Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, Earth experienced a mass extinction so devastating that it’s become known as “the Great Dying.” Massive volcanic eruptions triggered catastrophic climate change, killing off nine out of every ten species and eventually setting the stage for the dinosaurs. But the Great Dying was a long goodbye-- the extinction event took place over the course of up to a million years at the end of the Permian period. During that time, the fossil record shows drama and upheaval as species fought to get a foothold in their changing environments. One animal that exemplifies ...

“We are confident and hope that this can be one of many tools that doctors need to tackle antibiotic resistance, which is a serious and growing problem,” says principal investigator Vicent Pelechano, associate professor at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet. The method is called 5PSeq, is simple to use, and is based on sequencing the messenger RNA (mRNA) that the bacteria break down as they synthesise proteins. The measurements reveal how the bacteria are affected by different environmental factors, such as antibiotic treatments and other types ...

Researchers have cloned the wheat rust resistance genes Lr9 and Sr43 and identified that they encode unusual kinase fusion proteins[1][2]. Their research will enable new options for addressing resistance to disease in bread wheat. Each year about 20 percent of global wheat production is lost to pests and disease, the equivalent of 3,500 grain ships. Breeding resistant cultivars is one of the most economical and environmentally friendly ways to address the problem. The wild relatives of wheat provide a ...

The law should take into consideration neuroscientific evidence that suggests fear and threat can cause victims to become ‘frozen’ in cases of rape or sexual assault, argue UCL experts. In a comment article, published in Nature Human Behaviour, Professor Patrick Haggard and former UCL undergraduate, Ebani Dhawan, state that victims of sexual assault are often blamed for not fighting or fleeing their attackers. Thirty per cent of women are thought to experience sexual assault or rape in their lifetime. And, of those who have attended an emergency clinic, 70% reported being “frozen” during ...

Curbside recycling can compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from garbage destined for landfills, says a new study that encourages towns and cities to continue offering recycling services to meet their climate goals.   The study’s authors took a deep dive into the economic and environmental value of community recycling efforts and compared it to the value of other climate change mitigation practices. They concluded that recycling provides a return on investment similar to or better than environmentally friendly strategies like transitioning to electric vehicles or purchasing green power, which is electricity from clean, renewable energy sources.  “Eliminating ...

FINDINGS The commonly used Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX), which includes self-identified race and ethnicity information, and the Osteoporosis Self-Assessment Tool (OST), which does not, had suboptimal performance in determining major osteoporotic fracture risk across racial/ethnic categories in younger postmenopausal women. But OST was excellent for identifying who had osteoporosis within each racial/ethnic category.    BACKGROUND The researchers sought to compare the ability of FRAX and OST ...

About The Study: The results of this cross-sectional study suggest that trends in mental health diagnoses among children and adolescents in the U.S. differed greatly by age and sex over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Female youth, especially female adolescents, represented the most vulnerable population with regard to marked increases in the prevalence of mental health diagnoses during the pandemic, the most pronounced being the prevalence of eating disorders.  Authors: Loreen Straub, M.D., M.S., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard ...

About The Study: Among 20 health outcomes that were monitored in near real time in this study including more than 3 million children ages 5 to 17 who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a safety signal was identified for only myocarditis or pericarditis. Consistent with other published reports, these results provide additional evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe in children.  Authors: Steven A. Anderson, Ph.D., M.P.P., of the Food and Drug Administration in Silver Spring, ...

About The Study: In this study of 1,050 pregnant women and their neonates, vaginal human papillomavirus (HPV) was frequently detected in pregnant women. Perinatal transmission was infrequent, and in this cohort, no infection detected at birth persisted at six months. Although HPV was detected in placentas, it remains difficult to differentiate contamination versus true infection.  Authors: Helen Trottier, M.Sc., Ph.D., of the Universite de Montreal in Montreal, is the corresponding author. To ...

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed the first fully integrated wearable ultrasound system for deep-tissue monitoring, including for subjects on the go. It facilitates potentially life-saving cardiovascular monitoring and marks a major breakthrough for one of the world’s leading wearable ultrasound labs. The paper, “A fully integrated wearable ultrasound system to monitor deep tissues in moving subjects,” is published in the May 22, 2023 issue of Nature Biotechnology. “This project gives a complete solution to wearable ultrasound technology—not ...

Understanding the ways our immune response changes as we age holds the key to designing better vaccines and boosting protection for people most at risk. Research published by Dr Michelle Linterman and her group today in Nature Immunology has explained that the organisation of the germinal centre, which is vital to the generation of longer-lived protection following vaccination, is altered in ageing. By demonstrating that these age-related changes can be reversed in mice, the research sets the foundation for interventions that bolster an effective vaccine response. After a vaccination ...

A University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team has developed a first-of-its-kind, breakthrough method that makes it easier to create high-quality metal oxide thin films out of “stubborn” metals that have historically been difficult to synthesize in an atomically precise manner. This research paves the way for scientists to develop better materials for various next-generation applications including quantum computing, microelectronics, sensors, and energy catalysis. The researchers’ paper is published in Nature Nanotechnology, ...

Enzymes are the molecule factories in biological cells. However, which basic molecular building blocks they use to assemble target molecules is often unknown and difficult to measure. An international team including bioinformaticians from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has now taken an important step forward in this regard: Their AI method predicts with a high degree of accuracy whether an enzyme can work with a specific substrate. They now present their results in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Enzymes are important biocatalysts in all living cells: They facilitate chemical reactions, through which all molecules ...

