Great recipes require the perfect combination of ingredients — biotechnology recipes are no exception. Researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University have discovered the ideal genetic “recipe” to turn yeast into a tiny yet powerful eco-friendly factory that converts methanol into D-lactic acid, a key compound used in biodegradable plastics and pharmaceuticals. This approach could help reduce reliance on petroleum-based processes and contribute to more sustainable chemical production. Lactic acid is widely used in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and bioplastics. It exists in two forms: L-lactic acid ...

Ikoma, Japan—The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for effective therapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2. Although vaccines helped control the spread of the virus, the emergence of new variants continues to challenge global health efforts. Small-molecule inhibitors targeting viral proteins could serve as an effective alternative for controlling the spread of COVID-19 at both individual and community levels. In this vein, a recent study led by Associate Professor Md. Altaf-Ul-Amin, along with Muhammad Alqaaf, Ahmad Kamal Nasution, Mohammad Bozlul Karim, Mahfujul Islam ...

Almost half of children who require surgery for complicated appendicitis can safely complete their recovery at home, according to a new study. The research, led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, found more than 40 per cent who received care in the home following a complex appendectomy recovered faster and had fewer complications. More than 300 patients present with appendicitis to The Royal Children's Hospital (RCH) every year, with about one in three ...

A t-shirt that monitors a patient’s vitals after urological surgery for cancer could help people return from hospital sooner to recover at home. The device, worn for around two weeks under clothes for three-hour windows each day, enabled patients to feel safer and more reassured than a control group in a pilot study of 70 individuals. The results are presented this weekend at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid.   Telemedicine in medical practice allows patients and clinicians to maintain contact remotely so that care, interventions and monitoring ...

Men who consistently avoid prostate cancer screening appointments face a disproportionately higher risk of dying from the disease, finds research identifying a new high-risk group. An analysis of data from across seven countries from the world’s largest prostate cancer screening study, the European Randomized study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC), is presented this weekend at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Madrid. Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men in 112 countries, with prevalence expected to double by 2040. If introduced on a national scale, prostate ...

Shrinking Andean glaciers threaten water supply of 90 million people, global policy makers warned Shrinking glaciers in the Andes threaten the water supplies of 90 million people Andean glaciers are thinning by 0.7 metres a year, 35 percent faster than the global average Climate change is threatening the stability of the Andean glaciers as a water source and the water security of the people who rely on them Scientists argue we are not doing enough to curb the carbon emissions fueling climate change Scientists from the University of Sheffield will warn policymakers that the shrinking glaciers of the Andes threaten ...

Women experience a significant fall in earnings in the years following a menopause diagnosis, with more women stopping work and others working fewer hours, according to a new UCL study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.  Economists at UCL, University of Bergen, Stanford University and University of Delaware calculated that women experience a 4.3% reduction in their earnings, on average, in the four years following a menopause diagnosis, with losses deepening to 10% by the fourth year.  This 10% reduction in earnings is approximately half of the estimated 23% loss of earnings experienced by new mothers, also ...

A research team led by Colorado State University has achieved a new milestone in 3D X-ray imaging technology. The scientists are the first to capture high-resolution CT scans of the interior of a large, dense object – a gas turbine blade – using a compact, laser-driven X-ray source.     The findings, published this week in Optica, describe the science and engineering behind this new radiographic imaging capability and its potential benefits to a range of industries, from aerospace to additive manufacturing.   The project is a years-long collaboration between researchers at CSU’s Departments ...

A new technique has enabled ultra-powerful magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners to identify tiny differences in patients’ brains that cause treatment-resistant epilepsy. In the first study to use this approach, it has allowed doctors at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to offer the patients surgery to cure their condition. Previously, 7T MRI scanners – so called because they operate using a 7 Tesla magnetic field, more than double the strength of previous 3T scanners – have suffered from signal blackspots in crucial parts of the brain. But in research ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s (NRL) Narrow Field Imager (NFI) was launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as a part of NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission on March 11 and deployed from Falcon 9 on March 12. PUNCH is a four-satellite constellation, collecting observations in low Earth orbit. It will conduct global, 3D observations of the inner heliosphere to investigate the solar corona's evolution into the solar wind. The mission is scheduled to conduct science for the next two years, following a 90-day commissioning period. The NRL-developed NFI, sponsored ...

A new study has discovered that birds in the Galápagos Islands are changing their behaviour due to traffic noise, with those frequently exposed to vehicles showing heightened levels of aggression. Published in the journal Animal Behaviour and led by experts from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and the Konrad Lorenz Research Centre at the University of Vienna, the research examined the impact of vehicle noise pollution on Galápagos yellow warblers (Setophaga petechia aureola), a songbird widespread on the archipelago. The Galápagos Islands, ...

Groundbreaking Study Finds AI-Driven Interviews with Children May Boost Accuracy in Witness Accounts In a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal PLOS ONE, an international team of researchers led by scholars from New York University Shanghai and Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland explored the potential of artificial intelligence to assist in sensitive child investigative interviews. The study compared how effectively a Large Language Model (LLM), specifically ChatGPT, and untrained human interviewers were able to interview children about a mock event ...

Welfare measurement is among the most fundamental questions in economics. Policymakers and others use gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for welfare, but this application does not reflect the benefits of introducing new and free goods and services, such as digital goods, and may result in misunderstanding the economy. In a new study, researchers developed a framework to measure the welfare contributions of new and free goods and services and quantify their benefits. By applying the framework to several examples (e.g., Facebook, Smartphone cameras), the study found that these goods and services significantly increase welfare. The study ...

