From the impacts on the environment and climate to transforming land cover and habitats, urban growth is driving global change. Urban areas contribute up to 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, urban areas globally will either double or triple, and the raw materials needed to build future cities is more than the world can sustainably provide. Yet, the impacts of cities on Earth systems are not factored into policy and planning among international agencies and that needs to change, says Karen Seto, Frederick ...

CHICAGO—January 25, 2024—Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) Professor Chun Liu has been elected a 2024 fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS)—one of just 40 mathematical scientists to be honored this year for his contribution to mathematics. “It’s nice to be recognized by my colleagues, but this also gives visibility for the whole department and Illinois Tech,” says Liu, chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics. “It’s great recognition for the mathematics research that’s going on here at Illinois Tech.” Liu’s research includes partial differential ...

MADISON — People who were more skeptical of human-caused climate change or the Black Lives Matter movement who took part in conversation with a popular AI chatbot were disappointed with the experience but left the conversation more supportive of the scientific consensus on climate change or BLM. This is according to researchers studying how these chatbots handle interactions from people with different cultural backgrounds.  Savvy humans can adjust to their conversation partners’ political leanings and cultural expectations to make sure they’re understood, but more and more often, humans find themselves in ...

RICHLAND, Wash.—Visual Sample Plan (VSP), a free software tool developed at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) that boosts statistics-based planning, has been recognized with a 2024 Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award. The FLC represents over 300 federal laboratories, agencies, and research centers. The annual FLC awards program recognizes agencies for their contributions to technology transfer, which turns innovative research into impactful products and services. Judges bestowed ...

Current artificial intelligence models utilize billions of trainable parameters to achieve challenging tasks. However, this large number of parameters comes with a hefty cost. Training and deploying these huge models require immense memory space and computing capability that can only be provided by hangar-sized data centers in processes that consume energy equivalent to the electricity needs of midsized cities. The research community is presently making efforts to rethink both the related computing hardware and the machine learning algorithms to sustainably keep the development of artificial intelligence at its current pace. Optical implementation ...

Rigoberto “Gobet” Advincula has been awarded one of the highest honors of his profession. Advincula, the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair of Advanced and Nanostructured Materials, has been elected National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow. Advincula is a leader in the polymer field with inventions and many publications in polymer nanocomposites, graphene nanomaterials, polymer layered films, and coatings. He has been granted 14 US patents and has 21 published filings related to graphene nanomaterials, solid-state device fabrication, smart coatings and films, ...

AMHERST – University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have received an award to develop a new type of sweat monitor that can be applied to the skin just like a temporary tattoo and assess the molecules present, such as cortisol. The tattoos will ultimately give individuals better insight into their health and serve as a tool for researchers to discover new early indications of diseases.    “There are a lot of vital biomolecules that are present in sweat that we need to measure to really understand overall human performance and correlation to different ...

Because viruses have to hijack someone else’s cell to replicate, they’ve gotten very good at it—inventing all sorts of tricks. A new study from two University of Chicago scientists has revealed how HIV squirms its way into the nucleus as it invades a cell. According to their models, the HIV capsid, which is cone-shaped, points its smaller end into the pores of the nucleus and then ratchets itself in. Once the pore is open enough, the capsid is elastic enough to squeeze through. Importantly, the scientists ...

The 1972 Clean Water Act protects the "waters of the United States" but does not precisely define which streams and wetlands this phrase covers, leaving it to presidential administrations, regulators, and courts to decide. As a result, the exact coverage of Clean Water Act rules is difficult to estimate. New research led by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, used machine learning to more accurately predict which waterways are protected by the Act. The analysis found that a 2020 Trump administration rule removed Clean Water Act ...

The invasion of non-native species can sometimes lead to large and unexpected ecosystem shifts, as Douglas Kamaru and colleagues demonstrate in a unique, careful study that traces the links between big-headed ants, acacia trees, elephants, lions, zebras, and buffalo at a Kenyan conservancy. The invasive big-headed ant species disrupted a mutualism between native ants and the region’s thorny acacia trees, in which the native ants protected the trees from grazers in exchange for a place to live. Through a combination of observations, experimental plots, and animal tracking at Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Kamaru et al. followed the ecosystem chain reaction prompted by this disruption. ...

New measurements of total gaseous organic carbon concentrations in the air over the Athabasca oil sands in Canada suggest that traditional methods of estimating this pollution can severely underestimate emissions, according to an analysis by Megan He and colleagues. Using aircraft-based measurements, He et al. conclude that the total gaseous organic carbon emissions from oil sands operations exceed industry-reported values by 1900% to over 6300% across the studied facilities. “Measured facility-wide emissions represented approximately 1% of extracted petroleum, resulting in total organic ...

The U.S. Clean Water Act is a critically important part of federal water quality regulation, but the act does not define the exact waters that fall under its jurisdiction. Now, Simon Greenhill and colleagues have developed a machine learning model that helps to clarify which waters are protected from pollution under the United States’ Clean Water Act, and how recent rule changes affect protection. The model demonstrates that the waters protected under the act differ substantially depending on whether the act’s regulations follow a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling or a 2020 White House rule. Under the 2006 Rapanos Supreme Court ruling, the model suggests that the Clean ...

Observations of gamma rays, emitted by relativistic jets in a microquasar system, demonstrate the acceleration of electrons by a shock front, reports a new study. The microquasar SS 433 is a binary system made up of a compact object, probably a black hole, and a supergiant star. The black hole pulls material off the star and ejects plasma jets, which move at close to the speed of light. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is an array of five telescopes in Namibia that observe gamma rays. The H.E.S.S. ...

