paired with traditional knowledge acquired through interviews, have together provided new insights into the decline of Coast Salish “woolly dogs” – an extinct Indigenous dog once bred for its unique woolly coat. Dogs were introduced to the Americas at least 15,000 years ago and have been ubiquitous in Indigenous societies across the continents for thousands of years. Coast Salish peoples – a group of Indigenous societies that lived in the Salish Sea region of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) – kept several different types of dogs, including a special lineage of “woolly ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Using genomics to map illegal pangolin poaching from Africa to Asia

Genomic analyses reveal illegal pangolin trafficking routes from origins in Africa to markets in Asia, researchers report. The approach offers new opportunities to monitor pangolin poaching in near real-time, allowing for targeted and more effective anti-trafficking measures. The illegal wildlife trade is a significant driver of global biodiversity loss. Of all the species poached and traded, the white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) is the world’s most trafficked mammal and is at risk of extinction. Pangolins are in high demand in Asia because their scales are believed, without scientific support, ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Reaching for the (invisible) stars

Supernovae–stellar explosions as bright as an entire galaxy–have fascinated us since time immemorial. Yet, there are more hydrogen-poor supernovae than astrophysicists can explain. Now, a new Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has played a pivotal role in identifying the missing precursor star population. The results, now published in Science, go back to a conversation the involved professors had many years ago as junior scientists. Some stars do not simply die down, but explode in a stellar blast that could outshine ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

How can Europe restore its nature?

The ‘Nature Restoration Law’ (NRL) requires member states of the EU to implement restoration measures on at least 20 per cent of land and marine areas by 2030, and in all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050. This includes specific targets to rewet peatlands and to increase pollinator populations. The NRL has already overcome various hurdles: most recently, it was approved by the EU Parliament’s Environment Committee, after delegations of the Parliament and the Council negotiated the final text. But will the regulation really achieve its aims? The authors, including scientists leading large European projects on ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Working women feel unsupported by Christian congregations — even more progressive ones

As church membership declines across the United States, a new study from Rice University’s Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance finds that working women do not feel supported by their clergy and churches, regardless of whether they’re involved with a more conservative or liberal congregation. “The Limits of Congregational Support for Working Women” is part of a larger study of faith at work funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. It ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Research shows disadvantaged people wait significantly longer for power restoration after major storms

Hurricanes and other extreme weather events often affect disadvantaged communities more severely, and extended power outages are some of the most harmful effects. Concerns over the intensification of hurricanes has led to new environmental justice policies that aim to mitigate the unequal impacts of major storms. Now, policy experts and engineers are directing their attention toward illuminating the causes. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology sought to investigate whether socioeconomically vulnerable households experienced longer power outage durations after extreme weather events. The team analyzed data from the top eight major Atlantic hurricanes between 2017 ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Jurors recommend death penalty based on looks, but new training can correct the bias

Certain facial features—like downturned lips and a heavy brow—are known to make someone appear untrustworthy to others, even though these do not indicate a person’s actual character. Such facial biases influence our everyday social interactions as well as high-stakes decisions, including who we hire, or elect to political office. But a new study by Columbia researchers shows that the effects of these judgments can be mitigated. The study outlines the results of four experiments that the authors conducted with 1,400 volunteers. Through those experiments, the researchers found that when real-world defendants have facial features that appear untrustworthy, they are more likely ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

D-mannose reduces age-triggered changes in urinary tract that increase susceptibility to UTIs

Aging poses a number of challenges to the body’s well-being, one of the most important being an increased susceptibility to multiple diseases, including urinary tract infections (UTIs). The connection between aging and more prevalent UTIs is not well understood, but now researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have found an explanation. The researchers show in the journal Developmental Cell that, compared to the younger counterpart, the aging urinary tract in animal models changes how it functions at the cellular level in ways that seem to favor the establishment ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Finding the source of debilitating, body-wide muscular pain and weakness

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) identify the T cells that, when activated, are pathogenic in a subset of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies Tokyo, Japan – Inflammation is an important part of the body’s defenses, eliminating threats and repairing damage. When the immune system is overactivated, though, it can turn from friend to foe. Now, researchers from Japan have identified the culprit responsible for one type of harmful inflammation that occurs in certain muscular disorders. In a study published last month in the Journal of Autoimmunity, ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Jacob Tsimerman receives Ostrowski Prize in Higher Mathematics

The Canadian mathematician Jacob Tsimerman has been awarded the International Ostrowski Prize in Higher Mathematics 2023. The Ostrowski Prize is worth 100,000 Swiss Francs and named after Alexander M. Ostrowski, a professor of mathematics who taught at the University of Basel. Jacob Tsimerman, a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto (Canada), received the Ostrowski Prize 2023 in recognition of his work at the interface of transcendence theory, analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry, including recent breakthroughs on the André-Oort and Griffiths conjectures. Shimura varieties are algebraic varieties of great ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

This next generation blue light could potentially promote or hinder sleep on command

Blue light from LED lamps and consumer electronics can mess with your sleep because it disrupts production of the natural sleep hormone melatonin. Tinted glasses or displays in night mode can mask, but don’t remove, a portion of the disruptive wavelengths. But now, researchers report in ACS Omega that they have designed more “human-centric” LEDs that could potentially enhance drowsiness or alertness on command. Humans have evolved over millennia to be active during the day and to rest at night; we’ve depended on the sun to regulate our sleep/wake cycle. But many people ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

American Meteorological Society Announces David J. Stensrud as New President-Elect

[Boston, MA—December 13, 2023] Members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)—composed of weather, water, and climate professionals—have voted to elect David J. Stensrud to the position of President-Elect for 2024. He will be inducted to the post Sunday, 28 January, 2024, during the 104th AMS Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. The AMS will also induct five new Councilors at the 2024 Annual Meeting. Cynthia Atherton, Gina Eosco, Andrew Humphrey, Ying-Hwa (Bill) Kuo, and Clifford Mass have been selected to serve three-year ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Cockroaches can transmit antimicrobial resistance genes between groups

Washington, D.C.—A new paper describes a study of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) transmission among cockroaches, with implications for AMR transmission in humans. The study was published in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. AMR represents a serious threat to the health of humans and other animals. With fewer and fewer drugs being effective against some microbial pathogens, infections have become increasingly difficult to treat. Theoretical modeling has been used to explore the spread of AMR through the microbiome of the symbiotic, or nonpathogenic, gut of animals. The present study ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Three novel inorganic clusters accelerate ‘one of the most important’ chemical reactions

Perfume, rubbing alcohol, a cholesterol medication and even biological processes all depend on a chemical process called the aldol reaction. The reaction primarily combines compounds to form carbon-carbon bonds, which are incredibly strong and provide a molecule with stability. Catalyst clusters made of aluminum and oxygen typically help accelerate this reaction, but clusters that also include rare earth elements could offer more desirable and synergistic properties, according to a team of researchers based in China. The team developed three such clusters, ...

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Science14 Dec 2023

Menstrual cycles affect day-to-day suicide risk, UIC researchers find

Female patients with a history of suicidality experience an increased risk of suicidal ideation or suicidal planning in the days surrounding menstruation, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago. In the first longitudinal study of how suicidal thoughts and related symptoms fluctuate across the menstrual cycle, UIC researchers identified when some female patients are at the highest risk, offering new guidance for clinicians about when to focus interventions with suicidal patients. “As clinicians, we feel responsible for keeping our patients safe from a suicide attempt, but we often don’t have much information about when we need ...

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