Highlights: Michigan State University researchers sequenced the Montmorency tart cherry genome for the first time. This will have a major impact on all future tart cherry research and breeding efforts worldwide. Michigan is the nation’s leading producer of tart cherries. EAST LANSING, Mich. – Since Michigan is the nation's leading producer of tart cherries, Michigan State University researchers were searching for the genes associated with tart cherry trees that bloom later in the season to meet the needs of a changing climate. They started by comparing DNA sequences from late-blooming ...

For 21st century authors, the odds of writing a critical hit are much higher if the novel takes place in the past, not the present or future. Between 2000 and 2020, about three quarters of the novels shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award took place in the historical past. “As a reader, you may not have even noticed the growing infatuation with history in literature because the historical novel has become such a diversely practiced form by such a wide array of writers, it's almost become invisible to us as a genre in itself,” ...

McGill researchers are exploring a new technique that uses 3D printing and hydrogels. It has the potential not only to improve biomedical implants but could also be useful in the development of human-machine interfaces such as touch screens and neural implants. Biomedical devices like pacemakers or blood pressure sensors that are implanted into the human body need to be fabricated in such a way that they conform and adhere to the body – and then dissolve at the right time. Using 3D printing and hydrogel technology, researchers in McGill University’s Department of Engineering ...

“When I touch the stump with my hand, I feel tingling in my missing hand, my phantom hand. But feeling the temperature variation is a different thing, something important... something beautiful,” says Francesca Rossi. Rossi is an amputee from Bologna, Italy. She recently participated in a study to test the effects of temperature feedback directly to the skin on her residual arm. She is one of 17 patients to have felt her phantom, missing hand, change in temperature thanks to new EPFL technology. More importantly, she reports feeling reconnected to her missing hand. “Temperature feedback is a nice ...

In the years it strikes, the band of warm ocean water spanning from South America to Asia known as El Niño triggers far-reaching changes in weather that result in devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations, and an uptick in tropical diseases. With El Niño projected to return this year, Dartmouth researchers report in the journal Science that the financial toll of the recurring climate pattern can persist for several years after the event itself—and cost trillions in lost income worldwide. The study is among the first to evaluate the long-term costs of El Niño and projects losses that far exceed ...

Medium-sized carnivorous species – mesopredators like coyotes or bobcats – tend to move into human-dominated areas to avoid predation by larger carnivores, a phenomenon also known as the “human shield” effect. However, according to a new study, doing so places these safety-seeking species at considerably greater risk for mortality due to human activities. The findings describe a “paradox of the lethal human shield” for mesopredators, which could become an increasingly important driver of carnivore community dynamics and ecological trophic structures as species restoration and recovery efforts expand the coexistence of ...

In a Perspective, Troels Arbøll and Sophie Rasmussen review the ancient history of kissing, particularly the emergence of romantic-sexual kissing in Mesopotamia more than 4000 years ago and its role in the evolution and spread of orally transmitted diseases like herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). They say the kiss cannot be regarded as a sudden biological trigger causing a spread of specific pathogens, as some research has recently proposed. “Evidence indicates that kissing was a common practice in ancient times, potentially representing a constant influence on the spread of orally transmitted microbes, such as HSV-1,” ...

The amount of water stored in more than half of the largest lakes and reservoirs worldwide is declining, according to a new study. This drying is largely attributable to a warming climate and increased human impacts. The findings underscore the importance of accounting for these impacts in future surface water resources management strategies. Although they cover roughly 3% of the global land area, lakes hold 87% of Earth’s liquid surface fresh water. These features also provide essential ecosystem services and are key components in global biogeochemical processes. Many of these benefits are modulated by lake water storage (LWS), which ...

Even if all direct human management of global forests ended immediately, their carbon sequestration potential would not be enough to curb ongoing climate change, according to a new study. The findings suggest that the planet’s current forests have only limited remaining carbon storage potential – even under the most unlikely of scenarios – to substantially mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) without major reductions in emissions. By capturing and storing carbon in biomass and soil organic matter, forests are integral to the global carbon cycle. As a result, the planet’s forests are often considered a central component in climate ...

More than 50 percent of the largest lakes in the world are losing water, according to a groundbreaking new assessment published today in Science . The key culprits are not surprising: warming climate and unsustainable human consumption. But lead author Fangfang Yao, a CIRES visiting fellow, now a climate fellow at University of Virginia, said the news is not entirely bleak. With this new method of tracking lake water storage trends and the reasons behind them, scientists can give water managers and communities insight into how to better protect critical sources of water and important regional ecosystems. “This is the first comprehensive assessment of trends ...

Recent research has hypothesised that the earliest evidence of human lip kissing originated in a very specific geographical location in South Asia 3,500 years ago, from where it may have spread to other regions, simultaneously accelerating the spread of the herpes simplex virus 1. But according to Dr Troels Pank Arbøll and Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, who in a new article in the journal Science draw on a range of written sources from the earliest Mesopotamian societies, kissing was already a well-established ...

Quantum computers promise to solve challenging tasks in material science and cryptography that will remain out of reach even for the most powerful conventional supercomputers in the future. Yet, this will likely require millions of high-quality qubits due to the required error correction. Progress in superconducting processors advances quickly with a current qubit count in the few hundreds. The advantages of this technology are the fast computing speed and its compatibility with microchip fabrication, but the need for ultra-cold temperatures ultimately confines the processor in size and prevents any physical ...

