(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Beginning around 2.5 million years ago, Earth entered an era marked by successive ice ages and interglacial periods, emerging from the last glaciation around 11,700 years ago. A new analysis suggests the onset of the next ice age could be expected in 10,000 years’ time. An international team, including researchers form UC Santa Barbara, made their prediction based on a new interpretation of the small changes in Earth’s orbit of the sun, which lead to massive shifts in the planet’s climate over periods of thousands of years. The study tracks the natural cycles of the planet’s climate over a period ...

The quantum rules shaping molecular collisions are now coming into focus, offering fresh insights for chemistry and materials science. When molecules collide with surfaces, a complex exchange of energy takes place between the molecule and the atoms composing the surface. But beneath this dizzying complexity, quantum mechanics, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, governs the process. Quantum interference, in particular, plays a key role. It occurs when different pathways that a molecule can take overlap, resulting ...

The discovery of a powerful “weapon” used by many disease-causing fungi to infect and destroy major food crop staples, such as rice and corn, could offer new strategies to bolster global food security, according to researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) in collaboration with scientists in Germany and the United States.  Like humans, many fungi rely on plants as a food source. This impacts the yield of food crops. It’s estimated farmers lose between 10 to 23 per cent of their crops to fungal disease every year.  The global research team discovered that an enzyme known as a ‘NUDIX hydrolase’ is ...

NORMAN, OKLA. – In an increasingly data-saturated world, computing infrastructure innovations are needed to make sense of new types of information. Richard Veras, a professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma, has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award to develop such an innovation by creating more efficient infrastructure for the computation of sparse and irregular data. Big data – datasets that are challenging to manage using traditional processing tools due to size and complexity, such as social ...

Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen small satellite galaxies circling the Andromeda galaxy, like bees around a hive. These satellite galaxies represent a rambunctious galactic "ecosystem" that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is studying in unprecedented detail. This ambitious Hubble Treasury Program used observations from more than a whopping 1,000 Hubble orbits. Hubble's optical stability, clarity, and efficiency ...

Scientists based at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing on Caltech's campus have made a leap forward in figuring out how to suppress errors in quantum computers, a pesky problem that continues to be the greatest hurdle to building the machines of the future.   Quantum computers, which are based on the seemingly magical properties of the quantum realm, hold promise for use in many different fields, including medicine, materials science, cryptography, and fundamental physics. But while today's quantum computers can be useful for ...

The Association for Computing Machinery’s Technology Policy Council (TPC) has announced the publication of “TechBrief: Technology Policy Can Curb Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, and Crimes Against Children,” a new issue brief which explains how intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and child exploitation are facilitated by computing technologies. The term “tech abuse” pertains to a wide variety of abuse in this context. The ACM policy experts contend that tech abuse is being addressed inconsistently, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA – One large metropolis might have several different train systems, from local intercity lines to commuter trains to longer regional lines. When designing a system of train tracks, stations, and schedules in this network, should rail operators assume each entity operates independently, seeking only to maximize its own revenue? Or that they fully cooperate all the time with a joint plan, putting their own interest aside? In the real world, neither assumption is very realistic. Researchers from MIT and ETH Zurich have developed a new planning ...

Key take-aways: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a stage of decline in cognitive function greater than normal for a person’s age and education, not severe enough to impair daily function – but it can progress. Around one third of people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) also have MCI, yet MCI is undiagnosed in 50-80% of these cases. The central aim of the EU’s DORIAN GRAY project is to untangle this MCI-CVD connection, reduce the burden of disease at older ages and prolong survival. Brescia, Italy – 27 February 2025 – A major new project, DORIAN GRAY, ...

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a crucial role in protecting childhood and adult health by developing vaccination recommendations based on scientific evidence. SHEA encourages timely rescheduling of the ACIP’s meeting that was scheduled for February 2025 to ensure patients and healthcare providers  are getting the most up to date recommendations based on the latest scientific evidence review regarding vaccination.  The ACIP’s recommendations are foundational to public health, guiding pediatric and adult vaccine schedules that have significantly reduced the prevalence of highly communicable infectious ...

Filippo Radicchi, professor of Informatics at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, co-authored a ground-breaking study that could lead to the development of new AI algorithms and new ways to study brain function. The study, titled “Topology shapes dynamics of higher-order networks,” and published in Nature Physics, proposed a theoretical framework specifically designed for understanding complex higher-order networks. It could lead to breakthroughs ...

A unique dark-coloured organic glass, found inside the skull of an individual who died in Herculaneum during the 79 CE Mount Vesuvius eruption, likely formed when they were killed by a very hot but short-lived ash cloud. The conclusion, from research published in Scientific Reports, is based on an analysis of the physical properties of the glass, thought to comprise the fossilised brain of the individual. Glass rarely occurs naturally due to the specific conditions required for formation. For a substance to become glass, its liquid form must cool fast ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers compared the feathers and bodies of different species of flightless birds and their closest relatives who can still fly. They were able to determine which features change first when birds evolve to be flightless, versus which traits take more time for evolution to alter. These findings help shed light on the evolution of complex traits that lose their original ...

