New observations down to light-year scale of the gas flows around a supermassive black hole have successfully detected dense gas inflows and shown that only a small portion (about 3 percent) of the gas flowing towards the black hole is eaten by the black hole. The remainder is ejected and recycled back into the host galaxy.   Not all of the matter which falls towards a black hole is absorbed, some of it is ejected as outflows. But the ratio of the matter that the black hole “eats,” and the amount “dropped” ...

A surprising mechanism that makes some cancers treatment-resistant has been discovered by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators.  The mechanism, which involves the shuttling of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, ultimately facilitates DNA repair in cancer cells. These cancer cells can thereby thwart treatments aimed at damaging their DNA. In a project encompassing both fundamental research and clinical studies they demonstrated that a combination of approved chemotherapies, ...

One in seven people in the US reported having had long Covid by the end of 2022, suggests a large-scale investigation of long Covid and symptom prevalence by academics at UCL and Dartmouth. Having had long Covid is associated with anxiety and low mood, as well as an increased likelihood of continued physical mobility problems and challenges with memory, concentration or understanding, according to the findings published in PLOS ONE. The risk of anxiety and low mood appeared to be lower for those who have been vaccinated, ...

New York, NY (November 2nd, 2023) — The Mount Sinai Health System has received a $7 million grant from the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation for a three-year project that aims to fast-track novel translational concepts to improve outcomes for people with high risk myeloma, the second most common blood cancer in the United States. This grant award will facilitate a multidisciplinary research project that will analyze a large, diverse cohort of patient samples from all over the United States at the genomic and immune level and apply novel functional genomics technology to understand the critical events that drive ...

November 2, 2023, Mountain View, CA -- The SETI Institute is delighted to announce that Dr. Pascal Lee will be honored with the 2023 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization presented by Wonderfest. The prestigious Sagan Prize recognizes and encourages individuals who “have contributed wonderfully to the public understanding and appreciation of science.” Previous recipients from the SETI Institute include SETI Institute co-founder and SETI pioneer Jill Tarter, senior astronomer Seth Shostak and trustee Andrew Fraknoi. “I am truly delighted and humbled by this award,” says Pascal Lee, “all the more because Carl Sagan was, and remains, ...

No one had ever seen one virus latching onto another virus, until anomalous sequencing results sent a UMBC team down a rabbit hole leading to a first-of-its-kind discovery. It’s known that some viruses, called satellites, depend not only on their host organism to complete their life cycle, but also on another virus, known as a “helper,” explains Ivan Erill, professor of biological sciences. The satellite virus needs the helper either to build its capsid, a protective shell that encloses the virus’s genetic material, or to help it replicate ...

The gut microbiome, a community of trillions of microbes living in the human intestines, has an increasing reputation for affecting not only gut health but also the health of organs distant from the gut. For most microbes in the intestine, the details of how they can affect other organs remain unclear, but for gut resident bacteria L. reuteri the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place. “L. reuteri is one of such bacteria that can affect more than one organ in the body,” said co-corresponding author Dr. Sara Di Rienzi, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The human eye can perceive about 1 million colors, but languages have far fewer words to describe those colors. So-called basic color terms, single color words used frequently by speakers of a given language, are often employed to gauge how languages differ in their handling of color. Languages spoken in industrialized nations such as the United States, for example, tend to have about a dozen basic color terms, while languages spoken by more isolated populations often have fewer. However, the way that a language ...

A research team from the Universities of Cologne and Potsdam and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research has found that the regional lines of the thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana), a small ruderal plant which populates the streets of Cologne, vary greatly in typical life cycle characteristics, such as the regulation of flowering and germination. This allows them to adapt their reproduction to local environmental conditions such as temperature and human disturbances. The researchers from Collaborative Research Center / Transregio 341 “Plant Ecological Genetics” found that environmental ...

Though beer is a popular drink worldwide, it’s usually made from barley, which leaves those with a gluten allergy or intolerance unable to enjoy the frothy beverage. Sorghum, a naturally gluten-free grain, could be an alternative, but complex preparation steps have hampered its widespread adoption by brewers. Now, researchers reporting the molecular basis behind sorghum brewing in ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research have uncovered an enzyme that could improve the future of sorghum-based beers. Traditionally, beer brewers start with barley grains, which they malt, mash, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. –Things may not have ended well for dinosaurs on Earth, but Cornell University astronomers say the “light fingerprint” of the conditions that enabled them to emerge here provide a crucial missing piece in our search for signs of life on planets orbiting alien stars. Their analysis of the most recent 540 million years of Earth’s evolution, known as the Phanerozoic Eon, finds that telescopes could better detect potential chemical signatures of life in the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet more closely resembling the age the dinosaurs inhabited than the ...

A re-analysis of more than 300 sets of 5,000-year-old skeletal remains excavated from a site in Spain suggests that many of the individuals may have been casualties of the earliest period of warfare in Europe, occurring over 1,000 years before the previous earliest known larger-scale conflict in the region. The study, published in Scientific Reports, indicates that both the number of injured individuals and the disproportionately high percentage of males affected suggest that the injuries resulted from a period of conflict, potentially lasting at least months. Conflict during the European Neolithic period (approximately 9,000 ...

