STARKVILLE, Miss.— A Mississippi State faculty member’s work on symbiosis—a mutually beneficial relationship between living organisms—is pushing back against the newer theory of a “single-origin” of root nodule symbiosis (RNS)—that all symbiosis between plant root nodules and nitrogen-fixing bacteria stems from one point—instead suggesting a “multiple-origin” theory of symbiosis which opens a better understanding for genetically engineering crops. Ryan A. Folk, an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Biological Sciences and herbarium curator, is an author on a paper published this month in Nature ...

Shortly after artificial intelligence models including Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E went public, AI-generated art started winning competitions: one in digital art, another in photography. Concern rumbled that AI could replace artists — and even, by some metrics, be more creative than humans. But simultaneously, people were exploring these tools as ways to augment their creative processes, not replace them. University of Washington researchers grew curious about how AI might affect creativity in children, specifically, so they worked with a group of 12 Seattle-area kids ages seven to 13 to explore how the kids’ creative processes interacted ...

Moisés A. Bernal, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Auburn University, is collaborating with researchers Kathleen Lotterhos (Northeast University), Megan Phifer-Rixey (Drexel University), and Torrance Hanley, (Sacred Heart University) to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual lab meetings in demystifying the hidden curriculum in academia, incentivize primary research among students without previous experience, and foster participation of underrepresented groups in STEM. The “Biological Practices” article entitled A virtual lab meeting training program mutually benefits mentees and host labs was recently published ...

May 29, 2024 Boosters that target the omicron subvariants of SARS-CoV-2 are still providing reasonably durable protection against infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, according to new data from a study led by researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study found that COVID-19 boosters targeting the XBB.1.5 subvariants were most effective one month after receiving one. After four weeks, the vaccines were 52.2% effective at preventing infection and 66.8% effective at preventing hospitalization. The vaccines were also highly effective ...

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A Mississippi State faculty member’s work on plant life symbiosis—a mutually beneficial relationship between living organisms—is pushing back against the newer theory of “single-origin”—that all life stems from one point—instead suggesting “multiple-origin” theory which opens a better understanding for genetically engineering crops. Ryan A. Folk, an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Biological Sciences and herbarium curator, is an author on a paper published this month in ...

Three Huntsman Cancer Institute researchers have recently been recognized for their work as outstanding faculty members at the University of Utah (the U). Kim Kaphingst, ScD, director of cancer communication research at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor of communication at the U, and June Round, PhD, investigator at Huntsman Cancer Institute and professor of microbiology and immunology at the U, were both granted the 2024 Distinguished Research Award. The faculty prize is given annually to scholars who exemplify exceptional research.  Kaphingst’s group explores cancer communication, particularly how to educate patients and families who ...

In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, the HUN-REN-ELTE Protein Modeling Research Group (Institute of Chemistry) has laid the foundations for a mathematical method, allowing the computer-assisted comparison of the three-dimensional structures of proteins. The method is unique in that while the alternatives available so far only took into account the position of the atoms, the new technique, called LoCoHD (Local Composition Hellinger Distance), also includes the chemical information of the atoms. Proteins are molecular machines that carry out processes necessary for cells to function, acting as molecular switches, transcribing information ...

When trying to measure molecular structures with nanometer precision, every bit of noise shows up in the data: someone walking past the microscope, tiny vibrations in the building and even the traffic outside. A new processing technique removes noise from optical microscope data in real time, allowing scientists to track individual molecules over 10 times more precisely than was possible before. A team of bioengineering researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has introduced an algorithm called adaptive intersection maximization, or AIM, that removes high-frequency ...

Researchers at Rice University have revealed a previously unknown function of opioid receptors in the development of the enteric nervous system (ENS), often referred to as the “brain in the gut.” This discovery challenges conventional understanding of opioid receptors, shedding new light on their significance beyond pain management and addiction. Led by Rosa Uribe, an assistant professor of biosciences at Rice and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar, the research team identified the genes critical for ENS development by conducting a series of experiments using zebrafish ...

CLEVELAND - Researchers from Cleveland Clinic and IBM recently published findings in the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation that could lay the groundwork for applying quantum computing methods to protein structure prediction. This publication is the first peer-reviewed quantum computing paper from the Cleveland Clinic-IBM  Discovery Accelerator partnership.  For decades, researchers have leveraged computational approaches to predict protein structures. A protein folds itself into a structure that determines how it functions and binds to other ...

WHAT: Researchers have, for the first time, visualized the full network of blood vessels across the cortex of awake mice, finding that blood vessels rhythmically expand and contract leading to “waves” washing across the surface of the brain. These findings, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), improve the understanding of how the brain receives blood, though the function of the waves remains a mystery. A network of elastic and actively pumping vessels carrying oxygenated blood span the surface of the brain before entering the cortex. There, they feed into a second network of capillaries that supply oxygen deeper into ...

