UCLA Health researchers have discovered a group of specialized support cells in the brain that can regulate behaviors associated with human neuropsychiatric disorders. The study, published in the journal Nature, focused on a group of cells known as astrocytes – star-shaped cells that tile the central nervous system and provide a support structure for the neural communication networks.  While neurons have long been understood to have primary control of behavior, the study found that a distinct group of astrocytes located deep in the central region of the brain, known as the central striatum, may also regulate communications between neurons. Unlike ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a new study, scientists have discovered that viruses that infect microbes contribute to climate change by playing a key role in cycling methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the environment.  By analyzing nearly 1,000 sets of metagenomic DNA data from 15 different habitats, ranging from various lakes to the inside of a cow’s stomach, researchers found that microbial viruses carry special genetic elements for controlling methane processes, called auxiliary metabolic genes ...

A new paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology examines the possible effects of two properties of receiver playing fields documented in studies of animal psychology—habituation and neural adaptation—on the efficacy of mate choice signals. In “A Bridge between Animal Psychology and Sexual Selection: Possible Effects of Habituation and Neural Adaptation on Mate Choice Signals,” William G. Eberhard notes that researchers have paid little attention to habituation and neural adaptation in relation to sexual selection. Eberhard argues in favor of adding further dimensions to studies of female choice, noting that standard ...

International research co-authored by Joshua Fisher, associate professor in Chapman University’s Schmid College of Science and Technology, suggests that studying root function in tropical forests could help vegetation models improve predictions of climate change. Their study was published on Feb. 28 in New Phytologist. When it comes to understanding climate change, vegetation models are vital tools that help scientists study plants’ adaptation strategies to changing environmental conditions, including drying, warming and elevated carbon ...

The vocalizations of humans, bats, whales, seals and songbirds vastly differ from each other. Humans and birds, for example, are separated by some 300 million years of evolution. But scientists studying how these animals learn to "speak" have time and again seen surprising similarities in the connections in brain regions that support this vocal learning.  In a paper published in the journal Science, a multi-institutional team led by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, ...

Of the 38 million Americans who have diabetes at least 90% have Type 2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Type 2 diabetes occurs over time and is characterized by a loss of the cells in the pancreas that make the hormone insulin, which helps the body manage sugar. These cells make another protein, called islet amyloid polypeptide or IAPP, which has been found clumped together in many Type 2 diabetes patients. The formation of IAPP clusters is comparable to how a protein in the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients sticks together to eventually form the signature plaques associated with that ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Spring frosts can have devastating effects on apple production, and a warming climate may be causing trees to blossom early, making them more susceptible to the damaging effects of extreme cold events. Growers’ attempts to prevent the flowers from freezing by attempting to heat the canopies of their orchards largely have been inefficient. To deal with the worsening problem, Penn State researchers devised a frost protection cyber-physical system, which makes heating decisions based on real-time temperature and wind-direction data. The system consists of a temperature-sensing device, a propane-fueled heater that ...

New York City ranks in the top 15 percent safest of more than 800 U.S. cities, according to a pioneering new analysis from researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, suggesting  the effectiveness of the city’s efforts to mitigate homicides there. In a paper published in Nature Cities, a research team explored the role that population size of cities plays on the incidences of gun homicides, gun ownership and licensed gun sellers.  The researchers found that none of these quantities vary linearly with the population size. ...

In a landmark study, researchers at University of Washington and The Jackson Laboratory have characterized, in exacting detail, the rapid series of events that transform a single fertilized cell into a living, complex being. The work, reported this month in Nature, not only has enabled the team to explore which genes drive the differentiation of hundreds of cell types, but also shows, for the first time, that there are very rapid changes in genetic activity within the hour immediately following birth, underscoring the speed with which newborns must adapt. “The ...

Tropical trees are at the heart of this study. They are essential for climate regulation, maintaining biodiversity and providing crucial resources for many local communities. Understanding how they evolve genetically is therefore of vital importance for preserving biological diversity and finding sustainable solutions for tropical forest adaptation to the environmental pressures they face. The aim of this study was to identify the mutations accumulated during growth by two specimens of tropical trees sampled in French Guiana, a French overseas department covered to 96% by tropical forest. To do this, the scientists ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2024 MINNEAPOLIS – Pedaling on a stationary bicycle built for two may improve the health and well-being for both people with Parkinson’s disease and their care partners, according to a small, preliminary study released today, February 29, 2024, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 76th Annual Meeting taking place April 13–18, 2024, in person in Denver and online. “Our study found that a unique cycling program that pairs people with Parkinson’s disease with their care partners can improve ...

Preprints raise possibility of rethinking the peer-review process as they become more widely used and accepted – new article encourages their growing momentum and provides recommendations to empower researchers to provide open and constructive peer review for preprints   ##### In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002502 Article Title: Recommendations for accelerating ...

Every hug, every handshake, every dexterous act engages and requires touch perception. Therefore, it is essential to understand the molecular basis of touch. “Until now, we had known that the ion channel – Piezo2 – is required for touch perception, but it was clear that this protein alone cannot explain the entirety of touch sensation,” says Professor Gary Lewin, head of the Molecular Physiology of Somatic Sensation Lab at the Max Delbrück Center. For over 20 years Lewin has been studying the molecular basis of the sensation ...

