Plants can be temperamental. Even weeds along the side of highways or pushing their way up in the cracks of concrete sidewalks can get stressed out by dehydration, cold, excess salt and more. Researchers at Hiroshima University have identified 14 genes that thale cress — a plant commonly used in genetic investigations since its genome is well documented — express more when responding to five specific stressors, as well as eight genes that the plant suppresses. They published their results on March 22 in Frontiers in Plant Science.  “Abiotic stresses — as opposed to biotic stresses like pests or disease — such as drought, salinity and cold negatively ...

Thiazolidinediones (TZDs) are a class of drug that can be used to treat type 2 diabetes by reversing insulin resistance, one of the main hallmarks of the disease. While TZDs were extremely popular in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, they have fallen out of use among physicians in recent decades because they were discovered to cause unwanted side effects, including weight gain and excess fluid accumulation in body tissues. Now, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine are ...

As artificial intelligence is inevitably woven into the workplace, teams of humans will increasingly collaborate with robots on complex design problems, such as those in the auto, aviation, and space industries. “Right now, design is mainly done by humans, and it’s based on their expertise and intuitive decision-making, which is learned over time,” says A. Emrah Bayrak, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in Lehigh University’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. “Usually, ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – A new study showed that a non-invasive imaging test can help identify patients with coronary artery blockage or narrowing who need a revascularization procedure. The findings were published as a Special Report in Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Doctors use coronary CT angiography (CTA) to diagnose narrowed or blocked arteries in the heart. A CTA exam receives a score from mild (0-1) to moderate (2-3) to severe (4-5). Patients ...

Many people are familiar with the principle of electronic excitation from their physics lessons: electrons in atoms or molecules absorb energy, typically from light, and rise to a higher energy level. This can have various consequences – in photovoltaic technology, the phenomenon ensures that electricity can be generated from sunlight. Measuring electronic excitation according to scientific standards and investigating how excited electrons influence each other is a real challenge: “Electronic excitation and the subsequent processes take place extremely quickly, many things happen simultaneously“, explains Tobias Brixner, Chair of Physical Chemistry ...

The maritime profession is among the world’s oldest professions, and today’s shipping is based on long and proud traditions. Professional pride and commitment are often deeply ingrained in seafarers, and for many, the job is more of a way of life. New technologies will bring about major changes in the work of bridge officers, who have the ultimate responsibility on board Norwegian vessels. Strong doubts about safety “Bridge officers rely on automated systems that are already found on board, such as advanced autopilot systems. However, there is strong scepticism, almost mistrust, that increased automation and autonomous ...

People who use willpower to overcome temptations and achieve their goals are perceived as more trustworthy than those who use strategies that involve external incentives or deterrents – such as swear jars or internet-blocking apps – according to research published by the American Psychological Association. “The knowledge that people can use external commitment strategies to overcome self-control problems has existed in some form for thousands of years. Since at least the time of Homer and Odysseus, the focus has primarily been on the efficacy of these strategies for the person choosing to engage ...

CLEVELAND—A recent study by Case Western Reserve University used national data from U.S. military veterans with diabetes to validate and modify a widely accepted model used to predict the risk of heart failure in diabetic patients. The model, called the WATCH-DM score, is used to predict the likelihood of heart failure in diabetes patients within five years. But because it overlooks the influence of social determinants of health‚ such as housing, food and a patient’s neighborhood, the researchers used a social deprivation index (SDI), a multi-component summary score, to adjust the WATCH-DM score.  The SDI, introduced by the Robert ...

​​​​​​RESTON, Va. — A new set of maps that document the movements of ungulates was published today in the fourth volume of the Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States. The maps in this collaborative U.S. Geological Survey report series reveal the migration routes and critical ranges used by ungulates, or hooved mammals, in the western U.S., furthering scientists’ understanding of the geography of big game migrations. The new volume, “Ungulate Migrations of the Western United States: Volume 4,” documents 33 mule deer, ...

Can Jos Malda crack the code of cartilage?  In our aging society, healing joint problems is becoming increasingly important. To do this, cartilage damage must become repairable. But so far it has proven impossible to recreate the intricate internal structure of cartilage. Professor Jos Malda has now received an ERC Advanced grant of €2.5 million to crack that code.  Bringing biology and technology together   Throughout his career, Jos Malda has been concerned with the interface between biology and technology. It took him from studying Bioprocess Engineering in Wageningen to ...

A recent Mayo Clinic study published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association investigated lucid episodes in people living with later stages of dementia, providing insights into how these occurrences reveal themselves. The findings showed that 75% of people having lucid episodes were reported to have Alzheimer’s Disease as opposed to other forms of dementia. Researchers define lucid episodes as unexpected, spontaneous, meaningful and relevant communication from a ...

11 April, Prague, Czech Republic—Glen Kelley’s journey as a heart transplant recipient came full circle today in Prague, as he addressed attendees of the Annual Meeting and Scientific Sessions of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), including members of his own care teams. As a high school senior outside of Peoria, Illinois, Kelley was diagnosed with stage-4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma and underwent eight months of chemotherapy and radiation. After 10 months in remission, the ...