A new study has identified a genetic circuit in plants that controls individual leaf growth and allows the plants to adapt to their environment. The findings could help the development of more drought-resistant crops. Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Biosciences investigated the growth of maize leaves in plants cultivated in three different soils containing differential amounts of nutrients and water.  They found that microbes colonising plant leaves across these soils influence the growth of the leaves independently of the concentration of nutrients and soil properties. The findings have been published ...

Mothers who were given access to virtual breastfeeding support (or telelactation) through a free app tended to report more breastfeeding than peers who did not receive such help, with a more-pronounced effect observed among Black mothers, according to a new RAND study.     Reporting results from the first large trial of telelactation services, researchers found that mothers who were given access to video telelactation services reported slightly higher rates of breastfeeding six months after giving birth, as compared to mothers who did not receive the service.      The ...

About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of U.S. homicide rates, substantial variation was found across and within county, race and ethnicity, sex, and age groups; American Indian and Alaska Native and Black males ages 15 to 44 had the highest rates of homicide. The findings highlight several populations and places where homicide rates were high, but awareness and violence prevention remains limited. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Paula D. Strassle, PhD, MSPH, email pdstrass@umd.edu. To access the embargoed ...

About The Study: This study found that the prevalence of adults with diabetes did not significantly change between 2013 and 2023, but glycemic control among those with diagnosed disease worsened in 2021-2023 after nearly a decade of stability. This trend was most pronounced among young adults. The increase of 1% in mean HbA1c levels and 20% decrease in glycemic control would increase the lifetime risk of cardiovascular events. Potential explanations for these findings include increased sedentary behavior, reduced social support, heightened mental health ...

About The Study: In this cohort study of 46,000 U.S. residents, nearly two-thirds of participants had suboptimal 5-year sleep duration trajectories. Suboptimal sleep duration trajectories were associated with as much as a 29% increase in risk of all-cause mortality. These findings highlight the importance of maintaining healthy sleep duration over time to reduce mortality risk. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Kelsie M. Full, PhD, MPH, email k.full@vumc.org. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.62117) Editor’s ...

Key Takeaways  Surgical adhesions — internal bands of scar tissue that form between organs or tissues after surgery— can lead to severe complications such as bowel obstructions, chronic pain, and infertility while increasing the difficulty of future operations.  Surgical adhesions negatively impact patient outcomes and drive up health care costs.  There is currently no standard measure of the severity of surgical adhesions or their impact on a patient’s quality of life.  CHICAGO – Scarring is expected after most operations, but surgical adhesions present a unique ...

Age-related macular (AMD) degeneration is a leading cause of vision impairment and blindness in the elderly population. In so-called wet AMD, new, abnormal blood vessels grow in the central part of the retina called macula, which is required for high-acuity central vision, leading to fluid and blood leakage and macular damage or dysfunction. Although wet AMD accounts for a minority of AMD cases, 90% of AMD-related cases of blindness are due to wet AMD. Wet AMD in its early stages can be treated with drugs to reduce the formation of new blood vessels, but this treatment is inefficient in cases where blood vessel formation is already in ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Michigan State University, Arizona State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.   The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed ...

Since the discovery of actin in relation to muscle function more than 80 years ago by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi in Szeged, Hungary, actin research has become extremely diverse and now extends to plants and prokaryotes, as well as biochemical, biophysical, molecular, and cellular biology fields. The need for an international actin conference with comprehensive topics, where the latest results and research directions are presented, is critical for the community. Therefore, we decided to bring together the best experts in actin biology from across the world to build research synergies to tackle long-standing questions ...

Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Arizona State University (ASU) , Michigan State University (MSU) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.  The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In conjunction with JWST, this collaboration, called the KRONOS program, will use computers ...

WASHINGTON — For the first time, researchers have used high-speed laser writing to create lines spaced just 100 nm apart on a glass substrate. The optimized printing approach could enable super-resolution 3D direct laser writing (DLW) of microlenses, photonics crystals, micro-optical devices, metamaterials and more. DLW is an additive manufacturing technique that uses a focused laser beam to selectively solidify, or polymerize, a material with nanoscale precision. DLW typically uses multi-photon polymerization to polymerize materials in a precise, ...

Scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an innovative combination of treatment strategies that work collaboratively to effectively kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells, a frequently incurable form of cancer. New research findings — published in the Nature family journal Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy — suggest that a class of drugs known as MCL-1 (myeloid leukemia cell-1) inhibitors interact with a type of kinase inhibitor that targets the SRC gene to efficiently trigger cell death in AML cells. “Results from this research could add another approach ...