Born tail first, bottlenose dolphin calves emerge equipped with two slender rows of whiskers along their beak-like snouts – much like the touch-sensitive whiskers of seals. But the whiskers fall out soon after birth, leaving the youngster with a series of dimples, known as vibrissal pits. Recently Tim Hüttner and Guido Dehnhardt, from University of Rostock, Germany, began to suspect that the dimples may be more than just a relic. Could they allow adult bottlenose dolphins to sense weak electric fields? Taking an initial close look, they realised that the remnant pits resemble ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Possessing more than two complete sets of chromosomes can be a hindrance to long-term survival of a plant lineage, yet scientists are also finding evidence it’s likely behind some evolutionary innovation.  Sudden inheritance of whole suites of extra gene copies can add redundancy to an organism's regular sets of functions, actually permitting some of those copies to evolve and express in entirely new ways.  In the case of the East Asian pitcher plant, this mutational freedom may have even fine-turned its ability to capture prey and satisfy its appetite for “meat.” That’s just one of the findings ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, scientists have begun to figure out why the disfiguring skin lesions caused by cutaneous leishmaniasis don’t hurt. Researchers analyzed leishmaniasis lesions on mouse skin to detect metabolic signaling pathways that differed from uninfected mice. Results suggested the parasites that cause the disease change pain perception – presumably as a way to delay treatment and promote their own survival. “No one knows why these lesions are painless – ...

“In this article, we describe for the first time the impact of chronological aging on EVs production by human keratinocytes.” BUFFALO, NY- November 30, 2023 – A new research paper was published on the cover of Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 15, Issue 22, entitled, “Chronological aging impacts abundance, function and microRNA content of extracellular vesicles produced by human epidermal keratinocytes.” The disturbance of intercellular communication is one of the hallmarks of aging. In their new study, researchers ...

As part of its ongoing quest to advance better brain health and performance, new research led by Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas investigated neural biomarkers associated with improvements on a brain health index. The study, “Toward Precision Brain Health: Accurate Prediction of a Cognitive Index Trajectory Using Neuroimaging Metrics,” was recently published in Cerebral Cortex A total of 48 participants aged 21–65 completed a simple task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session, then once ...

Researchers at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center have shown that inhibiting a specific protein using gene therapy can shrink hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in mice. Silencing the galectin 1 (Gal1) protein, which is often over-expressed in HCC, also improved the anti-cancer immune response and increased the number of killer T cells inside tumors. The study was published in Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B. “We’ve long known that Gal1 is a biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma,” said ...

EL PASO, Texas (Nov. 30, 2023) – Space near earth is teeming with objects, whether natural, like meteors and comets, or manmade, like satellites, spacecraft and rocket debris. But experts still need a clearer picture of the location and state of these objects, which can threaten space-based assets, such as GPS, weather-monitoring and communication satellites. “The United States is dependent economically and militarily on space assets,” said Miguel Velez-Reyes, Ph.D., chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The University of Texas at El Paso. “For ...

Research has shown that social media can negatively impact people's mental health. But can it affect people’s beliefs about mental health treatment? Yes, according to researchers at Union. In one of the first studies to examine the impact of social media on people’s perceptions of mental health care, researchers discovered that viewing just a few social media posts that mock mental health treatment can have a profound impact on some people's attitudes toward treatment. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Social Media + Society. For the study, 186 participants viewed 10 tweets. The gender ...

New research from Northern Arizona University has explained coast redwood’s remarkable ability to recover from very severe fire, a rare sign of optimism amid a landscape increasingly scarred by severe fires. The study, published today in Nature: Plants, examined recovery after the catastrophic CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which began in August 2020 and burned thousands of acres of redwoods in Big Basin State Park in California, some more than 1,500 years old. Researchers from NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) and the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS) found, however, that many trees were not dead, as they first appeared. Redwoods ...

The American Institute of Biological Sciences is pleased to announce Dr. Nyeema C. Harris as the 2023 winner of its Inspiring Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, Acceptance, and Learning (IDEAL) Leadership Award. The IDEAL Award recognizes commendable leadership in advancing inclusion, diversity, equity, acceptance, accessibility, and learning in the biological sciences community. The award was presented by past awardee Dr. Steward T. A. Pickett on 30 November 2023 at AIBS's Council of Member Societies and Organizations meeting, entitled "Expanding the ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Flames roared through Santa Barbara County in late 2017. UC Santa Barbara canceled classes, and the administration recommended donning an N95, long before the COVID pandemic made the mask a household item. Smoke and ash choked the air, but the Thomas Fire’s effects weren’t restricted to the land and sky. Huge amounts of ash settled into the oceans, leaving researchers to wonder what effect it might have on marine life. Now scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that wildfire ash adds nutrients to marine systems, ...

Transitioning away from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which offer water- and oil-repelling properties on the outer shells of firefighter turnout gear, could bring potential performance tradeoffs, according to a new study from North Carolina State University. The study showed that turnout gear without PFAS outer shell coatings were not oil-repellent, posing a potential flammability hazard to firefighters if exposed to oil and flame, said Bryan Ormond, assistant professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science at NC State and corresponding author of ...

