LA JOLLA--(March 25, 2021) The brush of an insect's wing is enough to trigger a Venus flytrap to snap shut, but the biology of how these plants sense and respond to touch is still poorly understood, especially at the molecular level. Now, a new study by Salk and Scripps Research scientists identifies what appears to be a key protein involved in touch sensitivity for flytraps and other carnivorous plants. The findings, published March 16, 2021, in the journal eLife, help explain a critical process that has long puzzled botanists. This could help scientists better understand how plants of all kinds sense and respond to mechanical stimulation, and could also have a potential application in medical therapies that mechanically stimulate human cells such as neurons. "We know that plants ...

A multi-institutional collaboration has revealed that α-solanine, a toxic compound found in potato plants, is a divergent of the bitter-tasting α-tomatine, which is found in tomato plants. The research group included Associate Professor MIZUTANI Masaharu and Researcher AKIYAMA Ryota et al. of Kobe University's Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Assistant Professor WATANABE Bunta of Kyoto University's Institute for Chemical Research, Senior Research Scientist UMEMOTO Naoyuki of the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, and Professor MURANAKA Toshiya of Osaka University's Graduate School of Engineering. It ...

Salts are far more complicated than the food seasoning - they can even act as electrical conductors, shuttling current through systems. Extremely well studied and understood, the electrical properties of salts were first theorized in 1834. Now, nearly 200 years later, researchers based in Japan have uncovered a new kind of salt. The results were published on March 17 in Inorganic Chemistry, a journal of the American Chemical Society. The researchers were specifically investigating how one-dimensional versions of three-dimensional substances exhibit unique physical phenomena and functionality in a process called the ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A novel analysis of encounters between albatross and commercial fishing vessels across the North Pacific Ocean is giving researchers important new understanding about seabird-vessel interactions that could help reduce harmful encounters. The new research method, which combines location data from GPS-tagged albatross and commercial fishing vessels, allows researchers to accurately identify bird-vessel encounters and better understand bird behavior, environmental conditions and the characteristics that influence these encounters. "It is hard to conceptualize how often birds ...

For the first time, researchers from the SponGES project collected year-round video footage and hydrodynamic data from the mysterious world of a deep-sea sponge ground in the Arctic. Deep-sea sponge grounds are often compared to the rich ecosystems of coral reefs and form true oases. In a world where all light has disappeared and without obvious food sources, they provide a habitat for other invertebrates and a refuge for fish in the otherwise barren landscape. It is still puzzling how these biodiversity hotspots survive in this extreme environment as deep as 1500 metres below the water surface. With over 700 hundred ...

Ikoma, Japan - Gear trains have been used for centuries to translate changes in gear rotational speed into changes in rotational force. Cars, drills, and basically anything that has spinning parts use them. Molecular-scale gears are a much more recent invention that could use light or a chemical stimulus to initiate gear rotation. Researchers at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan, in partnership with research teams at University Paul Sabatier, France, report in a new study published in Chemical Science a means to visualize snapshots of an ultrasmall ...

People who are physically active on a regular basis recover better after surgery for colorectal cancer. However, starting to exercise only after the diagnosis is a fact had no effect on recovery, a University of Gothenburg thesis shows. In working on his thesis, Aron Onerup, who obtained his doctorate in surgery at the University's Sahlgrenska Academy and is now a specialist doctor at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, carried out an observational study of 115 patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer. The participants who had been physically inactive proved, three weeks after their surgery, to be at higher risk of not feeling that they ...

Microswimmers are artificial, self-propelled, microscopic particles. They are capable of directional motion in a solution. The Molecular Nanophotonics Group at Leipzig University has developed special particles that are smaller than one-thirtieth of the diameter of a hair. They can change their direction of motion by heating tiny gold particles on their surface and converting this energy into motion. "However, these miniaturised machines cannot take in and learn information like their living counterparts. To achieve this, we control the microswimmers externally so that they learn to navigate in a virtual environment through what is known as reinforcement learning," said Cichos. With the help of virtual rewards, the microswimmers find their way through the liquid ...

