Researchers find that the earliest bacteria had the tools to perform a crucial step in photosynthesis, changing how we think life evolved on Earth. The finding also challenges expectations for how life might have evolved on other planets. The evolution of photosynthesis that produces oxygen is thought to be the key factor in the eventual emergence of complex life. This was thought to take several billion years to evolve, but if in fact the earliest life could do it, then other planets may have evolved complex life much earlier than previously thought. The ...

Beams of accelerated electrons power electron microscopes, X-ray lasers, medical accelerators and other devices. To optimize the performance of these applications, operators must be able to analyze the quality of the beams and adjust them as needed. For the past few years, researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have been developing "virtual diagnostics" that use machine learning to obtain crucial information about beam quality in an efficient, non-invasive way. Now, a new virtual diagnostic approach, published in Scientific Reports, incorporates additional information about the beam that allows the method to work in situations where conventional ...

Despite aquaculture's potential to feed a growing world population while relieving pressure on badly depleted oceans, the industry has been plagued by questions about its environmental impacts. (Watch related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG_nl7-naYo) But over the years, the diverse industry - which ranges from massive open-ocean salmon cages to family farm freshwater tilapia ponds - has made significant strides toward sustainability, according to a new Stanford-led analysis. The study notes, however, that in order for the global aquaculture sector to deliver on its full promise, more effective oversight measures are ...

In a significant advance toward the future redefinition of the international unit of time, the second, a research team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has compared three of the world's leading atomic clocks with record accuracy over both air and optical fiber links. Described in the March 25 issue of Nature, the NIST-led work is the first to compare three clocks, based on different atoms, and the first to link the most advanced atomic clocks in different locations over the air. These atomic clock comparisons place the scientific community one step closer to meeting the guidelines for redefinition of the second. "These comparisons are really defining ...

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fuels plant growth. As carbon levels rise, it's appealing to think of supercharged plant growth and massive tree-planting campaigns drawing down the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning, agriculture and other human activities. New research published March 24 in Nature, however, suggests that when elevated carbon dioxide levels drive increased plant growth, it takes a surprisingly steep toll on another big carbon sink: the soil. One likely explanation, the authors say, is that plants effectively mine the soil for nutrients they need to keep up with carbon-fueled growth. Extracting the extra nutrients requires revving up microbial activity, which then releases CO2 into the atmosphere that might otherwise remain locked in soil. The findings contradict ...

The secret to building superconducting quantum computers with massive processing power may be an ordinary telecommunications technology - optical fiber. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have measured and controlled a superconducting quantum bit (qubit) using light-conducting fiber instead of metal electrical wires, paving the way to packing a million qubits into a quantum computer rather than just a few thousand. The demonstration is described in the March 25 issue of Nature. Superconducting circuits are a leading technology for making quantum computers because they are reliable and easily mass produced. But these circuits must operate at cryogenic temperatures, and schemes for wiring them to room-temperature electronics are complex and prone to ...

As the signs of today's human-caused climate change become ever more alarming, research into the ways past societies responded to natural climate changes is growing increasingly urgent. Scholars have often argued that climatic changes plunge communities into crisis and provide the conditions that lead societies to collapse, but a growing body of research shows that the impacts of climate change on past populations are rarely so straightforward. In a new paper published in Nature, scholars in archaeology, geography, history and paleoclimatology present a framework for research into what they term 'the History of Climate and Society' (HCS). The framework uses a series of ...

LEBANON, NH - Some melanoma patients respond very well to immunotherapy, experiencing profound and durable tumor regression. A fraction of these patients will also develop autoimmunity against their normal melanocytes--the cells that give rise to melanoma--a phenomenon called vitiligo. Melanoma survivors with vitiligo have long been recognized as a special group with an outstanding prognosis, and a strong response of immune system cells called T cells. Immunotherapy researchers at Dartmouth's and Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) led by Mary Jo Turk, PhD, and surgical oncologist Christina Angeles, MD (now of University of Michigan), have discovered how a subset ...

The ocean is dynamic in nature, playing a crucial role as a planetary thermostat that buffer global warming. However, in response to climate change, the ocean has generally become stabler over the past 50 years. Six times stabler, in fact, than previously estimated--as shown by a new study that researchers from the CNRS, Sorbonne University, and IFREMER have conducted within the scope of an international collaboration.* Warming waters, melting glaciers, and disrupted precipitation patterns have created an ocean surface layer cut off from the depths. Just as oil and ...

Training babies' brains and bodies might delay the onset of Rett syndrome, a devastating neurological disorder that affects about 1 in 10,000 girls worldwide. In experiments with mice that replicate the genetic disorder, scientists discovered that intense behavioral training before symptoms develop staves off both memory loss and motor control decline. Compared to untrained mice, those trained early in life were up to five times better at performing tasks that tested their coordination or their ability to learn, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Huda Zoghbi and her colleagues report March 24, 2021, in the journal Nature. Those data, from animals whose symptoms closely mimic the human disease, offers a clear rationale for genetically screening newborns for Rett syndrome, ...

New York, NY (March 24, 2021) -- Immunotherapy is not only significantly less effective in liver cancer patients who previously had a liver disease called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), but actually appears to fuel tumor growth, according to a Mount Sinai study published in Nature in March. NASH affects as many as 40 million people worldwide and is associated with obesity and diabetes. The researchers led a large international collaboration to investigate immunotherapy's effect on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a deadly liver cancer, caused by NASH. They conducted a meta-analysis ...

New scientific findings bring hope that early training during the presymptomatic phase could help individuals with Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, retain specific motor and memory skills and delay the onset of the condition. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital reported in the journal Nature that, in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, intensive training beginning before symptoms appear dramatically improved the performance of specific motor and memory tasks and substantially delayed the appearance of symptoms. The researchers propose that newborn genetic testing for Rett syndrome, followed by prompt intensive training in the skills that will be affected, such ...

