FRONTIERS announces a new call for applications for its Science Journalism in Residency Programme, funded by the European Research Council (ERC). This third call is exclusively aimed at early-career journalists and will remain open until May 6, 2025, at 17h00 CEST. Science journalists with up to five years of experience are invited to apply for a residency at a research institution of their choice, in an EU Member State or a country associated with the EU’s Horizon Europe Programme. The residencies, lasting between three to five months, should focus on frontier science topics, in collaboration with scientists.  The ...

The efficient conversion of solar energy into storable forms of chemical energy is the dream of many engineers. Nature found a perfect solution to this problem billions of years ago. The new study shows that quantum mechanics is not just for physicists but also plays a key role in biology. Photosynthetic organisms such as green plants use quantum mechanical processes to harness the energy of the sun, as Prof. Jürgen Hauer explains: “When light is absorbed in a leaf, for example, the electronic excitation energy is distributed over several states ...

A new paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, published by Oxford University Press, shows customer service workers using artificial intelligence assistance become more productive and work faster. The effects vary significantly, however. Less experienced and lower-skilled employees improve both the speed and quality of their work, while the most experienced and highest-skilled workers see small gains in speed and small declines in quality. The researchers also found that AI assistance can help worker learning and improve English fluency, particularly for international workers. Computers and software have transformed the economy with their ability to perform certain tasks with far ...

BELMONT, Massachusetts, USA, 4 February 2025 - In a comprehensive Genomic Press Interview, Dr. Kerry Ressler, Chief Scientific Officer at McLean Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, unveils groundbreaking advances in understanding the neurobiological basis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related anxiety conditions. Dr. Ressler's research bridges the gap between molecular neuroscience and clinical psychiatry, focusing on how the amygdala processes fear and trauma at cellular and genomic levels. "Most proximally, I hope that our work may lead to novel approaches to fear- and trauma-related disorders, perhaps even to prevent ...

International collaborative research led by Aakash Project* researchers at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) show an unequivocal contribution of crop residue burning (CRB) to air pollution in the rural/semi-urban regions of Punjab and Haryana, and a relatively lower contribution than previously thought to the Delhi national capital region (NCR). We have installed 30 units of compact and useful PM2.5** in situ instrument with gas sensors (CUPI-Gs) and have continuously recorded air pollutants in 2022 and 2023. New analytical methods have been developed to assess ...

A groundbreaking University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa study on the freezing of water droplets suspended in air sheds light on a key process in Earth’s water cycle: the transformation of supercooled water into ice. Conducted using a novel cryogenically cooled ultrasonic levitation chamber, the research captures real-time molecular-level changes during the freezing process, mimicking conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere. This innovative setup enables researchers to observe how water droplets transition to ice at subzero temperatures, providing ...

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) have uncovered how perceptual memories linked to positive emotions, such as joy or happiness, are strengthened during sleep. The study, published in the scientific journal Neuron, could help scientists understand the neurological basis for overcoming conditions like drug or sexual addiction. Why do emotional events, whether positive or negative, create strong, long-lasting memories of external information such as music, scene smells and textures received at the events? We know that sleep is essential for memory consolidation, the process that turns new events into memories, but do not ...

A 3D model accurately mimicking the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) in a laboratory environment has been successfully developed by research teams led by Professor Jinah Jang from the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Life Sciences, IT Convergence Engineering, and the Graduate School of Convergence at POSTECH, and Professor Sun Ha Paek from the Department of Neurosurgery at Seoul National University Hospital.  This study was recently published in Biomaterials Research, an international academic journal on materials science.   Neurodegenerative diseases, ...

Children are nearly three-quarters (71%) more likely to develop mental health problems between the ages of five and 18, if the firstborn child in their family experienced adversity during their first 1,000 days, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The first-of-its-kind study, published in The Lancet Public Health and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Policy Research Programme, found that mothers whose firstborns had experienced adverse childhood experiences had a 71% increased risk of having children (aged five -18) with mental health problems, compared to mothers whose firstborn did not experience adversity. This ...

BOZEMAN – In a new publication in the journal Nature Communications, Montana State University scientists in College of Agriculture highlight fresh knowledge of how ancient microorganisms adapted from a low-oxygen prehistoric environment to the one that exists today. The work builds on more than two decades of scientific research in Yellowstone National Park by MSU professor Bill Inskeep. The article, titled “Respiratory Processes of Early-evolved Hyperthermophiles in Sulfidic and Low-oxygen Geothermal Microbial Communities” was published Jan. 2. Authors Inskeep, a professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, and Mensur ...

Generative AI, a technology that is developing at breakneck speed, may carry hidden risks that could erode public trust and democratic values, according to a study led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).  In collaboration with researchers from the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) and Insper, both in Brazil, the research showed that ChatGPT exhibits biases in both text and image outputs — leaning toward left-wing political values — raising questions about fairness and accountability in its design.   The study revealed ...

