Haim Sompolinsky, Professor in Residence in Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Department of Physics, has received the Brain Prize for his pioneering contributions to computational and theoretical neuroscience. Considered the world’s most prestigious prize for neuroscience research, the Brain Prize 2024 is shared by Sompolinsky, Larry Abbott of Columbia University, and Terrence Sejnowski of the Salk Institute. All three scientists have helped uncover key principles governing the brain’s structure, ...

Although several studies have linked smoking during pregnancy with neurodevelopmental disorders, the results of behavioral experiments in mice prenatally exposed to nicotine have been inconsistent. In a recent study, scientists from Japan developed a deep learning-based framework to automatically observe and classify mice behavior in such experiments, producing more accurate and unbiased results. They show that prenatal exposure to nicotine could increase the risk of autism spectrum- and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders in newborns. The fact that smoking is a risk factor for several diseases, including cancer, stroke, and diabetes, has been known for approximately ...

Which natural products are helping solve biotech challenges? How can enzymes supercharge biodegradation for a greener tomorrow? What role does RNA play in cancer and other diseases? You’ll find the answers to these questions and more at Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to be held March 23–26 in San Antonio. Secure your front-row seat to cutting-edge findings, approaches and technologies in the biological sciences by registering for a complimentary ...

The Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) at Hiroshima University is inviting submissions for Trends in Peace and Sustainability (TRENDS), an innovative academic platform dedicated to exploring the complex interplay between peace and sustainability. TRENDS aims to become a forum for scholars, professionals, and advocates to share their research, insights, and viewpoints on the pursuit of peace amid sustainability challenges. It aims to promote interdisciplinary engagement, stimulating conversation ...

The call for the 2024 Carbon Future Young Investigator Award is open! About The Award Tsinghua University Press announces the 2024 Carbon Future Young Investigator Award. This award is intended to recognize and encourage outstanding early career researchers in the areas of carbon-related materials, catalysis, energy conversion and storage, as well as low carbon emission process and engineering. The award includes an honorarium of $1,000 for each awardee (up to 10 awardees).   Eligibility The nominee must be a current PhD student or postdoctoral researcher. The nominee’s ...

ST. LOUIS, MO, March 5, 2024 – The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) have received a $4.9 million grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build on previous advances in gene editing of tef for reduced height and lodging resistance in advanced, farmer preferred tef lines.  The grant will support research to validate the improved semi dwarf tef in Ethiopia under greenhouse and multi location field conditions and generate lodging resistance ...

In a series of studies, a team of astronomers has shed new light on the fascinating and complex process of planet formation. The stunning images, captured using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, represent one of the largest ever surveys of planet-forming discs. The research brings together observations of more than 80 young stars that might have planets forming around them, providing astronomers with a wealth of data and unique insights into how planets arise in different regions of our galaxy. “This is really a shift in our field of study,” says Christian Ginski, a lecturer at the University of Galway, Ireland, ...

A theoretical experiment characterized the network architecture of a species-rich ecosystem over 8 months. Predator–prey interaction networks play a key role in structuring ecosystems, but ecological research has often treated such networks as static, despite the broadly accepted understanding of ecosystems as dynamic. Hirokazu Toju and colleagues followed the complex food webs between 50 predatory spider species and 974 prey species, including midges, springtails, mosquitoes, and aphids, for eight months. The studied ecosystem is a warm-temperate grassland ...

In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original.  That idea is inspiring a new approach to managing plasma, the super-hot state of matter, for use as a power source. Scientists are using the imperfections in magnetic fields that confine a reaction to improve and enhance the plasma in an approach outlined in a new paper in the journal Nature Communications. “This approach allows you to maintain ...

Researchers built a model that can predict with 73.5% accuracy when a person will experience aesthetic chills: shivers, goosebumps, or a feeling of cold down the neck or spine elicited by aesthetic stimuli, such as beautiful music or an inspirational speech. Felix Schoeller and colleagues surveyed 2,937 people from Southern California, through an online platform, gathering data on their personalities, demographic backgrounds, and emotional state. The authors then exposed survey respondents to 40 emotion-evoking audiovisual clips sourced from social media, selected because commenters had reported experiencing aesthetic chills while watching and listening. ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – Bacteria can be tricked into sending death signals to stop the growth of their slimy, protective homes that lead to deadly infections, a new study demonstrates. The discovery by Washington State University researchers could someday be harnessed as an alternative to antibiotics for treating difficult infections. Reporting in the journal, Biofilm, the researchers used the messengers, which they named death extracellular vesicles (D-EVs), to reduce growth of the bacterial communities by up to 99.99% in laboratory experiments. “Adding the death extracellular vesicles to ...

Text-to-image generative AI systems like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E can produce images based on text prompts that, had they been produced by humans, would plausibly be judged as “creative.” Some artists have argued that these programs are a threat to human creativity. If AI comes to be relied on to produce most new visual works, drawing on what has been done before, creative progress could stagnate. Eric Zhou and Dokyun “DK” Lee investigated the impact of text-to-image AI tools on human creativity, seeking to understand ...

Since its introduction, cryptocurrency governance has been one of the most controversial global financial topics. While some countries have established elaborate regulations for cryptocurrencies, many countries are still reluctant to oversee the markets, and some have outright banned them. Most studies suggest that public agencies naturally want to regulate markets and bring them into their purview. However, the significant differences in cryptocurrency regulation over the world call this view into question. Moreover, these differences cannot be explained by the development ...

