In a Policy Forum, Chad Nelson and colleagues highlight the efforts of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in advancing alternative methods to reduce animal testing for regulatory use. Animal studies have been crucial for advancing disease understanding, developing therapies, and assessing the safety and effectiveness of consumer products. However, reducing animal use and developing effective alternatives is an ongoing priority. Although advances in biology, engineering, and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities to improve product safety assessments, these technologies require extensive development to meet regulatory ...

A new study presents “Evo” – a machine learning model capable of decoding and designing DNA, RNA, and protein sequences, from molecular to genome scale, with unparalleled accuracy. Evo’s ability to predict, generate, and engineer entire genomic sequences could change the way synthetic biology is done. “The ability to predict the effects of mutations across all layers of regulation in the cell and to design DNA sequences to manipulate cell function would have tremendous diagnostic and therapeutic implications for disease,” writes Christina Theodoris ...

Without intervention, global plastic waste could double by 2050, a new machine learning study predicts. However, according to simulations by the study’s authors, a mix of policy interventions could cut plastic waste by more than 90% and it could cut plastics-related emissions by a third. With UN treaty negotiations underway, these findings provide a crucial blueprint for tackling the plastic crisis. Plastic production has increased relentlessly for decades, leading to surging plastic waste generation and environmental mismanagement. As plastic ...

Anthropogenic aerosols, tiny solid and liquid air pollution particles, have masked a fraction of global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Climate researchers have known for decades that anthropogenic aerosols perturb liquid clouds by enabling the formation of a larger number of cloud droplets, making clouds brighter. A new landmark study led by the University of Tartu suggests that anthropogenic aerosols may also influence clouds by converting cloud droplets to ice at temperatures below zero degrees Celsius. Powerplant Snow Using satellite observations, climate researchers discovered unique plumes of ice clouds and reduced cloud cover downwind of industrial hot spots ...

Scientists have found a trigger for social learning in wild animals. An experiment on great tits has pinpointed a single factor—immigration—that can cause birds to pay close attention to others, leading them to rapidly adopt useful behaviors. The study is the first to provide experimental support of a long-held assumption that immigrants should strategically use social learning. The study, conducted by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz in Germany, is published November 14 in PLOS Biology. Many animals that live in groups learn from one another, but few ...

Berkeley, CA/Santa Barabara, CA (14 November 2024) — A new study released in Science today determines that just four policies can reduce mismanaged plastic waste — plastic that isn’t recycled or properly disposed of and ends up as pollution — by 91% and plastic-related greenhouse gasses by one-third. The policies are: mandate new products be made with 40% post-consumer recycled plastic; cap new plastic production at 2020 levels; invest significantly in plastic waste management — such as landfills and waste collection services; and implement a small fee on plastic packaging. ...

Industrial plants, such as those that make cement or steel, emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, but the exhaust is too hot for state-of-the-art carbon removal technology. Lots of energy and water are needed to cool the exhaust streams, a requirement that has limited adoption of CO2 capture in some of the most polluting industries. Now, chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that a porous material can act like a sponge to capture CO2 at temperatures close to those of many industrial exhaust streams. ...

Gene therapy can effectively treat various diseases, but for some debilitating conditions like muscular dystrophies there is a big problem: size. The genes that are dysfunctional in muscular dystrophies are often extremely large, and current delivery methods can’t courier such substantial genetic loads into the body. A new technology, dubbed “StitchR,” surmounts this obstacle by delivering two halves of a gene separately; once in a cell, both DNA segments generate messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that join seamlessly together to restore expression of a protein that is missing or inactive in disease. Published in ...

New research suggests that it could be possible to separate treatment from hallucinations when developing new drugs based on psychedelics. The anti-anxiety andhallucination-inducing qualities of psychedelic drugs work through different neural circuits, according to research using a mouse model. The work is published Nov. 15 in Science.  The research shows that decoupling the beneficial effects of psychedelics from their hallucinogenic effects isn’t just a matter of chemical compound design. It’s a matter of targeted neural circuitry. “In the past, we did this using chemistry by making new compounds, but here we focused on identifying the circuits responsible ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Microorganisms — bacteria, viruses and other tiny life forms — may drive biological variation in visible life as much, if not more, than genetic mutations, creating new lineages and even new species of animals and plants, according to Seth Bordenstein, director of Penn State’s One Health Microbiome Center, professor of biology and entomology, and the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Microbiome Sciences. Bordenstein and 21 other scientists from around the world published a paper in the leading journal Science, summarizing research that they said drives a deeper understanding of biological ...

Ghent, November 15, 2024 – Understanding how roots grow can help us develop plants that, for example, are more resistant to drought. Research by Prof. Bert De Rybel’s team (VIB-UGent), in collaboration with the VIB Screening Core and Ghent University, uncovers how roots go through a puberty phase, which could have important implications for developing climate-resilient agriculture. Their work appears in Science.   Plant puberty  Plants, like all living organisms, transition through various developmental stages, starting as a seed, becoming a shoot, and eventually a full-grown, fertile plant. They even go through a sort of ‘puberty’ ...