The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke selected his own seven wonders of the world in a BBC television series in 1997. The only astronomical object he included was SS 433. It had attracted attention already in the late 1970s due to its X-ray emission and was later discovered to be at the center of a gas nebula that is dubbed the manatee nebula due to its unique shape resembling these aquatic mammals. SS 433 is a binary star system in which a black hole, with a mass approximately ten times that of the Sun, and a star, with a similar mass but occupying a much larger volume, orbit each other with ...

Leading scientists are today calling for an urgent step change in global governance to save the future of worldwide cities and the planet at large. Cities are growing at an unprecedented rate, putting overwhelming pressures on exploited land, scarce resources, and fragile ecosystems. The bold proposals, led by experts from the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and Yale, are set out in a Science journal article, proposing a new global advisory system to address the alarming impacts of urban expansion. This system would fulfil a similar function as the Intergovernmental ...

For the first time, scientists have engineered an enzyme that can break stubborn man-made bonds between silicon and carbon that exist in widely used chemicals known as siloxanes, or silicones. The discovery is a first step toward rendering the chemicals, which can linger in the environment, biodegradable. "Nature is an amazing chemist, and her repertoire now includes breaking bonds in siloxanes previously thought to evade attack by living organisms," says Frances Arnold, the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at Caltech and winner of the 2018 Nobel ...

What makes the little old ant think he can disrupt the life of an African lion? Researchers say it’s more than just high hopes. In a study published today in the journal Science, a team of scientists reports that a tiny and seemingly innocuous invasive ant species is changing tree cover in an East African wildlife area, making it harder for lions, the world’s most iconic predator, to hunt its preferred prey, zebra. “These tiny invaders are cryptically pulling on the ties that bind an African ecosystem together, determining who is eaten and ...

The spread of West Nile virus in Europe is strongly linked to agricultural activities, urbanization, and bird migration, according to a modelling study published January 25, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Lu Lu from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and collaborators belonging to a large European collaborative consortium under the VEO (Versatile Emerging infectious disease Observatory) project. West Nile virus outbreaks have occurred in birds (the natural hosts and reservoirs for the virus), livestock, and ...

The intricate dance of nature often unfolds in mysterious ways, hidden from the naked eye. At the heart of this enigmatic tango lies a vital partnership: the symbiosis between plants and a type of fungi known as arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. New groundbreaking research, recently published in the journal Science, delves into this partnership, revealing key insights that deepen our understanding of plant-AM fungi interactions and could lead to advances in sustainable agriculture. AM fungi live within plant root cells, forming a unique alliance with ...

Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, a senior group leader at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus and head of Janelia’s 4D Cellular Physiology research area, has been awarded the 2023 Dickson Prize in Science from Carnegie Mellon University for her pioneering work in live-cell imaging and organelle dynamics. The Dickson Prize in Science recognizes substantial achievements or sustained progress in the fields of the natural sciences, engineering, computer science, or mathematics. It has been awarded annually since 1970. Lippincott-Schwartz was recognized for her decades of work in cell biology, including the development of groundbreaking ...

A new study has found that children growing up in low-income families have fewer opportunities to make friends and to socially integrate at school. Researchers from the University of Zurich and the University of Stockholm examined  data from over 200 school classes in Sweden and reached this conclusion. Having friends at school is important for adolescents’ development and it shapes their social skills later in life. Teenagers who feel well integrated in their school class have better mental health and higher grades – which has a knock-on effect on their later careers. A study led by the University of Zurich set out to examine whether parental income influences ...

Surgeons and scientists at UCLA Health will present data on the latest basic science, translational and health services research that has the potential to improve patient care at the 19th annual Academic Surgical (ASC) Congress in Washington, D.C., Feb. 6 to 8.  The annual meeting, which is the joint meeting of the Association for Academic Surgery and the Society of University Surgeons, will feature nearly 80 abstracts from UCLA investigators that highlight topics in subspecialties ranging from oncology, trauma surgery to cardiothoracic surgery.  Dr. Timothy Donahue, chief of surgical oncology and professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine, is the current ...

Diagnosis of sepsis in children has been improved based on new research findings. An international research team co-led by the Luregn Schlapbach from the University and the University Children’s Hospital Zurich harnessed artificial intelligence to analyze data from over 3.5 million children suffering from this life-threatening disease. Sepsis is a life-threatening infection that can lead to organ failure. Every year, around 3 million children worldwide die of the disease. Of those who survive a sepsis infection, every third child suffers long-term consequences, sometimes severe. Until now, there were no evidence-based criteria for diagnosing sepsis ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization has issued a worldwide, exclusive license for a short-stature corn inbred called D16 to Romney-based Ag Alumni Seed. The license is limited to popcorn and doesn’t apply to dent corn, field corn or sweet corn. Traditional breeding techniques Ag Alumni Seed has supported multiple research projects at Purdue University with both financial and in-kind contributions—such as the use of land, equipment and facilities. Jay Hulbert, the company’s president and CEO, said development of D16 began with research that Guri Johal conducted at the company’s ...

The American College of Cardiology’s Cardiovascular Summit (CV Summit) will take place on February 1-3 in Washington, DC. Bringing together all members of the CV team, the educational event highlights best practices for creating a more efficient, effective and equitable health care system. As health care systems continue to evolve, CV teams must be equipped to address these emerging trends and changes in operations, economics and the workforce. This year’s CV Summit will feature an array of educational sessions for clinicians, administrators and executives that encompass a multitude of practice models. Participants will learn how ...