Johns Hopkins Medicine neuroscientists say they have found a new function for the SYNGAP1 gene, a DNA sequence that controls memory and learning in mammals, including mice and humans. The finding, published March 1 in Science, may affect the development of therapies designed for children with SYNGAP1 mutations, who have a range of neurodevelopmental disorders marked by intellectual disability, autistic-like behaviors, and epilepsy. In general, SYNGAP1, as well as other genes, control learning and memory by making proteins that regulate the strength of synapses — the connections between brain ...

Ultraviolet “winds” from nearby massive stars are stripping the gas from a young star’s protoplanetary disk, causing it to rapidly lose mass, according to a new study. It reports the first directly observed evidence of far-ultraviolet (FUV)-driven photoevaporation of a protoplanetary disk. The findings, which use observations from the James Web Space Telescope (JWST), provide new insights into the constraints of gas giant planet formation, including in our own Solar System. Young low-mass stars are often surrounded by relatively short-lived protoplanetary disks of dust and gas, which provide the raw materials from which planets ...

Pelagic fish – species that occupy the water column of the open ocean, neither near the bottom nor near the shore – are more impacted by both human pressure and protection than bottom-dwelling benthic species, researchers report. The findings highlight the need for increased marine protection in remote pelagic locations. Body size is a universal biological property that influences a range of ecological processes in marine ecosystems. Measuring body-size-structured variation can be a useful framework for understanding and predicting the impacts of overfishing or the success ...

Climate change is altering the seasonality of river flow, particularly at high northern latitudes, according to a new study. Patterns in river flow vary with the seasons – a cycle that plays a critical role in floods and droughts, water security, and the health of biodiversity and ecosystems worldwide. Although recent studies have shown that climate change has already altered river flow seasonality (RFS), much of the evidence is limited to local regions or fails to consider the impact of climate change explicitly, independent of other human impacts to river flow. Consequently, the impact of climate warming on RFS isn’t ...

Energy security is a top priority across all levels of society because a host of global disruptions threaten energy systems and the critical functions they support. Most often, policymakers rely on policies and measurement indicators focused on energy supply to enhance energy security while ignoring demand-side possibilities. However, in a Policy Forum, Nuno Bento and colleagues argue that energy security is not solely security of supply; this limited focus fails to capture the full spectrum of vulnerability to energy crises. “Energy security is more than security ...

How do planetary systems such as the Solar System form? To find out, CNRS scientists taking part in an international research team1 studied a stellar nursery, the Orion Nebula, using the James Webb Space Telescope2. By observing a protoplanetary disc named d203-506, they have discovered the key role played by massive stars in the formation of such nascent planetary systems3. These stars, which are around 10 times more massive, and more importantly 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun, expose any planets forming in such systems nearby to very intense ultraviolet radiation. Depending on the mass of the star at the centre of the planetary system, this radiation can either help planets to ...

Climate change is disrupting the seasonal flow of rivers in the far northern latitudes of America, Russia and Europe and is posing a threat to water security and ecosystems, according to research published today. A team of scientists led by the University of Leeds analysed historical data from river gauging stations across the globe and found that 21% of them showed significant alterations in the seasonal rise and fall in water levels. The study used data-based reconstructions and state-of-the-art simulations to show that river flow is now far less likely to vary with the seasons in latitudes ...

When you walk into your kitchen in the morning, you easily orient yourself. To make coffee, you approach a specific location. Maybe you step into the pantry to grab a quick breakfast and then head to your car to drive to your workplace. How these apparently simple tasks happen is of major interest to neuroscientists at Baylor College of Medicine, Stanford University and collaborating institutions. Their work, published in the journal Science, has significantly improved our understanding of how this occurs by revealing a mechanism at the brain cell level that mediates how an animal moves about in the environment. “It’s been known that animals and people can find their ...

Governments typically rely on policies focused on energy supply to enhance energy security, ignoring demand-side options. Current indicators and indexes that measure energy security focus mostly on energy supply. This aligns with the International Energy Agency’s view, which defines energy security only in terms of security of supply. However, this approach does not fully capture the extent of vulnerability for states, businesses, and individuals during an energy crisis. “Energy security assessments also need to reflect how vulnerable countries, firms, and households are to energy ...

Electric vehicles are a critical part of Canada’s climate strategy, but a new University of British Columbia study highlights how it’s cheaper in some regions than others to drive electric—making it more challenging for certain households to make the switch. Location, location, location The researchers analyzed how far people need to drive their electric car to break even on the cost, factoring in the impacts of tax rebates and tax rates, charging costs, typical distance households travel in a region, and electricity ...

WASHINGTON — Climate change is heating the oceans, altering currents and circulation patterns responsible for regulating climate on a global scale. If temperatures dropped, some of that damage could theoretically be undone. But employing “emergency” atmospheric geoengineering later this century in the face of continuous high carbon emissions would not be able to reverse changes to ocean currents, a new study finds. This would critically curtail the intervention’s potential effectiveness ...

ANN ARBOR, Michigan — Researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center are exploiting a unique biological feature of glioblastoma to gain a better understanding of how this puzzling brain cancer develops and how to target new treatments against it.     The team, led by senior author Pedro Lowenstein, M.D., Ph.D., Richard Schneider Collegiate Professor of Neurosurgery at Michigan Medicine, had previously identified oncostreams as a key feature in glioblastoma development and in more aggressive disease. These highly active, elongated, spindle-like cells ...