More out-of-state women, largely from Texas and Alaska, are traveling to Washington state to obtain an abortion than was the case before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion, according to research published today in JAMA Network Open. The study tracked the number of abortions performed at the Cedar River Clinics, a large network of care sites in Washington state, both before and after the 2022 Dobbs decision. Researchers found a 50% increase in out-of-state patients (from 4% to 6%) and documented an average one-week delay in care for all patients seeking ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 29, 2024) – SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, continues to evolve and evade current vaccine and therapeutic interventions. A consortium of scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed), the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Columbia University have developed a promising new human monoclonal antibody that appears a step closer to a universal antibody cocktail that works against all strains of SARS-CoV-2. “This antibody worked against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, Omicron and SARS-CoV, providing ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – While older drugs for epilepsy, taken while pregnant, have been shown in previous research to affect the creative thinking of children, a new study finds no effects on creativity for children born to those taking newer epilepsy drugs. This study is published in the May 29, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Overall, the study found no effects on the children’s creative abilities or their executive function, which is a person’s ability to plan, focus, and manage multiple tasks. However, when ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – People who report early memory problems and whose partners also suspect they have memory problems have higher levels of tau tangles in the brain, a biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in the May 29, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Subjective cognitive decline is when a person reports memory and thinking problems before any decline is large enough to show up on standard tests. “Understanding the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s disease is even more important ...

Researchers found that reports from patients and their partners about cognitive decline were associated with the accumulation of tau, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease A new study adds further evidence that when a patient or family member notices signs of persistent memory loss, it’s important to speak with a doctor. While there are many reasons why someone’s memory may change, researchers from Mass General Brigham who are studying patients prior to diagnosis with Alzheimer’s disease found changes in the brain when patients and their study partners—those who could answer questions about their ...

In a new paper in Science Advances on May 29, researchers at JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Quantinuum have demonstrated clear evidence of a quantum algorithmic speedup for the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). This algorithm has been studied extensively and has been implemented on many quantum computers. It has potential application in fields such as logistics, telecommunications, financial modeling and materials science. “This work is a significant step towards reaching quantum advantage, ...

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame are developing artificial intelligence tools that help consumers understand how they are being exploited as they navigate online platforms. The goal is to boost the digital literacy of end users so they can better control how they interact with these websites. In a recent study, participants were invited to experiment with online privacy settings without consequence. To test how different data privacy settings work, the researchers created a Chrome browser plug-in called Privacy Sandbox that replaced participant data with personas generated by GPT-4, a large language model from OpenAI. With Privacy Sandbox, participants could ...

The Gilbert Family Foundation has awarded data scientists in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine $1.2 million to develop a microscopy assay and analysis pipeline for organoids derived from patients with Neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1), a complex rare disease that causes tumors to grow along nerves and produces a range of symptoms.   The project will help researchers develop more treatments for the disease, says DBMI assistant professor Gregory ...

When desert winds stir up dust from the Salton Sea’s exposed lakebed, nearby communities suffer from increased air pollution. The deterioration coincides with reduced flows into California’s largest lake, a new research paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics finds.  Disadvantaged communities have been affected more than others in the areas near the Salton Sea, which has been shrinking for years, said the paper’s co-leading author Eric Edwards. He is an assistant professor of agricultural economics at University of California, Davis, who did the research while at North Carolina State University.  “We ...

UCLA biologists have some good news and some bad news for lovers of urban wildlife in Los Angeles. The good news? Unexpected pockets of biodiversity pepper the city. The bad news? It will be a challenge to elevate the level of overall biodiversity of the city. Of all the major taxonomic groups studied, only snails and slugs are ‘easy’ to find in Los Angeles, probably because of the abundance of landscaping, gardens and irrigation.  The research points toward ways Angelenos — and people elsewhere — can make their city more hospitable not only to urban-tolerant species such as coyotes, but also to species that usually ...

Most native species avoid more urbanized areas of Los Angeles, but slugs and snails may actually prefer these environments, according to a study publishing May 29 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Joseph Curti from the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues. Urban areas continue to grow around the world, putting pressure on native species that find it difficult to tolerate the habitat changes and pollution it brings. To conserve and even increase biodiversity in cities, scientists and city planners need large-scale data on the ecological communities present, but this is time consuming and difficult to collect. Researchers used data from iNaturalist, a large ...

New simulations provide mathematical support for the theory that the spread of political ideas across international borders may have a big impact on election outcomes, and that small actions boosting a minority idea can gradually lead to global-scale political change. Jose Segovia-Martin and Óscar Rivero present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on May 29. People in many regions around the world are increasingly exposed to international information—such as news and opinions shared via social media—allowing for the possibility of ...

The YouTube comments sections of politically neutral news outlets might be more conducive to cooperative, cross-partisan conversation than their liberal and conservative counterparts, according to a study published May 29, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Seung Woo Chae and Sung Hyun Lee from Indiana University. The study, which focused on the media response to the 2019 release of the Mueller report, found that more cross-partisan discussions took place on liberal channels than conservative ones and mainstream news outlets hosted more cross-partisan ...

In the first large-scale observation with human coding of infant vocalizations using all-day home recordings, babies of all ages from birth up to a year old squealed and growled in significant cluster patterns, suggesting the babies may have been actively engaged in noisemaking play and sound practice, according to a study published May 29, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hyunjoo Yoo from the University of Alabama, Pumpki Lei Su from the University of Texas at Dallas, and colleagues. In their first year of life, babies spend a remarkable amount of time vocalizing—both responding with noises to parents and caregivers, as well as self-directed babbling that could ...