While the transportation sector has witnessed a dramatic shift toward electric vehicles (EVs), the idea of using hydrogen as a clean and efficient fuel for transportation has been explored for many decades. These vehicles emit water on combustion, and since they are based on the production of existing engine vehicles, they are expected to have a lower manufacturing carbon footprint than EVs. However, storing and transporting hydrogen requires high pressures and low temperatures, which are energy-intensive processes. To address this, ammonia has ...

How to optimise running? A new mathematical model1 has shown, with great precision, the impact that physiological and psychological parameters have on running performance and provides tips for optimised training. The model grew out of research conducted by a French-British team including two CNRS researchers2, the results of which will appear on March 5th 2024 in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. This innovative model was developed thanks to extremely precise data3 from the performances of Matthew Hudson-Smith (400m), Femke Bol (400m), and ...

The water cycle looks simple in theory — but human impacts, climate change, and complicated geography mean that in practice, floods and droughts remain hard to predict. To model water on Earth, you need incredibly high-resolution data across an immense expanse, and you need modeling sophisticated enough to account for everything from snowcaps on mountains to soil moisture in valleys. Now, scientists funded by the European Space Agency have made a tremendous step forward by building the most detailed models created to date.        “Simulating ...

Research Highlights: An analysis of health data in the UK Biobank found a 20% higher risk of irregular heart rhythm, known as atrial fibrillation, among people who said they drank two liters or more per week (about 67 ounces) of artificially sweetened drinks. The risk was 10% higher among people who said they drank similar amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages. Drinking one liter (about 34 ounces) or less of pure juice per week, such as 100% orange or vegetable juice, was associated with an 8% lower risk of atrial fibrillation. The observational study could not confirm that sweetened drinks cause  irregular heart rhythms. Embargoed ...

An estimated 1.8 million incarcerated people in the United States have been recently exposed to a dangerous combination of heat and humidity, and on average experience 100 days of these conditions each year—many of them in the 44 states that do not provide universal air conditioning to inmates. Tracking with climate change, in recent decades, the number of dangerous humid heat days in carceral facilities has increased, with those in the south experiencing the most rapid warming. The findings by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Montana State University, ...

In Colorado, people flock to the Rocky Mountains when the summer heat gets unbearable. Animals seek shelter too when temperatures become extreme, and forests serve as critical sanctuaries for small tree-dwelling animals like lizards. In a new study published March 5 in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and Tel Aviv University in Israel revealed that deforestation combined with climate change could negatively impact 84% of North America’s lizards by ...

The IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University announced the launch of a long-term partnership with the recently established Nicolelis Institute for Advanced Brain Studies of the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont Association for Research Support (AASDAP, www.aasdap.org.br) aimed at creating a state-of-the-art Neurotech Hub on their campus in the city of Milan. Resulting from a two-year planning process, that included the development of a comprehensive Master Plan, the San Raffaele Neurotech Hub will be the first initiative of this kind in Europe focused on deploying ...

Malaria and other illnesses caused by parasites, viruses, and bacteria transmitted by organisms that spread infectious pathogens account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases worldwide. These vector-borne diseases, typically transmitted by insects like mosquitoes, flies, and ticks, disproportionally affect the poorest populations in tropical and subtropical regions. In Cabo Verde, an island nation off west Africa, vector-borne disease has been prevalent for centuries, in part due to the island’s geographical location ...

Osaka, Japan – Researchers at Osaka University’s Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research (SANKEN) used the shortcuts to the adiabaticity (STA) method to greatly speed-up the adiabatic evolution of spin qubits. The spin flip fidelity after pulse optimization can be as high as 97.8% in GaAs quantum dots. This work may be applicable to other adiabatic passage and will be useful for fast and high-fidelity quantum control. A quantum computer uses the superposition of “0” and “1” states to perform information processing, which is completely different from classical computing, thus allowing for the solution of certain problems at a much faster rate. High-fidelity ...

New Curtin University research has shown Australian young people have major concerns about climate change, which is having a significant impact on their lives and could have broader consequences decades into the future.   Published in Sustainable Earth Reviews, the study surveyed Australian university students belonging to Generation Z (people born between 1995 and 2010) and found climate change was their number one environmental concern.   More than 80 per cent reported being ‘concerned’ or ‘very concerned’ about climate change, with many revealing they felt anxious over the issue.   Climate anxiety ...

With advances in neuroscience and the development of new technologies, new ethical considerations have emerged. This is particularly true for human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional tissues grown from stem cells that partially replicate the characteristics of the human brain. Brain organoids have emerged as important tools for studying brain development and disease, but there are concerns about the possibility of these organoids developing consciousness. This has important implications for research ethics and the need to obtain informed consent from cell donors.   To address these questions, an international team of researchers has sought to shed light on the intricate ...

Fukuoka, Japan – In a collaborative study, researchers from Kyushu University and Harvard Medical School have identified proteins that can turn or “reprogram” fibroblasts — the most commonly found cells in skin and connective tissue — into cells with similar properties to limb progenitor cells. Publishing in Developmental Cell, the researchers’ findings have enhanced our understanding of limb development and have set the stage for regenerative therapy in the future. Globally, close to 60 ...