Horodyskia, characterized by a string of beads with uniform size and spacing, is a kind of macroscopic fossil with a record extending from the early Mesoproterozoic Era (~1.48 Ga) to the terminal Ediacaran Period (~550 Ma).  Now, researchers led by Dr. LI Guangjin and Prof. PANG Ke from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and Prof. CHEN Lei from Shandong University of Science and Technology have revealed that Horodyskia is among the oldest multicellular macroorganisms and may have attained its macroscopic ...

APRIL 20, 2023 Researchers use networks to model the dynamics of coupled systems ranging from food webs to neurological processes. Those models originally focused on pairwise interactions, or behaviors that emerge from interactions between two entities. But in the last few years, network theorists have been asking, what about phenomena that involve three or more? In medicine, antibiotic combinations may fight a bacterial infection differently than they would on their own. In ecology, survival strategies may arise from ...

Scientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. Now, Fuzhong Zhang, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has made a significant breakthrough in the fabrication of synthetic spider silk, paving the way for a new era of sustainable clothing production. Since engineering recombinant spider silk in 2018 using bacteria, Zhang has been working to increase the yield of silk threads produced from microbes while maintaining its desirable properties of enhanced ...

Houston, TX – Degeneration of myelin, an insulating sheath required for rapid communication between nerve cells, and neuroinflammation are notable hallmarks of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and related neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or Huntington’s disease that affect roughly 2.8 million people in the world. However, little is known about the precise molecular steps by which demyelination leads to the loss of neurons and glia, the two major types of brain cells. A paper published recently in Cell Metabolism by a research team led by Drs. Hugo J. Bellen, Hyunglok Chung, and Hyun ...

New York, NY (April 20, 2023) — The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today announced that Elizabeth L. Whitlock, MD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is the 2023 recipient of the Jeffrey H. Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties.  The award will be presented at the 2023 AGS Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS23) which is being held in Long Beach, CA from May 4-6 (preconference day is May 3).  The award recognizes Dr. ...

A decade’s worth of research at oil and gas operations in the central and eastern United States has confirmed that fluid injection from hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal can induce seismicity. Now, data from hydraulic fracturing wells in eastern Ohio indicate that extraction activities also can influence the seismicity rate, according to a presentation at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)’s 2023 Annual Meeting. During hydraulic fracturing, well operators inject a pressurized liquid ...

In autumn 2022 and winter 2023, a total of 20 cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were introduced to Kuno National Park in India to establish a free-ranging population – for the first time since their extinction in India 70 years ago. Although the idea may be commendable, getting it right is not so easy. Scientists of the Cheetah Research Project of Leibniz-IZW in Namibia see shortcomings in the reintroduction plan: In southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities ...

APRIL 20, 2023 Most people think of a disease outbreak when they hear the word “contagion.” But it’s a concept that extends beyond pathogens. It could be an infectious disease, a fad, an online meme, or even a positive behavior in a population. “From the mathematical perspective, a contagion is just a thing that spreads,” says Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, a former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow, now an associate professor in computer science at the University of Vermont. April 19–21, Hébert-Dufresne and Juniper Lovato, ...

American Geophysical Union 20 April 2023 AGU Release No. 23-18 For Immediate Release   This press release and accompanying multimedia are available online at:  https://news.agu.org/press-release/beaver-ponds-with-more-sediments-store-more-nitrogen-simple-mapping-reveals/  Beaver ponds with deeper sediments store more nitrogen, simple mapping reveals  Simple mapping of beaver ponds can help land managers and conservationists in the West detect which ponds are sponging up nitrogen and which are releasing it  AGU press contact:   Rebecca Dzombak, +1 (202) 777-7492, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours)  Contact information for the researchers:  Desneiges ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – The drug atogepant may help prevent migraines for people who have had no success with other preventive drugs, according to a preliminary study released April 20, 2023, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023. The study involved people with episodic migraine, which is defined as having up to 14 headache days per month with migraine ...

Last month, OpenAI launched its newest AI chatbot product, GPT-4. According to the folks at OpenAI, the bot, which uses machine learning to generate natural language text, passed the bar exam with a score in the 90th percentile, passed 13 of 15 AP exams and got a nearly perfect score on the GRE Verbal test. Inquiring minds at BYU and 186 other universities wanted to know how OpenAI’s tech would fare on accounting exams. So, they put the original version, ChatGPT, to the test. The researchers ...

An international team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine with the National Institutes of Health Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium and the Bogdan Mateescu laboratory at the ETH Zürich and University of Zürich has developed a new powerful resource to study extracellular RNA (exRNA), a novel form of cell-to-cell communication. The study, published in the journal Cell Genomics, lays the foundation to examine how exRNA and its carrier proteins found in bodily fluids function in a healthy as well as a diseased setting, potentially providing a means to accurately implement early ...

