Ghent, 29 November 2024 – We are increasingly confronted with the impacts of climate change, with failed harvests being only one example. Addressing these challenges requires multifaceted approaches, including making plants more resilient. An international research team led by researchers at VIB-UGent has unraveled how the opening and closing of stomata - tiny pores on leaves – is regulated in response to high temperatures and drought. These new insights, published in Nature Plants, pave the way for developing climate change-ready crops. Global climate change affects more and more people, with extreme weather conditions ...

Water can be a catalyst for peace and security with a critical role in preventing conflicts and promoting cooperation among communities and nations - but only if managed equitably and sustainably, a new study reveals.  Experts have devised a blueprint to ensure safe, equitable and sustainable global access to clean water. The seven-point strategy will allow water challenges to be governed effectively so they do not create conflict when access is restricted or usage unfairly shared.  Publishing ...

Ewing sarcoma is a tumour of the bones and soft tissues that occurs in children and young people. A quarter of patients do not respond well to therapy. The group led by Ana Losada, at Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has discovered an alteration in the most aggressive cases that affects genes never previously related to this disease. This finding expands the list of potential prognostic markers and therapeutic targets in the most aggressive cases of Ewing sarcoma. The new research is published in EMBO Reports. Ewing sarcoma is a tumour of the bones and soft tissues that occurs in children and young people. ...

About The Study: The findings of this study suggest the NOTCH3-associated small vessel disease (NOTCH3-SVD) staging system will help to better harmonize NOTCH3-SVD and cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL) cohort studies and registries; may improve individualized disease counseling, monitoring, and clinical management; and may facilitate patient stratification in clinical trials. Corresponding Authors: To contact the corresponding ...

A new study led by King’s College London has provided further evidence that the deaths of 350 African elephants in Botswana during 2020 were the result of drinking from water holes where toxic algae populations had exploded due to climate change. The lead author of the report says their analysis shows animals were very likely poisoned by watering holes where toxic blooms of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, had developed after a very wet year followed a very dry one. Davide Lomeo, a PhD student in the Department of Geography at King’s College London and co-supervised by Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and ...

Killer whales can feed on marine mammals, turtles, and fish. In the Gulf of California, a pod might have picked up new skills that help them hunt whale sharks – the world’s largest fish, growing up to 18 meters long. Whale sharks feed at aggregation sites in the Gulf of California, sometimes while they are still young and smaller. During this life-stage, they are more vulnerable to predation, and anecdotal evidence suggests orcas could be hunting them. Now, researchers in Mexico have reported four separate hunting events. “We show how orcas displayed a collaboratively hunting technique on whale sharks, characterized by ...

UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 6:30 PM November 28, 2024: A recent major review of data published by the Lancet and led by Emory sports cardiologist Jonathan Kim, MD, shows that Black athletes are approximately five times more likely to experience sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) and sudden cardiac death (SCD) compared to White athletes, despite some evidence of a decline in rates of SCD overall. SCA and SCD have historically been a leading cause of mortality among athletes, particularly those involved in high-intensity sports. The disparities in SCA/D rates highlights the need for increased research into the social determinants of health in younger athletes, a topic that remains ...

Researchers at University of California San Diego analyzed the genomes of hundreds of malaria parasites to determine which genetic variants are most likely to confer drug resistance. The findings, published in Science, could help scientists use machine learning to predict antimalarial drug resistance and more effectively prioritize the most promising experimental treatments for further development. The approach could also help predict treatment resistance in other infectious diseases, and even cancer. “A lot of drug resistance research can only look at one chemical agent at a time, but what we’ve been able to do here is create a roadmap ...

Coral adaptation to ocean warming and marine heatwaves will likely be overwhelmed without rapid reductions of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to an international team of scientists. Their study, led by Dr. Liam Lachs of Newcastle University, reveals that coral heat tolerance adaptation via natural selection could keep pace with ocean warming, but only if Paris Agreement commitments are realised, limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius. “The reality is that marine heatwaves are triggering mass coral bleaching mortality events across the world’s shallow tropical reef ecosystems, and the increasing frequency and intensity of these events ...

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 19:00 GMT / 14:00 ET THURSDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2024 Bioinspired droplet-based systems herald a new era in biocompatible devices Oxford University researchers have developed a set of biocompatible devices, which can replicate or surpass many electronic functions but use ions as the signal carriers. The ‘dropletronic devices’ are made from miniature soft hydrogel droplets and can be combined to produce diodes, transistors, reconfigurable logic gates, and memory storage devices that mimic biological synapses. The research team generated a biocompatible, dropletronic ...

More than a million years ago, on a hot savannah teeming with wildlife near the shore of what would someday become Lake Turkana in Kenya, two completely different species of hominins may have passed each other as they scavenged for food. Scientists know this because they have examined 1.5-million-year-old fossils they unearthed and have concluded they represent the first example of two sets of hominin footprints made about the same time on an ancient lake shore. The discovery will provide more insight into human evolution and how species cooperated and competed with ...

In 2023, the United Nations climate conference (COP28) officially recognized the importance of agriculture in influencing and mitigating climate change. In a Policy Forum, Johan Swinnen and colleagues offer an approach to overcome challenges related to improving climate-sensitive farming practices across the globe. They discuss the importance of working with Agricultural Value Chains (AVC) by incentivizing small businesses who play an important role in the support of small- and medium-sized farms. This would involve both upstream enterprises related to seeds, fertilizer, ...

The thirteen-lined ground squirrel doesn’t drink during its winter hibernation, even though systems throughout its body are crying out for water. Madeleine Junkins and colleagues now show that the squirrel suppresses the need to quench its thirst by reducing the activity of a set of neurons in highly vascularized brain structures called circumventricular organs, which act as a specialized connection point between brain, blood circulation and cerebrospinal fluid. The study by Junkins et al. helps explain how some hibernating animals ignore the powerful physiological drive to seek out water ...