Food scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have made an antibacterial gel bandage using the discarded husks of the popular tropical fruit, durian. Known as the "King of Fruits" in Southeast Asia, the durian has a thick husk with spiky thorns which is discarded, while the sweet flesh surrounding the seeds on the inside is considered a delicacy. By extracting high-quality cellulose from the durian husks and combining it with glycerol - a waste by-product from the biodiesel and soap industry - NTU scientists created a soft gel, similar to silicon sheets, which can be cut into bandages of various shapes and sizes. They then added the organic molecules produced from baker's yeast known as natural yeast phenolics, making the bandage deadly ...

In order to assess the risk of bats dying at wind turbines, it is common practice to record the acoustic activity of bats within the operating range of the rotor blades. For this purpose, ultrasonic detectors are attached to the nacelles of the mast top. In a recent analysis, a team of scientists led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) concludes that the effectiveness of this acoustic monitoring is insufficient to reliably predict mortality risk, especially for bats at large turbines. They therefore recommend installing supplementary ultrasonic detectors at other locations on the wind turbines and developing additional techniques such as radar and thermal imaging cameras for monitoring. The results of their analysis are published in ...

European listed companies in the energy and mining sector provide, to say the least, sparse information on future environmental costs in their annual reports. Researchers believe that stricter guidelines are required as the lack of information may lead to underestimation of environmental liabilities, resulting in that future generations may have to bear the burden of cleanup costs. "I believe that the future environmental liabilities such as decommissioning costs are often underestimated and few understand the burden these costs might impose on future generations. If, for example, an oil & gas company fails, it costs an incredible amount to clean up after old oil wells and the risk is great that the taxpayers will have to pay the bill. Therefore, it is important that environmental obligations ...

Increased allergic reactions may be tied to the corticotropin-releasing stress hormone (CRH), suggests a study published this month in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. These findings may help clarify the mechanism by which CRH induces proliferation of mast cells (MC) - agents involved in the development of allergies in the human nasal cavity. "In my daily practice, I meet many patients with allergies who say their symptoms worsened due to psychological stress," states lead researcher Mika Yamanaka-Takaichi, a graduate student of the Department of Dermatology, Osaka City University, "This is what led me to do this research." Together with Professor Daisuke Tsuruta of the same department, they hypothesized that due to its ...

Bright but disadvantaged students from urban areas are more likely to enter elite UK universities than similar peers from rural communities due to an urban 'escalator effect', according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Bath analysed data from 800,000 English students commencing university in the years 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. They found that while in general rural areas had higher overall progression to university than city centres and surrounding areas, when controlling for factors including socio-economic status, age, ethnicity and sex, disadvantaged pupils from rural areas were less likely to progress to one of 27 'top' UK universities. The authors suggest the difference ...

NIMS and RIKEN have succeeded in synthesizing the longest ever bottlebrush polymer. This polymer--resembling a green foxtail--is composed of a main chain and numerous side chains grafting from it. The team also succeeded in giving various chemical properties to the ultralong bottlebrush polymer. These achievements are expected to substantially advance the current synthetic methods of bottlebrush polymers. This technique may be applicable to the development of flexible and low-friction polymeric materials. In the development of polymeric materials, it is necessary to link molecular units with desired chemical properties, called monomers, to ...

Prof. ZHAO Jin's research team from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has made important progress in the development of Spin-Valley exciton dynamics. The research developed an ab initio nonadiabatic molecular dynamics (NAMD) method based on for the spin-resolved exciton dynamics. The team gained the first clear and complete physical picture of valley exciton dynamics in MoS2 from the perspective of first-principles calculations based on GW plus real-time Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW + rtBSE-NAMD). It can accurately include many-body effects at the level of first principles and break through the bottleneck of GW+BSE method in ...

When we grow crystals, atoms first group together into small clusters - a process called nucleation. But understanding exactly how such atomic ordering emerges from the chaos of randomly moving atoms has long eluded scientists. Classical nucleation theory suggests that crystals form one atom at a time, steadily increasing the level of order. Modern studies have also observed a two-step nucleation process, where a temporary, high-energy structure forms first, which then changes into a stable crystal. But according to an international research team co-led by the ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A 10-week muscle-building and dietary program involving 50 middle-aged adults found no evidence that eating a high-protein diet increased strength or muscle mass more than consuming a moderate amount of protein while training. The intervention involved a standard strength-training protocol with sessions three times per week. None of the participants had previous weightlifting experience. Published in the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism, the study is one of the most comprehensive investigations of the health effects of diet and resistance training in middle-aged adults, the researchers say. Participants were 40-64 years ...