Kidney stones affect nearly 10% of the global population. For more than three decades, thiazide diuretics, a common medication used for high blood pressure, have been the standard of care for kidney stone prevention because they reduce the excretion of urinary calcium.     However, recent clinical trials have raised doubts about their efficacy in preventing kidney stones. The NOSTONE trial, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March 2023, failed to find a protective effect of thiazide diuretics on kidney stone disease.     A ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. --- Scleractinian corals, or hard corals, have been disappearing globally over the past four decades, a result of climate change, pollution, unsustainable coastal development and overfishing. However, some Caribbean octocorals, or soft corals, are not meeting the same fate. During a two-year survey of soft corals in the Florida Keys, Mary Alice Coffroth,  professor emerita of geology at the University at Buffalo, along with a small team of UB researchers, identified three species of octocorals that have survived heat waves. While the coral animal itself may be ...

Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute have created tiny biological robots that they call Anthrobots from human tracheal cells that can move across a surface and have been found to encourage the growth of neurons across a region of damage in a lab dish. The multicellular robots, ranging in size from the width of a human hair to the point of a sharpened pencil, were made to self-assemble and shown to have a remarkable healing effect on other cells. The discovery is a starting point for the researchers’ vision to use patient-derived ...

It’s a story that’s become all too familiar — high winds knock out a power line, and a community can go without power for hours to days, an inconvenience at best and a dangerous situation at worst. UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Yu Zhang and his lab are leveraging tools to improve the efficiency, reliability, and resilience of power systems, and have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) -based approach for the smart control of microgrids for power ...

AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst civil and environmental engineers have determined the factors that may help identify the schools and daycare centers at greatest risk for elevated levels of lead in drinking water. The most telling characteristic for schools in Massachusetts is building age, with facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s—nearly a third of the facilities tested—at the greatest risk for having dangerously high water lead levels.  There is no safe exposure ...

In the wild, nesting chinstrap penguins get more than 11 hours of sleep per day – but not all at once. According to a new study, these birds nod off thousands of times per day, but for only around 4 seconds at a time, cumulatively accruing their daily sleep needs while remaining continuously vigilant over their nests. Sleep seems to be ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom. Typically characterized by immobility and the relative loss of ability to sense and respond to the surrounding environment, sleep can render animals vulnerable to predation. In humans, insufficient sleep can lead to nodding off, the seconds-long interruption of wakefulness by eye closure, and sleep-related ...

The discovery of a Neptune-mass exoplanet orbiting the very low-mass M dwarf star LHS 3154 challenges theoretical models of planet formation, according to a new study. The planet, which has a mass at least 13 times that of Earth, tightly orbits a star 9 times less massive than the Sun, demonstrating that small stars can sometimes host larger planets than was previously thought. Planets form in the dense circumstellar discs of gas and dust that surround newborn stars. The amount of material in these structures determines how massive the planets that form ...

Broad genetic sampling of maize and its teosinte grass ancestors reveals evidence of wild admixture during the crop’s initial domestication and dispersal, according to a new study. The findings clarify the contentious origin of modern maize and raise new questions about the anthropogenic mechanisms underlying its spread throughout the Americas. The domestication of crops transformed human culture. For many crops, the wild plants that modern domesticates are most closely related to can be readily identified by morphological and genetic similarities. Yet, despite its global agricultural importance, the ancestry of modern maize has long ...

Maize is one of the world’s most widely grown crops. It is used for both human and animal foods and holds great cultural significance, especially for indigenous peoples in the Americas. Yet despite its importance, the origins of the grain have been hotly debated for more than a century. Now new research, published Dec. 1 in Science, shows that all modern maize descends from a hybrid created just over 5000 years ago in central Mexico, thousands of years after the plant was first domesticated. The ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar systems, according to Penn State researchers. In a paper published online today (Nov. 30) in the journal Science, researchers report the discovery of a planet more than 13 times as massive as Earth orbiting the “ultracool” star LHS 3154, which itself is nine times less massive than the sun. The mass ratio of the newly found planet with its host star is more than 100 times higher than that of Earth and the sun. The finding reveals the most massive known ...

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), along with several other leading medical associations, have issued a new guideline for preventing and optimally managing atrial fibrillation (AFib). The guideline was jointly published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation. Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, is the most common type of heart rhythm disorder (arrhythmia), affecting over 6 million Americans, and the number is expected to double by 2030. AFib causes a variety of symptoms, including fast ...

Embargoed: Not for Release Until 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time Thursday, 30 November 2023. A team of scientists found that carbon dioxide becomes a more potent greenhouse gas as more is released into the atmosphere. The new study, led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, Science, was published in Science and comes as world leaders meet in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week for the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP28.  “Our finding means that ...

WASHINGTON — Emerging technologies for non-line-of-sight imaging can detect objects even if they are around a corner or behind a wall. In new work, researchers use a new type of detector to extend this method from visible light into near and mid-infrared wavelengths, an advance that could be especially useful for unmanned vehicles, robotic vision, endoscopy and other applications. “Infrared non-line-of-sight imaging can improve the safety and efficiency of unmanned vehicles by helping them detect and navigate around obstacles that are not directly visible,” said Xiaolong Hu from Tianjin University in China. His team collaborated with a group ...