Hydrogen is set to play an important role in a future low-carbon economy. However, the hydrogen value chain comes with a set of emissions challenges that need to be addressed for hydrogen deployment to help achieve climate goals. A study prepared by the Research Institute for Sustainability – Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (RIFS) with support from Environmental Defense Fund Europe evaluates the potential impact of climate-warming emissions in Germany’s future hydrogen economy and provides recommendations for German and EU policymakers on how to avoid them. There are hopes that hydrogen can become a carbon neutral alternative to fossil ...

For decades, Disney animations have shaped perceptions of family relationships and gender roles. Although much focus has traditionally been on princesses and female characters, a new study shifts attention to fatherhood and the evolving ideals of masculinity. "In the history of Disney films, female characters and princess imagery have been widely analyzed, yet the role of masculinity has been explored far less. My research aims to deepen our understanding of the male ideals Disney has constructed and how they reflect ...

Most people think of coffee cups, bathroom tiles or flower pots when they hear the word "ceramic". Not so Frank Clemens. For the research group leader in Empa's Laboratory for High-Performance Ceramics, ceramics can conduct electricity, be intelligent, and even feel. Together with his team, Clemens is developing soft sensor materials based on ceramics. Such sensors can "feel" temperature, strain, pressure or humidity, for instance, which makes them interesting for use in medicine, but also in the field of soft robotics. Soft ceramics – how is that supposed to work? Materials ...

About The Study: This study found significant rate increases for alcohol-induced liver disease-related hospitalizations and liver transplants across sex and age groups between 2005 and 2021. Although older males had the highest absolute increases, the greatest relative increases occurred in younger individuals, particularly females. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michele Molinari, MD, MSc, email molinarim@upmc.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link ...

About The Study: This systematic review and network meta-analysis found that spinal cord stimulation therapies for treatment of chronic pain in back and/or lower extremities were associated with greater improvements in pain compared with conventional medical management. These findings highlight the potential of spinal cord stimulation therapies as an effective and valuable option in chronic pain management. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Konstantinos Soulanis, M.Sc., email konstantinos.soulanis@iqvia.com. To access ...

Most cancer treatments – from chemotherapies to engineered immune cells – have a host of side effects, in large part because they affect healthy cells in the body at the same time as targeting tumor cells. For the same reason, designing new cancer drugs can be challenging due to the molecular similarities between tumor cells and healthy cells.   Now, UC San Francisco researchers have designed highly customizable biological sensors which can ensure that engineered cells are only activated in certain environments – such as the vicinity of a tumor. This could yield cancer therapies ...

Two conflicting memories can both be activated in a worm’s brain, even if only one memory actively drives the animal’s behaviour, finds a new study by UCL researchers. In the paper published in Current Biology, the researchers showed how an animal’s sex drive can at times outweigh the need to eat when determining behaviour, as they investigated what happens when a worm smells an odour that has been linked to both good experiences (mating) and bad experiences (starvation). The scientists were seeking ...

Scientists at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have uncovered an unexpected role for the molecule netrin1 in organizing the developing spinal cord.  The researchers discovered that netrin1, which is known primarily as a guidance cue that directs growing nerve fibers, also limits bone morphogenetic protein, or BMP, signaling to specific regions of the spinal cord. This boundary-setting function is critical because this signaling activity must be precisely confined to the dorsal region for sensory neurons to develop properly.  Their findings, published in Cell ...

Miami (November 14, 2024) – Researchers are exploring how small airway abnormalities in younger smokers could help identify who is at risk of developing COPD and establish how the chronic lung disease progresses, according to a new article. The article is published in the September 2024 issue of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases: Journal of the COPD Foundation, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory lung disease, comprising several conditions, including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and can be caused ...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Naval Center for Space Technology (NCST) in partnership with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) successfully completed development of a spaceflight qualified robotics suite capable of servicing satellites in orbit, Oct. 8. Under DARPA funding, NRL developed the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) Integrated Robotic Payload (IRP). This transformative new space capability was delivered to DARPA’s commercial partner, Northrop Grumman’s SpaceLogistics, for ...

An international, phase 3 clinical trial led by investigators at Mass General Brigham could improve the treatment of a rare disease that can cause debilitating symptoms. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that treatment with inebilizumab greatly reduced the symptoms of immunoglobulin G4–related disease (IgG4-RD), compared to placebo. “This is a huge day in the history of this disease,” said lead author John Stone, MD, MPH, a rheumatologist in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. “We are thrilled to have ...

A new multi-national study has revealed that the shape of the heart is influenced in part by genetics and may help predict the risk of cardiovascular diseases.   Researchers from Queen Mary University of London, King’s College London, University of Zaragoza and University College London, as well as Complexo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña are first to examine the genetic basis of the heart’s left and right ventricles using advanced 3D imaging and machine learning.   Prior ...

The world appears to be plagued by crises. “The financial crisis, the European debt crisis, the migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza… The world seems to be stumbling from one existential crisis to the next, barely recovering from one before the next one hits,” said Stefan Geiß, a professor from the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). However, are there really more crises now than before? Has it always been this way, or is something new happening? And if there are more public crises today ...

NEW ORLEANS (November 14, 2024) — A new study from Uganda provides the first evidence to date that resistance to a lifesaving malaria drug may be emerging in the group of patients that accounts for most of the world’s malaria deaths: young African children suffering from serious infections. The study, presented today at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), documented partial resistance to the malaria drug artemisinin in 11 of 100 children, ages 6 months to 12 years, who were being treated for ...