Immunotherapy using checkpoint inhibitors is effective in around a quarter of patients with liver cancer. However, to date, physicians have been unable to predict which patients would benefit from this type of treatment and which would not. Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center have now discovered that liver cancer caused by chronic inflammatory fatty liver disease does not respond to this treatment. On the contrary: in an experimental model, this type of immunotherapy actually promoted the development of liver cancer, as now reported in the journal Nature. Liver cancer is the sixth most common type of cancer in the world, ...

The heart of any computer, its central processing unit, is built using semiconductor technology, which is capable of putting billions of transistors onto a single chip. Now, researchers from the group of Menno Veldhorst at QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, have shown that this technology can be used to build a two-dimensional array of qubits to function as a quantum processor. Their work, a crucial milestone for scalable quantum technology, was published today in Nature. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are impossible to address with classical computers. Whereas current ...

HOUSTON ? Overcoming previous technical challenges with single-cell DNA (scDNA) sequencing, a group led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has developed a novel method for scDNA sequencing at single-molecule resolution. This technique revealed for the first time that triple-negative breast cancers undergo continued genetic copy number changes after an initial burst of chromosome instability. The findings, published today in Nature, offer an accurate and efficient new approach for sequencing hundreds of individual cancer cells while also providing novel insights into cancer evolution. These insights may explain why treatments are ...

Joint press release by the German Cancer Research Center, University Medicine Mannheim, Heidelberg University Hospital, and the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg Tumor vaccines can help the body fight cancer. Mutations in the tumor genome often lead to protein changes that are typical of cancer. A vaccine can alert the patients' immune system to these mutated proteins. For the first time, physicians and cancer researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim have now carried out a clinical trial to test a mutation-specific vaccine against malignant brain tumors. The vaccine proved to be safe and triggered the desired immune response in the tumor tissue, as the team now reports in the journal Nature. Diffuse ...

Researchers have developed experimental flu shots that protect animals from a wide variety of seasonal and pandemic influenza strains. The vaccine product is currently being advanced toward clinical testing. If proven safe and effective, these next-generation influenza vaccines may replace current seasonal options by providing protection against many more strains that current vaccines do not adequately cover. A study detailing how the new flu vaccines were designed and how they protect mice, ferrets, and nonhuman primates appears in the March 24 edition of the journal Nature. This work was led by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Vaccine Research Center part of the National Institute of Allergy ...

Many children of low-income families across the country do not have access to quality health care. Lack of health care can have a domino effect, affecting educational outcomes in the classroom. School-based telehealth could offer a sustainable and effective solution, according to a new report in the Journal for Nurse Practitioners by Kathryn King Cristaldi, M.D., the medical director of the school-based telehealth program, and Kelli Garber, the lead advanced practice provider and clinical integration specialist for the program. The program through the MUSC Health Center for Telehealth has effectively served over 70 schools across the state of South Carolina. Evaluating a child at school via telehealth ...

Probiotics -- those bacteria that are good for your digestive tract -- are short-lived, rarely taking residence or colonizing the gut. But a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, finds that in breast milk-fed babies given the probiotic B. infantis, the probiotic will persist in the baby's gut for up to one year and play a valuable role in a healthy digestive system. The study was published in the journal Pediatric Research. "The same group had shown in a previous study that giving breast milk-fed babies B. infantis had beneficial effects that lasted up to 30 days after supplementation, but this is the first study to show persistent colonization up to 1 year of age," said lead author Jennifer Smilowitz with the UC Davis Department ...

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), often called 'fatty liver hepatitis', can lead to serious liver damage and liver cancer. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has discovered that this condition is caused by cells that attack healthy tissue - a phenomenon known as auto-aggression. Their results may help in the development of new therapies to avoid the consequences of NASH. Fatty liver disease (NASH) is often associated with obesity. However, our understanding of the causes has been very limited. A team working with ...

Rich false memories of autobiographical events can be planted - and then reversed, a new paper has found. The study highlights - for the first time - techniques that can correct false recollections without damaging true memories. It is published by researchers from the University of Portsmouth, UK, and the Universities of Hagen and Mainz, Germany. There is plenty of psychological research which shows that memories are often reconstructed and therefore fallible and malleable. However, this is the first time research has shown that false memories of autobiographical events can be undone. Studying how memories are created, identified ...

Infants prefer baby talk in any language, but particularly when it's in a language they're hearing at home. A unique study of hundreds of babies involving 17 labs on four continents showed that all babies respond more to infant-directed speech -- baby talk -- than they do to adult-directed speech. It also revealed that babies as young as six months can pick up on differences in language around them. "We were able to compare babies from bilingual backgrounds to babies from monolingual backgrounds, and what seemed to matter the most was the match between the language they ...

A new study is the first to identify how human brains grow much larger, with three times as many neurons, compared with chimpanzee and gorilla brains. The study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, identified a key molecular switch that can make ape brain organoids grow more like human organoids, and vice versa. The study, published in the journal END ...

Scientists have genetically engineered immune cells, called myeloid cells, to precisely deliver an anticancer signal to organs where cancer may spread. In a study of mice, treatment with the engineered cells shrank tumors and prevented the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. The study, led by scientists at the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was published March 24, 2021, in Cell. "This is a novel approach to immunotherapy that appears to have promise as a potential treatment for metastatic cancer," said the study's leader, Rosandra Kaplan, M.D., of NCI's Center for Cancer Research. Metastatic cancer--cancer that has spread from its original location to other parts of the body--is notoriously ...

What The Study Did: Researchers evaluated the association between a recent diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or dementia and the risk of attempting suicide among older adults. Authors: Amy L Byers, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.0150) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding and support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...