RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Physicist Nathaniel Gabor at the University of California, Riverside, has been awarded a $7.5M grant from the Department of Defense, or DoD, to develop a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives, or MURI, center on campus. Called QuVET for the Center for Quantum Vibronics in Energy and Time, the center’s co-principal investigators are leading scientists at UCR, Caltech, MIT, and Columbia University.  “Vibronic,” a portmanteau of vibrational and electronic, refers to transitions between molecular energy states. ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Research has often focused on how teachers and educators can best instruct and accommodate students with disabilities. However, are the methods used to teach students with disabilities effective and inclusive for all students? Michigan State University researchers are some of the first to answer that question. Faculty and doctoral students from across MSU, including from the College of Social Science and the College of ...

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology announced today that Ileana Cristea, professor of molecular biology and director of graduate studies at Princeton University, will be the next editor-in-chief of Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, one of the society’s three open-access, peer-reviewed journals. Cristea’s five-year term will begin Aug. 12. Cristea has a long relationship with the journal. She has been a member of the editorial board since 2011, and she served as the editor for the MCP special issue, “Proteomics in Infectious Disease” in 2017. Her research lies ...

Of all the carbon stored in ecosystems around the world, about half can be found in soils. Depending on climate, vegetation, and management, soils can be either a carbon source or a sink. Natural climate solutions (NCS) offer a promising opportunity to bring us closer to our net-zero emissions goals by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in plant biomass and soil. The growth of bioenergy feedstocks has great potential in this regard, because these grasses both build soil carbon and have the potential to be used to produce carbon-neutral biofuels and bioproducts. Over ...

The summer mating season is looking to get a lot easier for the scarlet tanager, one of a number of migratory songbirds that use the forests of northeastern North America to find a mate. In recent decades, the loss and degradation of bird habitats has led to a precipitous decline in bird populations. Now, a $2 million grant awarded to the National Audubon Society’s Bird-Friendly Maple program, in partnership with College of Natural Resources and Environment Associate Professor Ashley Dayer, will look to improve bird habitats by encouraging maple syrup producers to incorporate forest management practices that allow other ...

Living in neighborhoods where residents have lower incomes and limited food access during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of babies born small for gestational age or with lower birthweight, according to a new study from the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Previous studies have shown that maternal diet during pregnancy can impact the physical and mental health of a mother. However, less is known about how food insecurity affects health outcomes for newborns. In a new research article, ECHO researchers analyzed data to understand what connections might exist between where a pregnant ...

Erin McCarthy ’23, physics summa cum laude, is a rarity among young scientists. As an undergraduate researcher in Syracuse University's College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Physics, she guided a study that appeared in March 2024 in Physical Review Letters. It is the most-cited physics letters journal and the eighth-most cited journal in science overall. McCarthy and postdoctoral associates Raj Kumar Manna and Ojan Damavandi developed a model that identified an unexpected collective ...

A new book from Lori Beckstead, Ian M. Cook, and SFU Publishing Director Hannah McGregor, explores how the growth of scholarly podcasting may engender radical possibilities for how we conceive of knowledge creation and peer review, and the transformative potential of new modes of creating and reviewing expert knowledge. "Podcast Or Perish" investigates the historical development of the norms of scholarly communication and asks how podcasting might change how we think about scholarly work. Could this be the call to action academia needs? Read ...

PHILADELPHIA— Only a very small percentage of neurons show changes after an epileptic seizure in mice, but these alterations can be permanent and trigger future seizures that can affect the whole brain and lead to impaired cognition, like memory and learning, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers identified an experimental treatment that, if provided within the first 48 hours after the first seizure, can prevent these long-term changes. The findings, which were published recently in The ...

The University of Houston is proud to announce the appointment of two distinguished professionals to key leadership roles within the Office of Technology, Transfer, and Innovation (OTTI) under the Division of Energy and Innovation. These appointments mark a significant step forward in the University's continued commitment to fostering entrepreneurship, innovation and partnerships between academia and industry. Haleh Ardebili, the Kamel Salama Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been appointed as the new assistant vice president of Entrepreneurship and Startup Ecosystem. Michael Harold, ...

The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists. “For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft,” said lead author Fabian Klenner, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. ...

Archaeological analysis of a near unique animal cemetery discovered in London nearly 30 years ago has revealed the international scale of horse trading by the elites of late medieval and Tudor England. Using advanced archaeological science techniques, including studying chemical composition, researchers have been able to identify the likely origins of several physically elite horses and the routes they took to reach British shores during the formative years of their life. These animals – akin to modern supercars – were sourced from a variety of locations across ...

Francis Crick Institute press release Under strict embargo: 18:00hrs GMT Friday 22 March 2024 Peer reviewed Experimental study Animals Researchers uncover protein interactions controlling fertility in female mice Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have shed light on the proteins controlling the development of ovaries in mice before and after birth. This could lead to a better understanding of how female infertility develops. Following their research identifying the gene responsible for initiating the development ...

