Stars blinking code in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” might be science fiction, but by deciphering neutron stars’ erratic flickers, a new study has revealed the twisted origin of these dead stars’ mysterious “heartbeats.” When neutron stars—ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that exploded in supernovae—were first discovered in 1967, astronomers thought their strange periodic pulses could be signals from an alien civilization. Although we now know these “heartbeats” ...

Many municipal landfills “burp” gas from decomposing organic matter rather than letting it build up. And burps from buried waste containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) can release these “forever chemicals” into the air, say researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology Letters. Their study reports unexpectedly high levels of airborne PFAS at three landfills and demonstrates that vented gases and liquid by-products called leachates could transport similar amounts of these contaminants to the environment. Some consumer products and commercial waste, such as children’s clothing, cosmetics and wastewater treatment sludge solids, contain ...

Clean, safe water is a limited resource and access to it depends on local bodies of water. But even dry regions have some water vapor in the air. To harvest small amounts of humidity, researchers in ACS Energy Letters have developed a compact device with absorbent-coated fins that first trap moisture and then generate potable water when heated. They say the prototype could help meet growing demands for water, especially in arid locations. Earth’s atmosphere holds trillions of liters of fresh water as vapor, but it’s challenging to collect this colorless, transparent and dilute gas. Previously, researchers developed systems that trap ...

Comprising the base of the food web, plankton are extremely important to marine ecosystems. However, there is still much to be discovered about these organisms, and that’s especially true for mixoplankton. Plankton are typically divided into two groups. Similar to plants, phytoplankton contain chlorophyll and derive energy from photosynthesis. Zooplankton, on the other hand, consume other organisms for their energy. However, there is also a third group, mixoplankton, that is a combination of the two. And, despite accounting for, at times, more than half of all plankton in the ocean, they remain ...

River plants provide ecological and environmental benefits, but they raise flood risk by blocking the flow during heavy rain. Removing woody riparian vegetation patches is a primary flood prevention method, but it threatens stream's biodiversity. The research team at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT, President Kim, Byung-Suk) has developed a technology for quantifying the effect of river vegetation patches on flood level changes to aid in better decision-making of river management for balancing ecological benefits and flood mitigation. Rivers ...

Marine organisms produce many organic compounds with diverse chemical structures and biological activities. These natural marine products are regarded as potential starting points for the discovery and development of new drugs. Among these are norcembranolide diterpenes isolated from the soft corals of the genus Sinularia. These compounds exhibit diverse biological activities, and many of them have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. Consequently, many studies have investigated the properties of norcembranolide diterpenes and their synthesis methods. Given their potential in drug discovery, developing a synthetic ...

JACKSONVILLE, Florida — The blood-brain barrier — a network of blood vessels and tissues that nurtures and protects the brain from harmful substances circulating in the blood — is disrupted in Alzheimer's disease. Now, researchers at Mayo Clinic and collaborators have uncovered unique molecular signatures of blood-brain barrier dysfunction that could point to new ways to diagnose and treat the disease. Their findings are published in Nature Communications. "These signatures have high potential to become novel biomarkers that capture brain changes in Alzheimer's ...

Rome - Rural livelihoods are quite intertwined with urban centers, with mid-sized cities playing an extraordinary role in providing required services, including for food security, agricultural livelihoods and viable rural development, according to a new study by researchers at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other institutions. Some two-thirds of the world’s population, or more than 5 billion people, live within one hour of travel time – using locally available means of ...

A discovery by researchers at the University of British Columbia promises to improve care for patients with endometrial cancer, the most common gynecologic malignancy.   Using artificial intelligence (AI) to spot patterns across thousands of cancer cell images, the researchers have pinpointed a distinct subset of endometrial cancer that puts patients at much greater risk of recurrence and death, but would otherwise go unrecognized by traditional pathology and molecular diagnostics. The findings, published today in Nature Communications, will help doctors identify patients with high-risk disease ...

The COSPAR Panel on Innovative Solutions (PoIS) charter aims to bring state-of-the-art technology to address the hardest problems facing COSPAR researchers. PoIS first focused on predicting adverse events from solar activity and applying innovative technologies and sophisticated tools to atmospheric modelling of Mars, Earth, and Venus. This effort led to the creation of the Cyprus Space Research and Innovation Center (C-SpaRC), co-funded by the European Union (EU) in December 2023 as a new infrastructure with related research, with the cooperation of COSPAR. C-SpaRC is now under the auspices of COSPAR, and is designated the COSPAR International ...

Given the volcanic activity on Iceland over the last three years, researchers from six universities anticipate recurring, moderately sized eruptions of similar style in the coming years to decades. They therefore stress the need for preparedness in view of the risks posed to local populations and critical infrastructure. Their study was recently published in the scientific journal Terra Nova. “The study uses information from local earthquakes and geochemical data on the erupted magma through time to reveal the geological processes behind these recent Icelandic eruptions. A comparison of these eruptions with historical events provides strong evidence that Iceland will ...

A study led by a Brigham investigator evaluated a novel device that automatically measures blood pressure at the wrist, generating hundreds of readings within days that may help clinicians determine cardiovascular risk and improve hypertension care  High blood pressure, the leading risk factor for death worldwide, is present in one in every two adults. Only one-quarter of individuals with hypertension have their blood pressure under control, highlighting the need for innovative strategies for blood pressure management. A study led by an investigator from Brigham and Women’s ...