A new international study highlights the severity of climate change impacts across African mountains, how farmers are adapting, and the barriers they face – findings relevant to people living in mountain regions around the world.   "Mountains are the sentinels of climate change,” said Julia Klein, a Colorado State University professor of ecosystem science and sustainability and co-author of the study. “Like the Arctic, some of the first extreme changes we're seeing are happening in mountains, from glaciers melting to extreme events. There's greater warming at higher elevations, so what's happening in mountains is foreshadowing what's going ...

Air pollution is a well-known risk factor for respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, its contribution to lower respiratory infections —those that affect the lower respiratory tract, including the lungs, bronchi and alveoli— is less well documented, especially in adults. To fill this gap in knowledge, a team from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation, assessed the effect of air pollution ...

Understanding how tumors change their metabolism to resist treatments is a growing focus in cancer research. As cancer cells adapt to therapies, their metabolism often shifts, which can help them survive and thrive despite medical interventions. This process, known as metabolic reprogramming, is a key factor in the development of treatment resistance. However, current methods to study these changes can be costly, complex, and often destructive to the cells being studied. Researchers at the University of Kentucky have developed a new, simpler approach to observe these metabolic shifts in cancer cells, offering a more accessible and effective tool for cancer research. As ...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — With an increasing frequency and intensity of flooding events and an eye to capitalize on a common rice production technique, soybean breeders are on a quest to develop varieties with flood tolerance at any stage in the plant’s development. Farmers who use zero-grade fields for rice as their main production system are also interested in flood-tolerant soybean varieties for crop rotation, said Caio Vieira, assistant professor of soybean breeding and a researcher for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the University of Arkansas ...

For the last 10 years, the only effective treatment for hypophosphatasia (HPP) has been an enzyme replacement therapy that must be delivered by injection three-to-six times each week. “It's been a tremendous success and has proven to be a lifesaving treatment,” said José Luis Millán, PhD, professor in the Human Genetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “Many children who have been treated otherwise would have died shortly after birth, and they are now able to look forward to long lives. “It is, however, a very invasive treatment. Some patients have reactions from frequent injections and discontinue ...

Sustainability certificates such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Cocoa Life promise to improve the livelihoods of small-scale cocoa producers while preserving the biodiversity on their plantations. Together with the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, researchers from the University of Göttingen have investigated whether sustainability certificates actually achieve both these goals. To find out, they carried out an analysis within the Ghanaian cocoa production sector. Their results show that although certification improves both cocoa yield and cocoa income for small-scale producers, they were unable to ...

What began as a demonstration of the complexity of fluid systems became an art piece in the American Physical Society’s Gallery of Fluid Motion, and ultimately its own puzzle that the researchers just solved. Their new study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. “We came up with this experiment because we were having a hard time convincing people of certain effects happening for the problem of drag reduction,” said assistant professor Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, whose research specialties include modeling flow and investigating drag — as ...

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has awarded a $6 million grant to USC investigators pioneering a new first-of-its-kind genetic therapy for glioblastoma, a severe form of brain cancer. The treatment would be the first gene therapy for glioblastoma to use a novel, more precise delivery system that is less likely to harm non-cancerous cells. Glioblastoma is an aggressive and fast-growing cancer originating in the brain that occurs primarily in adults and has no known cure. Patients diagnosed with this type of tumor have a five-year survival rate of just 5 percent. The cancer’s location—in the sensitive brain—combined ...

The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) is concerned that two weeks have passed since the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health. With the order remaining in effect until a new HHS secretary is confirmed, this unpredictable timeline prolongs uncertainty for both healthcare professionals and the public, and endangers the nation by hindering our ability to detect and respond to public health threats, such as avian influenza (H5N1). Public ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 3 February 2025    @Annalsofim          Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.          ----------------------------       New ...

Through a multi-university collaboration, researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered a new, solid lubricating mechanism that can reduce friction in machinery at extremely high temperatures. It works well beyond the breakdown temperature of traditional solid lubricants such as graphite, and the findings were published in Nature Communications.  “This breakthrough solid-state lubricant could change how we design materials for high-tech engines, making them last longer and work better under extreme conditions,” said Rebecca Cai, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and one of the ...

The stereotype that women are much more talkative than men is pervasive across many cultures, but a widely reported study by University of Arizona researchers in 2007 refuted the claim, finding that men and women speak roughly the same number of words per day – around 16,000.  A new, larger follow-up to that study paints a more nuanced picture, suggesting that women may be the chattier gender, but only during a certain period of life.  "There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk a lot more than men," said ...

In physics, the term “isotropy” means a system where the properties are the same in all directions. For fusion, neutron energy  isotropy is an important measurement that analyzes the streams of neutrons coming from the device and how uniform they are. This is critical because so-called isotropic fusion plasmas suggest a stable, thermal plasma that can be scaled to higher fusion energy gains, whereas anisotropic plasmas, those emitting irregular neutron energies, can lead to a dead end. A new Zap research paper, published last week ...

A new study has estimated it would cost $15.6 billion per year for 30 years to prevent extinction for 99 of Australia’s priority species.  The research, led by Griffith University’s Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security with WWF-Australia and the University of Queensland, highlights the urgent need for increased funding to combat threats such as habitat destruction, invasive species and climate change. Australia has already lost more than 100 endemic species in the past three centuries, placing it at the forefront of the global extinction crisis.  The ...