An international team of scientists have warned against relying on nature providing straightforward ‘early warning’ indicators of a climate disaster, as new mathematical modelling shows new fascinating aspects of the complexity of the dynamics of climate. It suggests that the climate system could be more unpredictable than previously thought. By modelling the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, one of the main ocean current systems, the team which included mathematicians from the University of Leicester have found that the stability of ...

As part of a new multi-million-euro academic research programme at University College Dublin (UCD) funded by Met Éireann (the Irish National Meteorological Service) to support the further development of weather and climate services for Ireland using data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI), UCD is seeking to appoint a Full Professor of Data Science for Weather and Climate. This exciting new senior academic post is a permanent position in the UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics arising from a funding award of €5 million over five years from Met Éireann, ...

Researchers have for the first time discovered evidence of microplastic contamination in archaeological soil samples. The team discovered tiny microplastic particles in deposits located more than seven metres deep, in samples dating back to the first or early second century and excavated in the late 1980s. Preserving archaeology in situ has been the preferred approach to managing historical sites for a generation. However, the research team say the findings could prompt a rethink, with the tiny particles potentially compromising the preserved remains. Microplastics are small plastic particles, ranging from 1μm (one thousandth of a millimetre) ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto and Sinai Health have created a new platform to identify proteins that can be co-opted to control the stability of other proteins — a new but largely unrealized approach to the treatment of disease. The researchers developed a method to interrogate the entire human proteome for ‘effector’ proteins, which can influence the stability of other proteins via induced proximity. The study marks the first time researchers have searched for effector proteins on this scale, and has identified many new effectors that could be used therapeutically. “We found more than 600 new effector proteins in 14,000 ...

      Attention editors: Under embargo by the journal Nature Machine Intelligence until Friday, March 22, 12 p.m. eastern     Hamilton, ON, Mar. 22, 2024 – Researchers at McMaster University and Stanford University have invented a new generative artificial intelligence model which can design billions of new antibiotic molecules that are inexpensive and easy to build in the laboratory.   The worldwide spread of drug-resistant bacteria has created an urgent need for new antibiotics, but even modern AI methods are limited ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Eating one avocado per day may improve overall diet quality, according to a team led by researchers in Penn State’s Department of Nutritional Sciences. Poor diet quality is a risk factor for many diseases, including heart disease, and many American adults have poor diet quality and do not meet key dietary recommendations provided by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This study was led by Kristina Petersen, associate professor of nutritional sciences, and Penny ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 22, 2024) – The health impacts of a complex protein that plays a major role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and heart conditions can be lessened by three kinds of drug inhibitors, according to scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. In an overview of the protein and the inhibitors published today in the journal Cell Reports, the CU researchers discussed the best ways to use the interventions. The protein, CaMKII, is ubiquitous in cells throughout the body but is perhaps best known for its prominent role in the brain and the heart. It is critical in learning and memory but if misregulated can ...

From photons to atheism to Churchill’s extraterrestrial musings, the stunning breadth of Carlo Rovelli’s work has spurred readers to think deeply about the intersection of science and culture, transforming staggering complexity into widely accessible writing along the way. For this artful ability to educate and engage, Rovelli will be presented with the 2024 Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science at The Rockefeller University on April 9. Named after its first recipient, noted physician-scientist and essayist Lewis Thomas, the prize was ...

It’s no surprise that your dog can learn to sit when you say “sit” and come when called. But a study appearing March 22 in the journal Current Biology has made the unexpected discovery that dogs generally also know that certain words “stand for” certain objects. When dogs hear those words, brain activity recordings suggest they activate a matching mental representation in their minds. “Dogs do not only react with a learned behavior to certain words,” says Marianna Boros (@FamDogProject) of the Department of Ethology at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, one of the paper’s co-first authors. “They also don’t ...

It’s no surprise that dogs can learn to understand and respond to human words. Your dog can learn to sit when you say “sit” and come when called. But a new study has made the surprising discovery by recording brain activity that dogs generally also know that certain words “stand for” certain objects. When they hear those words, they activate a matching mental representation in their minds.  “Dogs do not only react with a learned behavior to certain words,” says Marianna Boros of the Department of Ethology at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. “They also don’t just associate that word with an object ...

CNIO researchers provide a new hypothesis to understand the origin of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It would be triggered by a similar problem to that occurring in a group of rare diseases called ribosomopathies. In ALS patients, motor neurons would accumulate an excess of non-functional ribosomal proteins that eventually collapse the cell's clearance systems and cause toxicity. The study also opens a new front in aging research. The authors provide experimental evidence that formally proves a kind of stress called ‘nucleolar stress’ cause aging in mammals. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a degenerative disease. ...

On the surface, the movement disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and the cognitive disorder frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), which underlies frontotemporal dementia, manifest in very different ways. In addition, they are known to primarily affect very different regions of the brain. However, doctors and scientists have noted several similarities over the years, and a new study in Cell reveals that the diseases have remarkable overlaps at the cellular and molecular levels, revealing potential targets that could yield therapies applicable ...