Newly discovered footprints show that at least two hominid species were walking through the muddy submerged edge of a lake in Kenya’s Turkana Basin at the same time, about 1.5 million years ago. The find from the famous hominid fossil site of Koobi Fora described by Kevin Hatala and colleagues provides physical evidence for the co-existence of multiple hominid lineages in the region—something that has only been inferred previously from overlapping dates for scattered fossils. Based on information on gait and stance gleaned from the footprints, Hatala et al. think that the two species were Homo erectus and Paranthropus ...

Social media posts containing misinformation evoke more moral outrage than posts with trustworthy information, and that outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, according to a new study by Killian McLoughlin and colleagues. The researchers also found that people are more likely to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first. The findings suggest that attempts to mitigate the online spread of misinformation by encouraging people to check its accuracy before sharing may not be successful, the researchers ...

IMAGE ANN ARBOR—Within a cell, DNA carries the genetic code for building proteins.  To build proteins, the cell makes a copy of DNA, called mRNA. Then, another molecule called a ribosome reads the mRNA, translating it into protein. But this step has been a visual mystery: scientists previously did not know how the ribosome attaches to and reads mRNA.  Now, a team of international scientists, including University of Michigan researchers, have used advanced microscopy to image how ribosomes recruit to mRNA while it's being transcribed by an enzyme called RNA polymerase, or RNAP. Their results, which examine the process in bacteria, are published in the journal ...

Washington DC, November 28, 2024: The global food system is uniquely vulnerable to climate impacts, making adaptation of paramount importance. While contributing roughly one-third of total anthropogenic emissions, food systems around the world fortunately also hold immense potential for mitigation through improved practices and land use. A new article published today in Science emphasizes the critical role of agrifood value chains (AVCs) in supporting both adaptation and mitigation at the farm level. Authored by Johan Swinnen (International Food Policy Research Institute), Loraine Ronchi (World Bank Group), and Thomas Reardon (Michigan State University and IFPRI), the paper pushes back ...

Learning French while also developing language skills in one’s mother tongue is no easy task. As a result, allophone children often face learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which can negatively impact their educational journey. However, solutions are emerging. According to a study led by Sylvana Côté, preschool education services significantly help bridge the gap between children whose mother tongue is French and those for whom French is a second or even a third language. Professor Côté, from the School of Public Health at the Université de Montréal (ESPUM), is the director of the Observatory ...

A team at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), led by Professor Miguel Ángel del Pozo Barriuso, who heads the Mechanoadaptation and Caveolae Biology group at the CNIC, has identified an essential mechanism in fat cells (adipocytes) that enables them to enlarge safely to store energy. This process avoids tissue damage and protects the body from the toxic effects of accumulating fat molecules (lipids) in inappropriate places. The results, published in Nature Communications, signify a major advance in the understanding of metabolic diseases. Moreover, this discovery ...

The increased use of a chemical compound to replace TNT in explosive devices has a damaging and long lasting effect on plants, new research has shown. In recent years, TNT has started to be replaced with DNAN, but until now very little was known about how this substance impacts the environment and how long it can remain in the soil. Researchers at the University of York have been studying the environmental impact of the explosive, TNT, for more than a decade. They have shown that the chemical compound, which is used by the military around the world, remains in ...

An international team of scientists recently published a study highlighting the potential role of iron sulfides in the formation of life in early Earth’s terrestrial hot springs. According to the researchers, the sulfides may have catalyzed the reduction of gaseous carbon dioxide into prebiotic organic molecules via nonenzymatic pathways. This work, which appeared in Nature Communications, offers new insights into Earth’s early carbon cycles and prebiotic chemical reactions, underscoring the significance of iron sulfides in supporting the terrestrial hot ...

New research from Karolinska Institutet shows that long-term sex hormone treatment in transgender individuals can lead to significant changes in body composition and risk factors for cardiovascular disease, particularly in transgender men. The study is published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. “We saw that transgender men treated with testosterone increased their muscle volume by an average of 21 percent over six years, but also that the amount of abdominal fat increased by 70 percent,” says Tommy Lundberg, docent at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. “In addition, they had more liver ...

Seven out of ten homes in Europe are smoke-free, according to a major survey published today (Thursday) in ERJ Open Research [1]. However, some countries have come further than others in protecting children and adults from second-hand tobacco smoke in the home.   Greece came out bottom of the 12 countries in the survey, with smoking allowed in more than half of homes. In Romania, Bulgaria and Spain more than four in ten homes allow smoking to take place. England scored the highest out of the 12, with more than eight in ten homes smoke-free, with Ireland, Latvia and Italy following next.   The researchers say that the ...

An injection given during some asthma and COPD attacks is more effective than the current treatment of steroid tablets, reducing the need for further treatment by 30%. The findings, published today in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, could be “game-changing” for millions of people with asthma and COPD around the world, scientists say. Asthma attacks and COPD flare-ups (also called exacerbations) can be deadly. Every day in the UK four people with asthma and 85 people with COPD will tragically die. Both conditions are also very common, in the UK someone has an asthma attack every ...

Certain hormone replacement therapy (HRT) tablets containing both oestrogen and progestogen are associated with a higher risk of heart disease and rare but serious blood clots known as venous thromboembolism (VTE) in women around the age of menopause, finds a study from Sweden published by The BMJ today. Another HRT tablet called tibolone was associated with an increased risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke, but not blood clots, “highlighting the diverse effects of different hormone combinations and administration methods on the risk of cardiovascular disease,” say the researchers. HRT is used to relieve menopausal ...