March 20, 2025 — Placing an external ventricular drain (EVD) at bedside using augmented reality (AR) guidance is more precise than freehand placement and is associated with fewer reinterventions and complications, according to a clinical pilot study of a novel system. Frederick Van Gestel, MD, a neurosurgery resident at Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel and PhD researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium, and colleagues report first-in-human results in Neurosurgery, the official publication of the Congress ...

Inhibiting the sonic hedgehog (Shh) pathway strongly perturbs feather development in chickens by restricting feather bud outgrowth, invagination and branching, according to a study published March 20th, in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Rory Cooper and Michel Milinkovitch from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Avian feathers are intricate appendages whose forms vary substantially across species and body areas, and between juvenile and adult stages. Understanding both the developmental and evolutionary mechanisms underpinning this morphological diversity has long fascinated biologists. The morphological intricacies ...

Fruit fly mutants that have severe sleep deficits perform better at olfactory learning and memory tasks, according to a study published March 20th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Sheng Huang and Stephan Sigrist from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and colleagues. The paradox of enhanced memory despite sleep loss could be explained by protein kinase A (PKA) signaling in the mushroom body of the fly brain.  Sleep is a dynamic process conserved from invertebrates to mammals and humans. Although sleep is thought to serve many purposes, it is often studied for its restorative roles, which ...

Marine mammals may have a secret weapon to survive long dives – an ability to directly sense their own circulating blood-oxygen levels that most mammals lack – allowing them to stay submerged longer and resurface before hypoxia leads to drowning, researchers report. Air-breathing marine mammals have developed a range of physiological adaptations to survive in aquatic environments, including thermoregulation to endure the pressures of the deep. However, one of the most critical evolutionary challenges for diving mammals is avoiding drowning. Despite adaptations for larger oxygen storage and tolerance to low oxygen levels, these animals still risk drowning if they ...

Challenging assumptions about infant memory, a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows that babies as young as 12 months old can encode memories, researchers report. The findings suggest that infantile amnesia – the inability to remember our first few years of life – is more likely caused by memory retrieval failures rather than an inability to form memories in the first place. Despite infancy being a period of rapid learning, memories from this time do not persist into later childhood or adulthood. In ...

Rising mountains do more than reshape the landscape – they also drive evolutionary change, according to a new study. By simulating millions of years of tectonic uplift, researchers have uncovered a link between mountain building and biodiversity, shedding light on how Earth’s dynamic topography shapes biodiversity over deep time. Mountain ranges are widely recognized as global hotspots of terrestrial biodiversity yet only cover a relatively small proportion of the Earth’s surface, suggesting a strong connection between topographic evolution and species diversity. Mountainous terrain can promote speciation by isolating populations, ...

Challenging long-held assumptions about global terrestrial carbon storage, a new study finds that the majority of carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbed by ecosystems has been locked away in dead plant material, soils, and sediments, rather than living biomass, researchers report. These new insights, which suggest that terrestrial carbon stocks are more resilient and stable than previously appreciated, are crucial for shaping future climate mitigation strategies and optimizing carbon sequestration efforts. Recent studies have shown that terrestrial carbon stocks are increasing, offsetting ...

Feathers are among the most complex cutaneous appendages in the animal kingdom. While their evolutionary origin has been widely debated, paleontological discoveries and developmental biology studies suggest that feathers evolved from simple structures known as proto-feathers. These primitive structures, composed of a single tubular filament, emerged around 200 million years ago in certain dinosaurs. Paleontologists continue to discuss the possibility of their even earlier presence in the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs (the first flying vertebrates with membranous wings) around 240 million years ago.   Proto-feathers are ...

Though we learn so much during our first years of life, we can’t, as adults, remember specific events from that time. Researchers have long believed we don’t hold onto these experiences because the part of the brain responsible for saving memories — the hippocampus — is still developing well into adolescence and just can’t encode memories in our earliest years. But new Yale research finds evidence that’s not the case. In a study, Yale researchers showed infants ...

Mitochondria are the powerhouses in our cells, producing the energy for all vital processes. Using cryo-electron tomography, researchers at the University of Basel, Switzerland, have now gained insight into the architecture of mitochondria at unprecedented resolution. They discovered that the proteins responsible for energy generation assemble into large “supercomplexes”, which play a crucial role in providing the cell’s energy. Most living organisms on our planet-whether plants, animals, or ...

Recent studies have shown that carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems are increasing, mitigating around 30% of the CO2 emissions linked to human activities. The overall value of carbon sinks on the earth's surface is fairly well known—as it can be deduced from the planet's total carbon balance anthropogenic emissions, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere and the ocean sinks—yet, researchers know very little about carbon distribution between the various terrestrial pools: living vegetation—mainly forests—and nonliving carbon pools—soil organic matter, sediments at the bottom of lakes and rivers, wetlands, ...

WASHINGTON — The American Geophysical Union and the U.S. Academic Alliance for the IPCC today open calls for U.S. researchers to self-nominate as experts, authors and review editors for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Seventh Assessment Report through a new application portal. The IPCC nomination period opened in early March and will close in mid-April. USAA-IPCC is a newly established network of U.S. academic institutions registered as observers with the IPCC. Both observer organizations and governments may nominate experts for ...