Andrew Lupini, a scientist and inventor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected Fellow of the Microscopy Society of America. MSA fellows are senior distinguished members who have made significant contributions to the advancement of microscopy and microanalysis through scientific achievement and service to the scientific community and the society. Lupini was one of only four scientists named an MSA Fellow this year. Lupini was cited “for foundational contribution of theory and practice ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue Ventures, which manages three funds to support Purdue University-connected startups, has invested $250,000 in TRIO Pharmaceuticals Inc., a cancer immunotherapeutics startup founded by a Purdue University biophysics and structural biology alumnus. The company’s antibody-based therapeutics strengthens the body’s defense, the immune system, to eradicate cancer. Purdue Ventures’ investment is part of a larger $2.2 million series seed-funding ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Finding ways to purchase sustainable products for the work of science has yielded another golden award. The U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has been recognized with a gold-level GreenBuy Award for its purchase of environmentally friendly products in fiscal year 2022. The GreenBuy Award Program honors DOE sites that go beyond the minimum requirements for purchasing products that are energy efficient, water efficient and recycled. Participating sites can qualify for three levels of the award: gold, silver and bronze. “The award is to show our mindset is ...

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE EMBARGOED UNTIL 19:00 BST LONDON TIME/14:00 US EASTERN TIME THURSDAY, 20 APRIL 2023 Paper and photos available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YaEEaTCCMRt85NXmCSpeO15YOrIRaXpO?usp=share_link Transmissible cancers, which occur only rarely in the animal kingdom, are spread by the transfer of living cancer cells. In the case of Tasmanian devils, the cells are transferred through biting – a behaviour that is common in devils especially in fights over mates and food. Tasmanian devils are susceptible to two fatal transmissible cancers called devil facial ...

  Researchers from the University of Michigan have found that an extra copy of a gene in Down syndrome patients causes improper development of neurons in mice.   The gene in question, called Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule, or DSCAM, is also implicated in other human neurological conditions, including autism spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder and intractable epilepsy.   The cause of Down syndrome is known to be an extra copy of chromosome 21, or trisomy 21. But because this ...

LA JOLLA (April 20, 2023)—Scientists often act as detectives, piecing together clues that alone may seem meaningless but together crack the case. Professor Reuben Shaw has spent nearly two decades piecing together such clues to understand the cellular response to metabolic stress, which occurs when cellular energy levels dip. Whether energy levels fall because the cell’s powerhouses (mitochondria) are failing or due to a lack of necessary energy-making supplies, the response is the same: get rid of the damaged mitochondria and create new ones. Now, in a study published in Science on April 20, 2023, Shaw and team cracked ...

Human beings have massively changed the Earth system. Greenhouse-gas emissions produced by human activities have caused the global mean temperature to rise by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to the preindustrial era. And every year, there are additional emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, currently amounting to more than 55 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This unprecedented climate crisis has consequences for the entire planet – the distribution of precipitation ...

Economic growth alone may not be enough to deliver the internationally agreed target to end human deaths from dog mediated rabies, according to new research from the University of Surrey. The study identifies that targeting vulnerable populations and improving responsible pet ownership are urgently needed to eradicate the deadly disease, which has strong associations with poverty.  In a landmark study, Surrey researchers investigated whether incidences of rabies are an inevitable consequence of poverty or whether other measures of development, such as healthcare access, can play a role in tackling this preventable disease.   Dr ...

SAN FRANCISCO — PLOS today announced that PLOS Genetics is expanding the scope of its journal with a renamed section called Microbial Genetics. This section will replace the former Prokaryotic Genetics section to emphasize research on microbes more broadly with the aim to publish studies that use genetic approaches to provide insights into how bacteria as well as archaea and their phages/viruses, fungi (including yeasts and filamentous fungi), and protists function and interact with the biotic and abiotic world. PLOS Genetics has an established presence in the fungal genetics community, but this ...

TAMPA, Fla. — MYC proteins are important regulators of cancer cell growth, proliferation and metabolism through their ability to increase the expression of proteins involved in these processes. Deregulation of MYC proteins occurs in more than half of all cancers and is associated with poor patient prognosis and outcomes. Numerous researchers have devoted significant efforts to try to target MYC proteins as a therapeutic approach to treat cancer. However, this has been extremely challenging to date, and other complementary strategies are being investigated. In a new article in Blood Cancer Discovery, which was published simultaneously with a presentation ...

April 20, 2023-- A new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health shows that water arsenic levels are linked to higher urinary arsenic among the U.S. population for users of both private wells and public water systems. The findings are published in the journal Environmental Research. Long-term exposure to arsenic even at low and moderate levels can increase the risk of cancer and other types of chronic disease. While drinking water along with diet is a major source ...

(Toronto, April 20, 2023)       Storing donor lungs for transplant at 10 degrees Celsius markedly increases the length of time the organ can live outside the body according to research led by a team of scientists at the Toronto Lung Transplant Program in the Ajmera Transplant Centre at the University Health Network (UHN). The prospective multicenter, nonrandomized clinical trial study of 70 patients demonstrated that donor lungs remained healthy and viable for transplant up to four times longer compared ...

Researchers know a lot about Turkey’s next major earthquake. They can pinpoint the probable epicenter, estimate its strength and see the spatial footprint of where damage is most likely to occur. They just can’t say when it will happen. That’s the main takeaway from a new USC-led study that appears today (April 20) in Seismica. Using remote sensing, USC geophysicist Sylvain Barbot and his fellow researchers documented the massive Feb. 6 quake that killed more than 50,000 people in Eastern Turkey and toppled more than 100,000 buildings. Alarmingly, researchers found that a section of the fault remains unbroken and locked – a sign that the plates there ...