Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute scientists are one step closer to understanding why some corals can weather climate change better than others, and the secret could be in a specific protein that produces a natural sunscreen. As their name implies, Hawaiian blue rice corals sport a deep blue pigment, which is created by chromoprotein and filters out harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. Although UV damage may produce long-term impacts to reproduction in many coral species--including brown rice coral--it may not have the same effect on blue rice coral. The findings of this study were published June 9 in ...

From 1980 to 2016, grain production in Brazil increased more than fourfold, and the country now stands as the world's largest soybean exporter and the second largest exporter of corn. The two main drivers of this increase in food production were cropland expansion and double-cropping, harvesting two crops, such as corn and soybeans, from the same field in a single year. While cropland expansion has long been recognized as one of the drivers behind the increase in Brazil's agricultural output, a new study published in Nature Food quantifies for the first time the impact that double-cropping also ...

The fairy circles of the Namib are one of nature's greatest mysteries. Millions of these circular barren patches extend over vast areas along the margins of the desert in Namibia. In 1979, G.K. Theron published the first research about their origin. His hypothesis was that poisonous substances from Euphorbia damarana leaves induced fairy circles. As part of a new study, scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute located the original euphorbia plants that were part of Theron's study. Four decades later, the researchers are now able to conclusively disprove Theron's original hypothesis. Their results were published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. In the late 1970s, South African botanist Theron noticed ...

A University of Oklahoma doctoral student, graduate and undergraduate research assistants, and an associate professor in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences are lead authors on a paper describing a "changing-look" blazar - a powerful active galactic nucleus powered by supermassive blackhole at the center of a galaxy. The paper is published in The Astrophysical Journal. Hora D. Mishra, a Ph.D. student, and faculty member Xinyu Dai are lead authors of the paper, along with Christopher Kochanek and Kris Stanek at the Ohio State University and Ben Shappee at the University of Hawaii. The paper represents the findings of researchers from 12 different institutions who participated ...

Tsukuba, Japan - Holographic displays help add a three-dimensional--and thus more life-like--feel to what would otherwise appear as a two-dimensional image. Now, researchers in Japan have tested how this may work on a supramolecular level; such tests could lead to improved displays. Commonly, one cannot overlay a certain type of molecular component that underlies helically arranged liquid crystals onto their molecular mirror images, much like a person cannot overlay their two hands and have them match up exactly without flipping one over. Molecules with this property are described as "chiral." Some materials make use of the principle of chirality to rotate light in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the light wave, known as circular ...

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have developed novel techniques, known as Automated Fibre Embedding (AFE), to produce complex fibre and silicone composite structures for soft robotics applications. Their work was published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. Many soft robot components, including sensors and actuators, utilise embedded continuous fibres within elastomeric substrates to achieve various functionalities. However, manual embedding of continuous fibres in soft substrates is challenging due to the complexities involved in handling precise layering, and ...

Thermotherapy or heat treatment can help in treating lesions and other tissue injuries. For example, chemotherapy or radiotherapy, when combined with thermotherapy, kills tumorous cells more effectively. Thermotherapy is considered a promising approach for treating internal lesions, but the advancement in the field depends on the availability of patient-friendly heat-inducing devices capable of rapidly increasing the temperature of target tissues. Current clinical practices around thermotherapy majorly employ heat-generating devices that are probed inside ...

DALLAS - June 9, 2021 - A phenomenon in which an RNA named NORAD drives a protein named Pumilio to form liquid droplets in cells, much like oil in water, appears to tightly regulate the activity of Pumilio. A new study led by UT Southwestern scientists suggests that such RNA-driven "phase separation," in turn, protects against genome instability, premature aging, and neurodegenerative diseases, and may represent a previously unrecognized way for RNAs to regulate cellular processes. "It's becoming more and more clear that phase separation is an important organizing ...

