Ask anyone what first springs to mind when they think of Australia and they’ll most likely say a kangaroo; the marsupial is ingrained in our national identity. But have you ever wondered why kangaroos never ventured beyond our shores?  A major study led by biologists at The Australian National University (ANU) and ETH Zurich in Switzerland provides a new explanation for why you won’t find kangaroos, koalas and other Aussie marsupials in Indonesia, but you will find many groups of animals that originated in Asia, such as goannas, ...

Solid electrolytes with high lithium-ion conductivity can be designed for millimeter-thick battery electrodes by increasing the complexity of their composite superionic crystals, report researchers from Tokyo Tech. This new design rule enables the synthesis of high-entropy active materials while preserving their superionic conduction.   As the world transitions towards a greener and more sustainable energy economy, reliance on lithium (Li)-ion batteries is expected to rise. Scientists from across the globe are working towards designing smaller yet efficient batteries that can keep up with the ever-increasing demand for energy ...

If you travel to Bali, you won’t see a cockatoo, but if you go to the neighbouring island of Lombok, you will. The situation is similar with marsupials: Australia is home to numerous marsupial species, such as the kangaroo and the koala. The further west you go, the sparser they become. While you will find just two representatives of these typically Australian mammals on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, you will search in vain for them on neighbouring Borneo. Australia, on the other hand, is not home to mammals that you will typically find in Asia, such as bears, tigers ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- When your laptop or smartphone heats up, it’s due to energy that’s lost in translation. The same goes for power lines that transmit electricity between cities. In fact, around 10 percent of the generated energy is lost in the transmission of electricity. That’s because the electrons that carry electric charge do so as free agents, bumping and grazing against other electrons as they move collectively through power cords and transmission lines. All this jostling generates friction, and, ultimately, heat.   But when electrons pair up, they can rise above the fray and glide through a material without ...

Sara Clasen is the 2023 winner of the NOSTER & Science Microbiome Prize for her work in illuminating how “silent flagellins” from commensal microbiota evade a host’s innate immunity. The NOSTER & Science Microbiome Prize aims to reward innovative research from young investigators working on the functional attributes of the microbiota of any organism that has potential to contribute to our understanding of health and disease, or to guide novel therapeutic interventions. Strong adaptive immune responses require activation of innate immunity. To do this, innate ...

WASHINGTON — Researchers have developed the first fiber laser that can produce femtosecond pulses in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Fiber lasers producing ultrashort, bright visible-wavelength pulses could be useful for a variety of biomedical applications as well as other areas such as material processing. Visible femtosecond pulses are usually obtained using complex and inherently inefficient setups. Although fiber lasers represent a very promising alternative due to their ruggedness/reliability, small footprint, efficiency, lower cost and high brightness, it hasn’t been possible, until now, to produce visible pulses with durations in the femtosecond ...

URBANA, Ill. — Winter cover crops could cut nitrogen pollution in Illinois’ agricultural drainage water up to 30%, according to recent research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But how will future climate change affect nitrogen loss, and will cover crops still be up to the job? A new study investigating near- and far-term climate change in Illinois suggests cover crops will still be beneficial, but not to the same degree. The report also forecasts corn ...

(Boston) – U.S. Black women have a disproportionately higher burden of both preeclamptic pregnancy and stroke compared with white women, but virtually all existing evidence on the association between the two medical conditions has come from studies of white women.   A newly published study focuses on data gathered over 25 years from 59,000 Black women in the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS) and is led by researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Slone Epidemiology Center. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine Evidence, ...

By conserving and replanting forests, the world buys time until it brings other climate and sustainability solutions online. As a critical step toward this goal, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) received a $12 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund to support GEO-TREES. This international consortium is the first worldwide system to independently ensure the accuracy of satellite monitoring of forest biomass—a way to measure carbon stored in trees—in all forest types and conditions. The GEO-TREES alliance offers a freely accessible database that integrates ...

In 985, Viking explorer Erik the Red led a group of Icelandic farmers to Greenland, where they established a settlement on the west coast. Archaeological evidence suggests that the settlement existed for over 400 years, but the impact of the settlement lasted much longer. It is little recognised today that the hope of finding the descendants of the settlers dominated European and American perspectives on Greenland for centuries In his new book The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy, Associate Professor Robert Rix argues that the lost Norse settlement played a decisive ...

The highest status individual in ancient Copper Age society in Iberia, was a woman and not a man as previously thought, according to peptide analysis reported in Scientific Reports. The individual, now re-dubbed the 'Ivory Lady', was buried in a tomb filled with the largest collection of rare and valuable items in the region, including ivory tusks, high-quality flint, ostrich eggshell, amber, and a rock crystal dagger. These findings reveal the high status women could hold in this ancient society. In 2008, an individual was discovered in a tomb in Valencia, Spain dating to the Copper Age between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago. As well as being a rare example of a single occupancy ...

As a psychiatric disorder with onset in adulthood, schizophrenia is thought to be triggered by some combination of environmental factors and genetics, although the exact cause is still not fully understood. In a study published in the journal Cell Genomics on July 6, researchers find a correlation between schizophrenia and somatic copy-number variants, a type of mutation that occurs early in development but after genetic material is inherited. This study is one of the first to rigorously describe the relationship between somatic—not inherited—genetic mutations and schizophrenia risk. “We originally thought of genetics as the study of inheritance. But now we ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In an advance that will help scientists track coronavirus variants in wild and domesticated animals, researchers report they can now detect exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in any animal species. Most coronavirus antibody tests require specialized chemical reagents to detect host antibody responses against the virus in each species tested, impeding research across species. The virus that causes COVID-19 in humans also infects a variety of animals, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign pathobiology professor and virologist Ying Fang, who led the new research. So far, ...