The nose or the gut? For the past two decades, the scientific community has debated the wellspring of the toxic proteins at the source of Parkinson’s disease. In 2003, a German pathologist, Heiko Braak, MD, first proposed that the disease begins outside the brain. More recently, Per Borghammer, MD, with Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, and his colleagues argue that the disease is the result of processes that start in either the brain’s smell center (brain-first) or the body’s intestinal tract (body-first).     A new hypothesis paper appearing in the Journal of Parkinson’s ...

Professor Jill Walker Rettberg, Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, is awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for the project AI STORIES.  The grant consists of 2.5 million Euro over 5 years. This is Rettberg's second ERC Grant. “The AI STORIES project builds on the premise that storytelling is central to human culture, with narratives shaping our understanding of the world. We will study artificial intelligence and how it creates new narratives,” says Rettberg. Generative AI has been dubbed ...

A major new research project will investigate how and why groups of animals from the same species fight one another. By focussing on warlike species – mongooses and termites – researchers aim to understand how evolution can lead to extreme aggression between groups, the consequences of this and the factors that can lead to peace. The results will help to explain why violence between rival groups evolves in some species but not others, or between some groups and not others – with implications for our understanding of human evolution. The research team, led by Professor ...

[Vienna, April 11, 2024] – The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an Advanced Grant to Mirta Galesic, a resident scientist at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), to study the intricate workings of collective adaptation. The project aims to provide insights into why collectives – from families to entire societies – can be stuck in deadlocks about important problems, such as resolving long-standing political conflicts; or why they sometimes appear incapable of finding seemingly obvious solutions, such ...

Fukuoka, Japan—Kyushu University researchers have shed new light into a critical question on how baby stars develop. Using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile, the team found that in its infancy, the protostellar disk that surrounds a baby star discharges plumes of dust, gas, and electromagnetic energy. These 'sneezes,' as the researchers describe them, release the magnetic flux within the protostellar disk, and may be a vital part of star formation. Their findings were published in The Astrophysical Journal. Stars, including our Sun, all develop from what are called stellar nurseries, large ...

Researchers have evaluated different types of pig farming – including woodland, organic, free range, RSPCA assured, and Red Tractor certified, to assess each systems’ impact across four areas: land use (representing biodiversity loss), greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotics use and animal welfare. Their study concludes that none of the farm types performed consistently well across all four areas – a finding that has important implications for increasingly climate conscious consumers, as well as farmers themselves. However, there were individual farms that did perform well ...

Ozone disrupts chemical communication crucial to mating in insects Insect pheromones are odor molecules used for chemical communication within a species. Sex pheromones play a crucial role in the mating of many insects. Species-specific odors attract males and females of the same species. At the same time, they maintain the natural boundaries between species. The research team led by Nanji Jiang, Bill Hansson and Markus Knaden from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has ...

Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels. A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the interplay between meandering ocean currents and the ocean floor induces upwelling velocity, transporting warm water to shallower depths. This mechanism contributes substantially to the melting of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. These ice shelves are destabilizing rapidly and contributing to sea level rise. Led by Taewook Park and Yoshihiro Nakayama, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Voids, or empty spaces, exist within matter at all scales, from the astronomical to the microscopic. In a new study, researchers used high-powered microscopy and mathematical theory to unveil nanoscale voids in three dimensions. This advancement is poised to improve the performance of many materials used in the home and in the chemical, energy and medical industries — particularly in the area of filtration. Magnification of common filters used in the home shows that, while they look like a solid ...

Cloud ‘engineering’ could be more effective for climate cooling than previously thought, because of the increased cloud cover produced, new research shows.  In a study published in Nature Geoscience (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01427-z), researchers at the University of Birmingham found that marine cloud brightening (MCB), also known as marine cloud engineering, works primarily by increasing the amount of cloud cover, accounting for 60-90% of the cooling effect.  Previous models ...

Media Availability   WHAT: Researchers have adapted an artificial intelligence (AI) program to identify signs of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD) by evaluating short narrative statements of patients who have given birth. The program successfully identified a large proportion of participants likely to have the disorder, and with further refinements—such as details from medical records and birth experience data from diverse populations—the model could potentially identify ...

Statement Highlights: Patient-centered care establishes a respectful partnership among the health care team, the patient and caregivers to make shared decisions about management tailored to the patients’ beliefs, preferences and values. Person-centered care can boost health equity and improve patients’ experiences and medical outcomes. Fully incorporating patient-centered care will require involvement by patients, caregivers, health care professionals, medical schools and the health care system. Embargoed until 4 a.m. CT / 5 a.m. ET Thursday, April 11, 2024 DALLAS, April 11, 2024 — Adult cardiovascular care centered on the patient can improve ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A chemical modification in the HIV-1 RNA genome whose function has been a matter of scientific debate is now confirmed to be key to the virus’s ability to survive and thrive after infecting host cells, a new study has found. This change to HIV-1 RNA, a tiny chemical modification on the adenosine building block of RNA known as m6A, is a common RNA editing process in all life forms that involves altering gene expression and protein production. The functional effect often represents a cellular solution but, in some cases, leads to disease. By developing technological advances to observe a full length ...