New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity Rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen seasonal weather patterns or even flash floods. The research was published today in Nature. “These exciting observations of mature mud cracks are allowing us to fill in some of the missing history of water on Mars. How did Mars go from a warm, wet planet to the cold, dry place we know today? These mud cracks show us that transitional time, when liquid water was less abundant but still active on the ...

New research suggests that the US municipal bond market systemically misprices risk, as the pricing of municipal debt does not account for local physical climate risk, but does demand larger credit spreads from communities with a larger proportion of Black residents. Erika Smull of Duke University, US, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 9. Across the US, local governments issue municipal bonds to help fund various expenses, such as schools and sewer systems. ...

Two-thirds of turtle injuries and strandings recorded in the Maldives across 12 years arose from entanglement with lost and discarded fishing gear ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289167 Article Title: Evaluation of sea turtle morbidity and mortality within the Indian Ocean from 12 years of data shows high prevalence of ghost net entanglement Author Countries: Republic of the Maldives Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

At one Antarctic research station, contaminant levels exceeding international guidelines across 18 years have resulted from historic practices that have polluted the local ecosystem ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288485 Article Title: Contamination of the marine environment by Antarctic research stations: Monitoring marine pollution at Casey station from 1997 to 2015 Author Countries: Australia, Canada Funding: This research was funded by a Australian Antarctic Science research grants to JSS (AAS 2201, 2948, 4127, 4180, 4633) by the Australian Antarctic Division ...

ChatGPT-authored Japanese writing can be stylistically distinguished with up to 100% accuracy from human-authored text by machine learning algorithms ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288453 Article Title: Distinguishing ChatGPT(-3.5, -4)-generated and human-written papers through Japanese stylometric analysis Author Countries: Japan Funding: This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP22K12726. The funders did not participate in this study design, data collection, analysis, or decision to publish, except their role in paying the English proofreading and Publication Fee. ...

While engaging in cell division research, Silke Hauf and members of her lab made a surprisingly quiet discovery. When cells express RNA, there is always some fluctuation, or noise, in how much RNA is produced. Hauf’s group found several genes whose noise dips below a previously established threshold, known as the noise floor, during expression. “We have solid data for this phenomenon,” said Hauf, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. “There are some genes that are different and can have super low noise.” Often upstaged by the more striking, well-publicized high-noise genes, Hauf and her team were intrigued by these ...

Philadelphia, August 9, 2023 – Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers have been trying to determine why this virus creates such negative long-term effects compared with most coronaviruses. Now, a multi-institutional consortium of researchers led by a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT) has found that the genes of the mitochondria, the energy producers of our cells, can be negatively impacted by the virus, leading to dysfunction ...

The surface of Mars, unlike the Earth's, is not constantly renewed by plate tectonics. This has resulted in the preservation of huge areas of terrain remarkable for their abundance in fossil rivers and lakes dating back billions of years. Since 2012, NASA's Curiosity, the first rover to ever explore such ancient remains, had already detected the presence of simple organic molecules which can be formed by geological as well as biological processes. However, the emergence of primitive life forms, as hypothesised by scientists, initially requires environmental conditions favourable to the spontaneous organisation ...

– By Christina Nunez In rooms where smoking has taken place regularly, tobacco's imprint lingers on indoor surfaces, even long after regular smoking has stopped. The leftover residues, known as thirdhand smoke, can be a long-term source of indoor pollutants. New research from a team led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) zeroes in on carpets as an especially potent – and difficult to clean – reservoir of tobacco contaminants. When thirdhand smoke settles into surfaces, it doesn't ...

A telecommunications fiber optic cable deployed offshore of Oliktok Point, Alaska recorded ambient seismic noise that can be used to finely track the formation and retreat of sea ice in the area, researchers report in The Seismic Record. Andres Felipe Peña Castro of the University of New Mexico and colleagues used distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, to identify seismic signals related to the motion of waves on open water and the sea ice that suppresses that wave action. The technique offers a way to track sea ice with increasing spatial and temporal resolution—on the scale of hours and kilometers--compared to satellite images that are updated ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Whether it’s work or play that prevents us from getting enough shut-eye during the week, assuming we can make up for it by sleeping in over the weekend is a mistake. New research led by Penn State reveals that cardiovascular health measures, including heart rate and blood pressure, worsen over the course of the week when sleep is restricted to five hours per night, and attempting to catch up on sleep over the weekend is insufficient to return these measures to normal. “Only 65% of adults in the U.S. regularly sleep the recommended seven hours per night, ...

LA JOLLA, CA—New research in the journal Nature Communications gives scientists an important window into how Ebola virus replicates inside host cells. The study, led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), reveals the inner workings of "viral factories," clusters of viral proteins and genomes that form in host cells. The research team, which included experts from Scripps Research and UC San Diego School of Medicine, found that Ebola virus's replication machinery forms fascinating microscopic ...