Climbing caribou numbers in northeastern British Columbia prove that collaborations between Indigenous and colonial governments can reverse decades-long declines, but focus needs to shift to culturally meaningful recovery targets, a consortium of researchers and community members say in a new paper published this week in Science. UBC Okanagan’s Dr. Clayton Lamb and West Moberly First Nation Chief Roland Willson co-lead the paper, Braiding Indigenous Rights and Endangered Species Law, alongside nine others for the influential journal. “Abundance matters. There are many cases where endangered species laws have prevented extinction, but the warning signs ...

A new study suggests that increasing rates of induction of labour (IOL) of pregnant women and people in the UK, without considering the accompanying, real-world impact on staffing workloads and patient care, may have unintended consequences. The study from City, University of London, the University of Edinburgh and others highlights the limited evidence around the delivery of home-based IOL services, which were seen as an important step to reducing maternity staff workload. It finds large gaps in knowledge on how to deliver home-based ...

Researchers have reported a strategy to disentangle the activity-selectivity tradeoff for direct conversion of syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, into desirable ethylene, propylene, and butylene. These hydrocarbons are known as light olefins and are the most-used building blocks for plastics. “Activity and selectivity are two primary indexes of a successful catalyst for chemical reactions. A higher activity means higher efficiency in converting feedstock to products, thereby reducing energy consumption,” said JIAO Feng, an associate professor at the ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Scientists are often trained to seek out the absolute best solution to a given problem. On a chalk board, this might look something like drawing a graph to find a function’s minimum or maximum point. When designing a turbojet engine, it might mean tweaking the rotor blades’ angles a tiny degree to achieve a tenth of a percent increase in efficiency. Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, was busy demonstrating the former for a class full of students ...

SEATTLE — May 18, 2023 — This Sunday (May 21) at 2:37 p.m. PDT1, astronauts from Axiom Space in partnership with Cedars-Sinai will blast off to the International Space Station carrying cells from the Allen Institute for Cell Science, a division of the Allen Institute. There, Axiom Space astronauts will perform experiments and send real-time data back to researchers at Cedars-Sinai as part of their study on the effects of microgravity on human cells. The experiments are part of the Ax-2 mission, funded by NASA and ...

Considering the millions of research papers and reports from open domains such as biomedicine, agriculture, and manufacturing, it is humanly impossible to keep up with all the findings. Constantly emerging world events present a similar challenge because they are difficult to track and even harder to analyze without looking into thousands of articles.  To address the problem of relying on human effort in situations such as these, Lifu Huang, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, is researching how machine learning can extract information without ...

Aurora, Colo. (May 18, 2023) – Children’s Hospital Colorado (Children’s Colorado) announces its official Electron Microscopy (EM) accreditation and becomes one of only two sites in the nation certified in the use of electron microscopy to diagnose primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). This EM accreditation is granted by the PCD Foundation (PCDF), a patient-focused organization dedicated to providing resources for those with PCD, a rare and debilitating lung disease. "Children’s Colorado’s Electron Microscopy Lab has a long history of providing specialized electron microscopic imaging for many disease ...

Searches for sustainable bioenergy and climate change solutions may be one in the same, according to a West Virginia University researcher. Edward Brzostek, associate professor of biology, and his students at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences are creating mathematical models to predict how bioenergy crops will enhance and store soil carbon through a renewed five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. Brzostek said he believes the models could present a “win-win” that not only improves soil carbon but spurs renewable bioenergy from biological sources. This includes biofuels like corn ethanol and perennial grasses. Soil ...

Publishing in the journal Nature Sustainability, a team of conservationists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society say that providing a “Conservation Basic Income” (CBI) – of $5.50 per day to all residents of protected areas in low- and middle-income countries would cost less than annual subsidies given to fossil fuels and other environmentally harmful industries. CBI is an unconditional cash payment to individuals, similar to universal basic income (UBI)10 but targeting residents of important conservation areas. A Conversation Basic Income would support stewardship of ...

Molecular clocks in our cells synchronize our bodies with the cycle of night and day, cue us for sleep and waking, and drive daily cycles in virtually every aspect of our physiology. Scientists studying the molecular mechanisms of our biological clocks have now identified a key event that controls the timing of the clock. The new findings, published May 18 in Molecular Cell, reveal important details of the molecular interactions that are disrupted in people with an inherited sleep disorder called Familial Advanced Sleep Phase ...

A dinosaur specimen from Castellón, Spain represents a new proposed species of spinosaurid, reports a paper published in Scientific Reports. The identification of a potential new species suggests that the Iberian peninsula may have been a diverse area for medium-to-large bodied spinosaurid dinosaurs and sheds light on the origin and evolution of spinosaurids. Spinosaurids comprise of different groups of dinosaurs that are often large, stand on two feet, and are carnivorous. Well-known examples of spinosaurids include Spinosaurus ...

About The Study: In a national panel survey of 2,000 respondents in 2022, approximately 1 in 5 older adults reported cost-related medication nonadherence. Real-time benefit tools may support medication cost conversations and cost-conscious prescribing, and patients are enthusiastic about their use. However, if disclosed prices are inaccurate, there is potential for harm through loss of confidence in the physician and nonadherence to prescribed medications.  Authors: Stacie B. Dusetzina, Ph.D., of the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For ...

About The Study: In this cost-effectiveness analysis, provision of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids was associated with greater uptake of hearing intervention and was cost-effective over a range of prices so long as OTC hearing aids were greater than 55% as beneficial to patient quality of life as traditional hearing aids. Over-the-counter hearing aids may expand access to beneficial treatment for hearing loss and represent an efficient use of resources.  Authors: Gillian D. Sanders Schmidler, Ph.D., of the Duke University ...