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published today in Nature Geoscience. The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, identified large stocks of methane gas leaking from groundwater springs unveiled by melting glaciers. The research suggests that these methane emissions will likely increase as Arctic glaciers retreat and more ...

About The Study: This decision analytic model showed that within the context of a high SARS-CoV-2 probability, monoclonal antibodies pre-exposure prophylaxis (mAbs PrEP) provision was cost-saving when provided to individuals at increased risk of severe COVID-19 if drug prices decrease to $275 and effectiveness is 75% or higher. When newer mAbs PrEP combinations become available, guidance on implementation should be formulated ensuring a fast rollout. Nevertheless, advocacy for mAbs PrEP use and critical discussion on drug prices are necessary to ensuring cost-effectiveness for different epidemic settings.  Authors: Stephanie Popping, M.D., Ph.D., of the University ...

About The Study: Hearing loss was cross-sectionally associated with higher frequency of fatigue after adjustment for demographics, lifestyle factors, and comorbidities in this nationally representative sample of middle-age and older adults. Future studies with fatigue assessments capturing its multidimensionality are needed to understand how hearing loss might contribute to physical and mental fatigue differentially and clarify how hearing loss may be associated with downstream outcomes like physical impairment through fatigue.  Authors: Nicholas ...

According to a recently published research paper by a team of scientists, a groundbreaking approach has been developed to create artificial allosteric sites (where by binding an effector molecule, activity at the distal active site is regulated) in protein complexes. This breakthrough research holds significant promise for a wide range of applications in industrial, biological, medical, and agricultural fields. The team’s work is published in Nature Chemistry on 06 July 2023 at 16:00 (London time)   Protein complexes, such as hemoglobin and molecular motors, ...

A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge reveals a surprising discovery that could transform the future of electrochemical devices. The findings offer new opportunities for the development of advanced materials and improved performance in fields such as energy storage, brain-like computing, and bioelectronics. Electrochemical devices rely on the movement of charged particles, both ions and electrons, to function properly. However, understanding how these charged particles move together has presented a significant challenge, hindering progress in creating new materials for these devices. In ...

Many Americans can trace some lines of their family tree back to the 1600s. However, African Americans descended from enslaved Africans, who began arriving in North America in 1619, lack ancestral information spanning several centuries. A new USC and Stanford study, recently published in Genetics, provides insight into who occupies these missing branches of family trees — and gives a glimpse of how many branches there are. “Slavery was not that many generations ago, so my family still tells stories about our enslaved ancestors, like who they were and, in my case, how we ended up as light as we are,” said first author Jazlyn Mooney, the Gabilan Assistant Professor of Quantitative ...

Depictions of the Milky Way show a coiling pattern of spiral "arms" filled with stars extending outward from the center. Similar patterns have been observed in the swirling clouds of gas and dust surrounding some young stars – planetary systems in the making. These so-called protoplanetary disks, which are the birthplaces of young planets, are of interest to scientists because they offer glimpses into what the solar system may have looked like in its infancy and into how planets may form in general. Scientists have long thought that spiral arms in these disks ...

HOUSTON – A new study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center provides a deeper understanding of the evolution of the tumor microenvironment during gastric cancer progression. Highlights of the study, published today in Cancer Cell, include a link between multicellular communities and clinical outcomes as well as a potential new therapeutic target. Gastric adenocarcinoma is one of the most lethal cancers worldwide due to inherent treatment resistance, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the progression from early pre-cancer to tumor formation and metastasis are not well understood. This research sheds light on how the various ...

SAN FRANCISCO — PLOS today is announcing that it has extended the scope of its “Accessible Data” experiment, which was first launched in March 2022, with support from a Wellcome Trust grant. The experimental “Accessible Data” feature is designed to increase research data sharing and reuse by highlighting links to select repositories with an eye-catching icon on the article page. We are now expanding from the original three repositories to nine, which together host about three quarters of the outputs linked to from PLOS articles. PLOS began its Accessible Data experiment with two overarching goals. First, to increase reuse of datasets linked to PLOS articles ...

Researchers have combined research with real and robotic insects to better understand how they sense forces in their limbs while walking, providing new insights into the biomechanics and neural dynamics of insects and informing new applications for large legged robots. Campaniform sensilla (CS) are force receptors found in the limbs of insects that respond to stress and strain, providing important information for controlling locomotion. Similar force receptors exist in mammals known as Golgi tendon organs, suggesting that understanding the role ...

Obesity risk genes make people feel hungrier and lose control over their eating, but practicing dietary restraint could counteract this. New research by University of Exeter, Exeter Clinical Research Facility, and University of Bristol – funded by the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership and published in the International Journal of Epidemiology - found that those with higher genetic risk of obesity can reduce the effects that are transmitted via hunger and uncontrolled eating by up to half through dietary restraint. Psychology PhD student, Shahina Begum, from the University of Exeter is lead author and said: “At a time when high ...

Researchers have discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed about 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe. In addition to the black hole in CEERS 1019, the researchers identified two more black holes that are on the smaller side and existed 1 billion and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. JWST also identified eleven galaxies that existed when the universe was 470 million to 675 million years old. The evidence was provided ...