A research team, led by Professor Kyoung-Duck Park in the Department of Physics at UNIST has succeeded in investigating and controlling the physical properties of naturally-formed nanoscale wrinkles in two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. This is thanks to their previously-developed hyperspectral adaptive tip-enhanced photoluminescence (a-TEPL) spectroscopy. This will be a major step forward in developing paper-thin, ultra-flexible displays. Wrinkles are an inevitable structural deformation in 2D semiconductor materials, which gives rise to spatial heterogeneity in material properties, according to the research team. Such structural deformation has long been considered one of the top technical challenges in semiconductor manufacturing, as this would harm the uniformity ...

Young clownfish living closest to shore are dying faster than those further offshore because they are being exposed to artificial lighting, says an international research team. Working on the reefs around Moorea in French Polynesia, scientists from France, the United Kingdom, Chile and Australia found that nearshore juvenile clownfish living in anemones under lights had higher mortality than juveniles in anemones not exposed to artificial light. The scientists also found that the surviving clownfish grew 44 per cent more slowly than clownfish under natural lighting conditions. Professor Stephen Swearer, a marine ecologist, from the University of Melbourne, ...

Scientists have leapt over the emerging problem of publication bias within genetic research by performing a meta-analysis of publicly available databases of 'transcriptomes', or the full range of messenger RNA molecules produced by an organism. Researchers from Hiroshima University applied the technique to their own field--the study of the genes that are activated when an organism experiences low-oxygen conditions--but it should also be applicable in any other fields that make use of the transcriptome, providing a powerful weapon against the threat posed by publication bias. The meta-analysis technique ...

A research collaboration based in Kumamoto University, Japan has revealed the DNA methylation status of gene transcriptional regulatory regions in the frontal lobes of patients with bipolar disorder (BD). The regions with altered DNA methylation status were significantly enriched in genomic regions which were reported to be genetically related to BD. These findings are expected to advance the understanding of the pathogenesis of BD and the development of therapeutic drugs targeting epigenetic conditions. BD is a mental disorder that affects about 1% of the population and requires long-term treatment. Epidemiological studies have ...

RUDN University chemist with his colleagues from Portugal has developed two types of coating based on new coordination polymers with silver. Both compounds were successfully tested against four common pathogens. The results are published in ACS Publications (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces). Due to the rapid mutation, harmful microorganisms constantly adapt to new antibiotics and antiseptics. It is especially difficult to destroy bacteria when they form a biofilm. They stick together and create a community ready to fight antimicrobial agents back. Coordination polymers (scaffolds made of metal ions and organic ligands) can solve this problem. They prevent pathogens from ...

Since energy storage devices are often used in a magnetic field environment, scientists have often explored how an external magnetic field affects the charge storage of nonmagnetic aqueous carbon-based supercapacitor systems. Recently, an experiment designed by Prof. YAN Xingbin's group from the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed that applying an external magnetic field can induce capacitance change in aqueous acidic and alkaline electrolytes, but not in neutral electrolytes. The experiment also shows that the force field can explain the origin of the magnetic field effect. This new discovery establishes ...

Tokyo, Japan - Incoming sensory information can affect the brain's structure, which may in turn affect the body's motor output. However, the specifics of this process are not always well understood. In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) found that when young rats were fed a diet of either soft or regular food, these different sensory inputs led to differences in muscle control and electrical activity of the jaw when a specific chewing-related brain region was stimulated. Chewing is mainly controlled by the brainstem, a brain region that controls many automatic activities such as breathing and swallowing. For ...

Indigenous Māori people may have set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent as early as the 7th century, new research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand shows. Over the last 200 years, narratives about the Antarctic have been of those carried out by predominantly European male explorers. However, this new study uncovers the story of the deep-rooted connections of Māori (and Polynesian) people with Antarctica dating back as far as the seventh century and continuing into the present day. "We found connections to Antarctica and its waters have been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging, and later ...

RUDN University professor and her colleagues from France proved that higher intake of magnesium and vitamin B6 helps to cope with the consequences of magnesium deficiency during pregnancy and in hormone-related conditions in women. Within four weeks, the painful symptoms become less severe, the quality of life improves, and the risks of miscarriage are reduced. The results of the study are published in Scientific Reports. Magnesium is involved in important processes in the human body -- from protein synthesis to respiration. The most common causes of magnesium imbalance are a lack of this element in the diet, diabetes, and hypertension. The problem of magnesium ...