University researchers from the UK, Germany and South Africa warn of a threat to scientific knowledge and the future of research in a paper published in Nature Human Behaviour, outlining the implications of changes to social media Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Over the course of 2023, numerous social media platforms including X, TikTok, and Reddit made substantial changes to their APIs – drastically reducing access or increasing charges for access, which the researchers say will in many cases make research harder. APIs have been routinely tapped by researchers ...

Evanston, IL. --- A team of researchers from the Mirkin Group at Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology in collaboration with the University of Michigan and the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials- CIC biomaGUNE, unveils a novel methodology to engineer colloidal quasicrystals using DNA-modified building blocks. Their study will be published in the journal Nature Materials under the title "Colloidal Quasicrystals Engineered with DNA." Characterized ...

Images Nanoengineers have created a quasicrystal—a scientifically intriguing and technologically promising material structure—from nanoparticles using DNA, the molecule that encodes life.    The team, led by researchers at Northwestern University, the University of Michigan and the Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials in San Sebastian, Spain, reports the results in Nature Materials.   Unlike ordinary crystals, which are defined by a repeating structure, the patterns in quasicrystals don't repeat. Quasicrystals built from atoms can have exceptional properties—for ...

Destructive winds that flow out of thunderstorms in the central United States are becoming more widespread with warming temperatures, according to new research by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The new study, published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows that the central U.S. experienced a fivefold increase in the geographic area affected by damaging thunderstorm straight line winds in the past 40 years. The research uses a combination of meteorological observations, very high-resolution computer modeling, and analyses of fundamental ...

Climate change is impeding the human rights of a large group of people living in the Pacific, a recent report in Nature reveals. The paper substantiates a submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal responsibility of countries to act on climate change. Evidence gathered in Vanuatu supports a clarification on loss and damage finance which could activate powerful legal tools to hold polluters accountable. Research Fellow at the Griffith University Climate Action Beacon, Dr Ross Westoby said the report explores how climate-induced loss and damage in the Pacific is already occurring and outlines ...

NEW YORK, November 2, 2023 — Harnessing and controlling light is vital for the development of technology, including energy harvesting, computation, communications, and biomedical sensing. Yet, in real-world scenarios, complexity in light's behavior poses challenges for its efficient control. Physicist Andrea Alù likens the behavior of light in chaotic systems to the initial break shot in a game of billiards. “In billiards, tiny variations in the way you launch the cue ball will lead to different patterns of the balls bouncing around the table,” said Alù, Einstein ...

It’s a multi-billion dollar question: What will happen to water as temperatures continue to rise? There will be winners and losers with any change that redistributes where, when and how much water is available for humans to drink and use. To find answers and make informed predictions, scientists look to the past. Reconstructions of past climate change using geologic data have helped to show the far-reaching influence of human activity on temperatures since the Industrial Age. But assembling hydroclimate records for the same timeframe has proved to be much harder. A study from the Past Global Changes (PAGES) Iso2k project team, ...

Metabolites called nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and can impact cancer’s sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy and radiation in brain cancer. Findings from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center, published in Cancer Discovery, show how a specific nucleotide metabolite, called GTP, controls responses to radiation and chemotherapy in an unexpected way. “We learned that if you increase a cell’s GTP levels, it makes it really resistant to ...

The American Thyroid Association® (ATA®) is pleased to announce that Trevor E. Angell, MD has been selected as the new Editor-in-Chief of the ATA monthly journal Clinical Thyroidology®. Dr. Angell’s term as Editor-in-Chief will begin in January 2024. Clinical Thyroidology is one of the ATA’s official journals and is published in partnership with Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. This highly valued abstract and commentary publication provides a comprehensive look at clinical thyroid literature. Experts ...

Researchers at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center believe that some drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or currently in clinical trials could be repurposed for certain breast cancer patients whose cancer has become resistant to standard therapies. Ozgur Sahin, Ph.D., a professor and SmartState Endowed Chair in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, led the research, which was published Nov. 2 in Nature Communications. The research, funded by an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant, started as an investigation into cancer resistance to the drug tamoxifen but expanded as the research questions led down new ...

It all began with basic research: While conducting laboratory experiments, a team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) came across an active agent against multidrug-resistant bacteria with a fundamental difference to antibiotics developed to date. The researchers have since established a start-up to develop a new drug based on this agent. The entrepreneurs have now been nominated for Science Breakthrough of the Year in the Science Start-Up category at the international Falling Walls summit. Rising numbers of bacteria are developing ...

Researchers report that 53% of European freestanding homes could have supplied all their own energy needs in 2020 using only local rooftop solar radiation, and this technical feasibility could increase to 75% in 2050. Publishing November 2 in the journal Joule, the study shows that there is no economic advantage for individual households to be fully self-sufficient under current or future conditions, though in some cases the costs are on par with remaining on-grid. The researchers estimate that self-sufficiency will be economically feasible for 5% (two million) of Europe’s 41 million freestanding single-family homes in 2050, ...

All-nighters can cause giddy and slap-happy feelings This effect is caused by increased dopamine release in distributed brain regions This dopamine signal also enhances plasticity in the neuronal connections, causing a potent antidepressant effect that lasts for days Study suggests that prefrontal cortex and its dopamine inputs are key for rapid plasticity and antidepressant effects after brief sleep loss EVANSTON, Ill. — Most people who have pulled an all-nighter are all too familiar with that “tired and wired” ...