Minecraft is officially the most played video game in history. Despite been 12 years old, the public does not seem to have lost interest: over 175 million people play Minecraft at least once a month. The number of players of this open-world or sandbox building game, which provides virtually unlimited possibilities for creation, keeps growing, and this is to a great extent thanks to its educational potential. According to Microsoft data, Minecraft Education Edition has over 35 million game licences. And this is just one of the many ways in which it can be ...

The Clinical Hospital of Emergency Services, a municipal hospital serving the community of Dnipro, in Ukraine, is the first in the country to take part in the American College of Cardiology’s Global Quality Solutions program. The hospital joins the program in an effort to improve heart attack care by reducing heart attack related deaths and saving lives in their community. “When the war started, myself and others on my team decided to stay at work to do our best to help our people, soldiers, neighbors and relatives to survive. But we decided it was not enough to only maintain, but that ...

They published their work in Energy Material Advances. "The investigation of MXene/MOF hybrid materials with high electrochemical performance is important," said paper author Huan Pang, professor with the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University. "Currently, MXene/MOF hybrid materials have received increasing attention in energy-related fields." Pang explained the motivations for designing MXene/MOF hybrid materials. Firstly, MXenes with numerous negatively charged surface groups can be employed as a valid substrate to support the growth of MOFs, thus not ...

Plants show enormous variety in traits relevant to breeding, such as plant height, yield and resistance to pests. One of the greatest challenges in modern plant research is to identify the differences in genetic information that are responsible for this variation. A research team led by the "Crop Yield" working group at the Institute for Molecular Physiology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the Carnegie Institution of Science at Stanford has now developed a method to identify precisely these special differences in genetic information. Using the example of maize, they demonstrate the great potential of their method in the journal Genome Biology and present ...

Along with sugar reallocation, a basic molecular mechanism within plants controls the formation of new lateral roots. An international team of plant biologists has demonstrated that it is based on the activity of a certain factor, the target of rapamycin (TOR) protein. A better understanding of the processes that regulate root branching at the molecular level could contribute to improving plant growth and therefore crop yields, according to research team leader Prof. Dr Alexis Maizel of the Centre for Organismal Studies at Heidelberg University. Good root growth ensures that plants can absorb sufficient ...

Prague, Czechia – 22 May 2023:  Heart failure patients are at increased risk of dying from their condition on polluted days and up to two days afterwards, according to research presented today at Heart Failure 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 “The findings indicate that reducing air pollution has the potential to prevent worsening heart failure,” said study author Dr. Lukasz Kuzma of the Medical University of Bialystok, Poland. “Protecting ...

They published their work on May. 15 in Energy Material Advances.   "With lead-halide perovskites reaching a mature research stage approaching product marketing, concerns remain about the materials' stability and the toxicity of lead-based salts." said paper author Hongwei Song, professor at College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University. Double perovskites with Cs2AgInCl6 composition, often doped with various elements, have been in the spotlight owing to their intriguing optical properties, namely, ...

San Antonio, Texas – May 22 ,2023 – The ROS-Industrial Americas Consortium, a project dedicated to advancing open-source robotics for manufacturing and industry, will celebrate its 10th anniversary on May 25 at its annual meeting in Detroit. The event will correspond with the Automate 2023 show, the largest automation showcase in North America, creating an exciting atmosphere for ROS-Industrial members to reflect on the organization’s history while also setting the stage for innovation in the years to come. The ROS-Industrial open-source project began as a collaboration among Yaskawa Motoman Robotics, Southwest Research Institute ...

The lack of a single communication standard among drone makers has made it difficult for information to be shared between drones, but a Korean research team has found a solution. The Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that four contributions related to the ‘Unmanned Aircraft Area Network’ were established as international standards at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO*) meeting in Vienna, Austria. * ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6(communication and information exchange between systems) The technology ...

Prague, Czechia – 22 May 2023:  The diagnosis of  heart failure is usually missed, denying patients treatments that could improve wellbeing and reduce mortality. That’s the finding from a late breaking science presentation today at Heart Failure 2023, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 “For patients with heart failure, lifestyle advice, medicines and devices can improve symptoms, reduce morbidity and prolong life but this requires someone ...

Bribery is among the most recognizable forms of corruption, and new research is shedding light on personality traits that could deter this behavior. Guilt-prone people are less likely to accept bribes, particularly when the act would cause obvious harm to other people. The research, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, contributes to a growing body of literature on individual differences in corrupt behaviors. “Our results have important implications for current world events, particularly in the realm of politics and governance where corruption and bribery are major concerns,” says author Prof. Xiaolin Zhou, of East China Normal University. “More ...

Washington, DC – A compound called honokiol, which is found in the bark of multiple species of magnolia tree, inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2 virus in several types of cells, according to a team of researchers in the Netherlands. The research is published in Microbiology Spectrum, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.  The researchers found that Honokiol inhibits replication of SARS-CoV-2 in several cell types, causing production of infectious SARS-CoV-2 particles in treated cells to fall to around 1,000th of the previous level.  The compound also inhibited replication of other highly pathogenic human coronaviruses, including MERS- ...