The research team led by Prof. GUO Guangcan from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), together with Prof. Adam Gali from Wigner Research Centre for Physics, realized robust coherent control of solid-state spin qubits using anti-Strokes (AS) excitation, broadening the boundary of quantum information processing and quantum sensing. This study was published in Nature Communications. Solid-state color center spin qubits play an important role in quantum computing, quantum networks and high-sensitivity quantum sensing. Considered as the basis of quantum technology application, optically detected magnetic ...

Research, development, and production of novel materials depend heavily on the availability of fast and at the same time accurate simulation methods. Machine learning, in which artificial intelligence (AI) autonomously acquires and applies new knowledge, will soon enable researchers to develop complex material systems in a purely virtual environment. How does this work, and which applications will benefit? In an article published in the Nature Materials journal, a researcher from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and his colleagues from Göttingen and Toronto explain it all. (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-020-0777-6) Digitization and virtualization are becoming increasingly important in a wide range of scientific disciplines. One of these disciplines ...

A research team led by Professor Jianping Huang from Lanzhou University has launched a Global Prediction System for COVID-19 pandemic. Their recent work explored the periodicity and mutability in the evolutionary history of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigated the principle mechanisms behind them. They attributed the periodic oscillations of COVID-19 daily cases to seasonal modulations and reporting bias, and identified the unrestricted mass gatherings as the main culprit of the COVID-19 disaster. Their findings, entitled "The oscillation-outbreaks characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic", were published in National Science Review. In this study, the influence ...

Bristle worms are found almost everywhere in seawater, they have populated the oceans for hundreds of millions of years. Nevertheless, some of their special features have only now been deciphered: Their jaws are made of remarkably stable material, and the secret of this stability can now be explained by experiments at TU Wien in cooperation with Max Perutz Labs. Metal atoms, which are incorporated into the protein structure of the material, play a decisive role. They make the material hard and flexible at the same time - very similar to ordinary metals. Further ...

X-rays are widely used to study the structures of various objects. New sources of x-rays, like Free Electron Lasers and 4th generation synchrotrons are being built around the Globe. The best optics for the new sources is usually made of the single crystal materials, such as silicon, germanium or diamond. However, the ideal periodicity of crystals leads to some unwanted diffraction losses - X-ray glitches. This effect causes dips in the intensity of the radiation transmitted through the optical element, down to zero. Scientists from the Immanuel Kant Baltic ...

Language is one of our species' most important skills, as it has enabled us to occupy nearly every corner of the planet. Among other things, language allows indigenous societies to use the biodiversity that surrounds them as a "living pharmacy" and to describe the medicinal properties of plants. Linguists estimate that there are nearly 7,400 languages in the world today. Most of these languages, however, are not recorded in writing, and many languages are not being passed on to the next generation. This has led linguists to estimate that 30 percent of all languages will disappear by the end of the 21st century. For indigenous cultures who mostly transmit knowledge orally, this ...

A research group at KAIST has engineered bacterial strains capable of producing three carotenoids and four violacein derivatives, completing the seven colors in the rainbow spectrum. The research team integrated systems metabolic engineering and membrane engineering strategies for the production of seven natural rainbow colorants in engineered Escherichia coli strains. The strategies will be also useful for the efficient production of other industrially important natural products used in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. Colorants are widely used in our lives and are directly related to human health when we eat food additives and wear cosmetics. However, most of these colorants are made from petroleum, causing unexpected side effects and health problems. Furthermore, ...

Feelings of anxiety, pessimism and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic led middle-aged women in both Australia and the UK to stock up on alcohol, which was associated with drinking more, a new Flinders University-led study has found. The research, led by Dr Emma Miller in Flinders University's College of Medicine and Public Health, also found women in the UK were more likely to drink at risky levels than their Australian counterparts during lockdown, and were more likely to have stockpiled alcohol. Despite these differences, the research found the emotional responses to ...