Simple home workouts using exercise apps can effectively reduce depressive symptoms in healthcare workers and could be a major tool to combat the global mental health crisis in the sector, says new University of British Columbia research. The study, published today in JAMA Psychiatry, divided participants into either a waitlisted control group or an exercise group who were given free access to a suite of home exercise apps called DownDog, that included yoga, cardio and strength training. They were asked to aim for at least 80 minutes of moderate-intensity ...

New research suggests that the Horn of Africa is likely to become even drier, not wetter in the future as predicted by most climate models. ‘Wet gets wetter, dry gets drier’. That mantra has been used for decennia to predict how global warming will affect the hydrological cycle in different world regions. But if climate models predict that much of tropical Africa will enjoy a future with wetter weather, then why does it keep getting drier in certain parts of the African tropics, like the Horn of Africa? An international team of researchers ...

First study to measure resilience in biomedical scientists during the pandemic Sixty-one percent of study participants said they experienced a setback during pandemic ‘You can be as resilient as you want, but certain structural factors can hinder your professional advancement’ CHICAGO --- When COVID-19 presented the world with the greatest health challenge in modern history, it was biomedical scientists who stepped up to develop diagnostic testing and vaccines to slow the spread of the disease.  But how did these in-demand scientists fare psychologically and in their careers amid pandemic pressures such as juggling ...

Brigham researchers are working on a new approach to target autoimmunity in the brain leverages designer bacteria to make treatment safer and more effective Researchers  from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, have designed a probiotic to suppress autoimmunity in the brain, which occurs when the immune system attacks the cells of the central nervous system. Autoimmunity in the brain is at the core of several diseases, including multiple sclerosis. In a new study, researchers demonstrated the treatment’s potential using preclinical models of these diseases, finding that the technique offered a more precise ...

To function properly, organs require a precise number of cells and a functional architecture, which are established during embryogenesis. Embryos are proficient multitaskers; they grow, and acquire shape and functional architecture all at once. Despite a lot of research on embryo development, scientists do not yetfully grasp how embryos orchestrate all these different tasks in space and time to ensure the formation of healthy organs. This was ...

The rare moss Takakia has adapted over millions of years to a life at high altitudes. An international research team led by Prof. Dr. Ralf Reski from the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Yikun He from the Capital Normal University / China has now discovered exactly how it has developed the ability to survive frost and life-threatening high UV radiation. In the renowned journal Cell, they describe the genetic traits that protect the moss from extreme environmental conditions. At the same time, they document how climate change greatly altered the natural habitat of this highly specialized species within just a few years. The ...

A Kaiser Permanente study provides new information that may help oncologists answer one of the most common questions they hear from breast cancer survivors: Is it safe to drink alcohol? The new study, published August 9 in Cancer, is the largest prospective study to look at short-term alcohol use after breast cancer. The findings suggest drinking alcohol is not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer recurrence or dying from the disease. “We know that women who drink alcohol are at increased ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Deep-learning technology developed by a team of Johns Hopkins engineers and cancer researchers can accurately predict cancer-related protein fragments that may trigger an immune system response. If validated in clinical trials, the technology could help scientists overcome a major hurdle to developing personalized immunotherapies and vaccines. In a study published July 20 in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, investigators from Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Computational Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy show that ...

(Vienna, 9.8.2023) Scientists at St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen have shown that immunotherapy after stem cell transplantation effectively combats certain nerve tumors in children. Crucially, stem cells from a parent provide children with a new immune system that responds much better to immunotherapies. These results of an early clinical trial were published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology. Childhood tumors of the nervous system, known as neuroblastomas, are associated with an unfavorable prognosis ...

The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) has published the new call for the 2024 HFSP Nakasone Award. Until September 30th, the global scientific community is invited to submit their nominations for this prestigious award. The HFSP Nakasone Award recognizes groundbreaking contributions and breakthrough discoveries in the life sciences. The award celebrates exceptional achievements in scientific excellence, particularly those that have propelled the boundaries of biological knowledge forward. In its 13th ...

For all the astonishing things artificial intelligence can do, it has a particular blind spot that one University of Virginia researcher seeks to remedy. It can’t recognize all shapes. “Current machine-learning models lack the capability to analyze and quantify the shape of objects presented in images with complex structures and large variations, especially in the context of medical imaging,” said Miaomiao Zhang, an assistant professor in the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science. The models are biased toward “seeing” image textures and have limited ability ...

Osaka, Japan – You’re likely familiar with RNA, the molecule that plays an important role in protein production and gene expression control. Perhaps you’re less familiar, however, with PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA), a special type of RNA that protects the genome from mutations. Now, researchers in Japan have shed light on how these critical molecules are formed by the dynamics of several associated proteins in the germline of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. In a new study published in the Journal of Cell Biology, researchers from Osaka University have clarified how the proteins Tejas (Tej), Vasa (Vas), and Spindle-E ...

In recent years, hydrogen gas has gained momentum as the fuel for a clean and green future. This carbon-neutral fuel source releases huge amounts of energy via combustion in the presence of oxygen with water vapor as the by-product. One of the most popular methods of hydrogen production is the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity.  An electrochemical cell is used to split water, and the hydrogen gas gets released at the negatively charged electrode in hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Catalysts are used to lower the ...