Fossil fuel producers in the U.S. are directly benefiting from implicit subsidies on the order of $62 billion a year because of inefficient pricing that doesn't properly account for the costs of damages to the environment, climate, and human health. That's the finding of a newly published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Yale School of the Environment Economics Professor Matthew Kotchen that analyzed gasoline, natural gas, diesel, and coal. The total annual implicit subsidy is equivalent to an average of 3% of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the study which examined data from 2010-2018. ...

A recent Oregon State University study found that when people feel they have resolved an argument, the emotional response associated with that disagreement is significantly reduced and, in some situations, almost entirely erased. That reduction in stress may have a major impact on overall health, researchers say. "Everyone experiences stress in their daily lives. You aren't going to stop stressful things from happening. But the extent to which you can tie them off, bring them to an end and resolve them is definitely going to pay dividends in terms of your well-being," said Robert Stawski, senior author on the study and an associate professor ...

The Gerontological Society of America's highly cited, peer-reviewed journals are continuing to publish scientific articles on COVID-19. The following were published between January 8 and March 15; all are free to access: Comment on: "Beyond chronological age: Frailty and multimorbidity predict in-hospital mortality in patients with coronavirus disease 2019": Letter to the editor in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences by Noémie Girard, MS, Geoffrey Odille, MS, Stéphane Sanchez, MD, Sarah Lelarge, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Long before Tyrone, Jermaine and Darnell came along, there were Isaac, Abe and Prince. A new study reveals the earliest evidence of distinctively Black first names in the United States, finding them arising in the early 1700s and then becoming increasingly common in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The results confirm previous work that shows the use of Black names didn't start during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as some scholars have argued, said Trevon Logan, co-author of the study and professor of economics at The Ohio State University. "Even ...

The Amazon rainforest is teeming with creatures unknown to science--and that's just in broad daylight. After dark, the forest is a whole new place, alive with nocturnal animals that have remained even more elusive to scientists than their day-shift counterparts. In a new paper in Zootaxa, researchers described two new species of screech owls that live in the Amazon and Atlantic forests, both of which are already critically endangered. "Screech owls are considered a well-understood group compared to some other types of organisms in these areas," says John Bates, curator of birds at the Field Museum in Chicago and one of the study's authors. "But when you start listening to them and comparing ...

Scientists estimate that dark matter and dark energy together are some 95% of the gravitational material in the universe while the remaining 5% is baryonic matter, which is the "normal" matter composing stars, planets, and living beings. However for decades almost one half of this matter has not been found either. Now, using a new technique, a team in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated, has shown that this "missing" baryonic matter is found filling the space between the galaxies as hot, low density gas. The same technique also gives a new tool that shows that the gravitational attraction experienced by ...

Researchers from Queen Mary University of London have developed a machine learning algorithm that ranks drugs based on their efficacy in reducing cancer cell growth. The approach may have the potential to advance personalised therapies in the future by allowing oncologists to select the best drugs to treat individual cancer patients. The method, named Drug Ranking Using Machine Learning (DRUML), was published today in Nature Communications and is based on machine learning analysis of data derived from the study of proteins expressed in cancer cells. Having been trained on ...

The interiors of nonflowering trees such as pine and ginkgo contain sapwood lined with straw-like conduits known as xylem, which draw water up through a tree's trunk and branches. Xylem conduits are interconnected via thin membranes that act as natural sieves, filtering out bubbles from water and sap. MIT engineers have been investigating sapwood's natural filtering ability, and have previously fabricated simple filters from peeled cross-sections of sapwood branches, demonstrating that the low-tech design effectively filters bacteria. Now, the same team has advanced the technology and shown that it works in real-world situations. They have fabricated new xylem filters that can filter out pathogens ...