Iceland’s ongoing volcanic eruptions may continue on and off for years to decades, threatening the country’s most densely populated region and vital infrastructure, researchers predict from local earthquake and geochemical data.   The eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula have forced authorities to declare a state of emergency, with a series of eight eruptions having occurred since 2021. This southwestern region is home to 70 percent of the country’s population, its only international airport, and several geothermal power plants that supply ...

A new Child Development study by researchers at the University of Maryland, Furman University, Education Northwest and University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa in the United States, examined whether children think it’s unfair for a teacher to select students from only one gender or ethnic group for leadership duties.  Researchers learned that children and adolescents are not only aware of these situations, but they are also motivated to rectify these types of inequalities in the classroom. Understanding ...

Research suggests that phone use may have an effect on children’s speech input and language development. However, most of the prior work in this area examines parents and children in controlled laboratory experiments in public spaces and may not be representative of daily interactions between a child and their caregivers.  New research in Child Development by the University of Texas at Austin in the United States is the first to combine objective markers of speech (via audio recorders worn by infants) and maternal cell phone use from cell phone logs. This research helps document ...

For decades, it’s been thought that people with heart failure should drastically reduce their dietary salt intake, but some studies have suggested that salt restriction could be harmful for these patients. A recent review in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation that assessed all relevant studies published between 2000 and 2023 has concluded that there is no proven clinical benefit to this strategy for patients with heart failure. Most relevant randomized trials were small, and a single large, ...

Research published in Terra Nova provides insights into the ongoing eruption series on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland that began in 2021. The eruptions forced the evacuation of an entire town, with an uncertain future about the possibility for residents to return. For the study, investigators analyzed information from local earthquakes and geochemical data on lava samples erupted through time. The combined evidence implies that the lavas that have erupted in recent years were derived from a moderately-sized magma reservoir ...

A new study that looked for relationships between early social media use and depression across adolescence and into young adulthood found that certain factors may make social media more risky or protective regarding depression. The findings, which are published in the Journal of Adolescence, suggest that social media use does not impact all adolescents in the same way, and an individualized approach is needed to determine the benefits and harms of social media on young people’s mental health. For the study, 488 adolescents living in the United States were surveyed once a year for 8 years ...

Based on focus groups with children and young people with peanut allergy, experts have published guidance for clinicians working in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) to help them safely and equitably implement Palforzia® peanut oral immunotherapy. Their recommendations are published in Clinical & Experimental Allergy. In 2022, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the UK recommended the use of Palforzia®—which has defatted peanut powder as its active ingredient—for desensitizing children ...

Worldwide, introduced non-native herbivores have the potential to threaten native ecosystems. For example, in western North America, uncontrolled numbers of feral horses and burros are threatening natural habitats and the native wildlife that rely on them. New research published in the wildlife research journal Wildlife Monographs documents the impact that non-native burros are having on plant and animal life in the Sonoran Desert of North America. Investigators found that the presence of burros was associated with changes to long-lived plants important to the region. In areas with established burro herds, researchers documented lower ground cover, plant density, and foliage density, ...

Ambient temperatures are associated with over 5 million premature deaths worldwide every year, more than 300,000 of which in Western Europe alone. In a context of rapidly warming temperatures that successively broke previous records during the last two decades, it is essential to use epidemiological models to develop novel, impact-based early warning systems predicting the health effects of forecast temperatures. This is precisely what the Adaptation group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, has done: Forecaster.health is the first pan-European, open-access platform using sex- and age-specific epidemiological ...

As critical pollinators, bees keep our agricultural systems going — but human-caused changes to the planet heavily impact their foraging options. To help protect our food security, we need more information about bees’ own dietary requirements. Scientists writing in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems studied the nutritional value of 57 types of pollen and found that bees need to forage from a variety of plants to balance their diet between fatty acids and essential amino acids. “Despite public interest and a rise in pollinator plantings, little is known ...

Even though there is substantial variability in the contents and nutritional profiles of plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs), the nutritional profiles tend to reflect a heart-healthy dietary pattern. A review article appearing in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, published by Elsevier, of the available studies directly comparing the impact of plant-based and animal-based meats consistently suggests that the plant-based alternatives improve cardiovascular risk factors. PBMAs are highly processed plant-based food products that typically replace meat in the diet. ...

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), with its exceptional image recognition capabilities, have performed outstandingly in the field of AI and notably within platforms like ChatGPT. Recently, a team of Chinese researchers from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have successfully introduced the concept of CNNs into the field of optics and realized convolutional all-optical neural network, bringing revolutionary progress to AI imaging technology. Led by Prof. Min Gu and Prof. Qiming Zhang from School of Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology (SAIST) at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology ...

SINGAPORE — Scientists have generated a comprehensive map of the gene targets regulated by the transcription factors HNF4A and HNF1A in human pancreatic beta cells and liver cells. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study revealed common and tissue-specific molecular pathways regulated by HNF4A and HNF1A, two proteins that possess important functions governing the development and function of the pancreas and liver. Notably, the scientists identified several novel gene targets in pancreatic beta cells, the cells responsible for insulin ...