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- A gas naturally produced by our own bodies could one day help treat skin and wound infections, potentially offering a new approach alongside conventional antibiotics.
- Archaeologists have performed toxicological analysis on the mummified remains of people sacrificed at mountain shrines across the Inca Empire, revealing the psychoactive substances they consumed before their deaths.
- Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the HI-STEM Stem Cell Institute have discovered a group of particularly long-lived blood stem cells in mice. These cells remain in a dormant state for an exceptionally long time while retaining their ability to generate new blood cells. This newly discovered cell population may be responsible for sustaining blood regeneration and immune defense throughout a mouse's entire life.
- Liverworts reproduce through a life cycle involving two distinct stages. First, sperm fertilize eggs in the presence of water, producing embryos that develop into spore-producing structures called sporophytes. These structures then produce spores that can disperse and grow into new liverwort plants.
- A new study from Tel Aviv University reveals how plants, despite having neither a brain nor a nervous system, integrate light coming from multiple directions to determine where to grow. The researchers show how this process emerges from local sensing across the stem, without the need for centralized information processing.
- Hydrothermal vents lie in perpetual darkness in the depths of the ocean, yet the cells of the vent mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus, which lives 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) below the surface, follow a 24-hour rhythm in the laboratory.
- When you think about making computer chips better, you probably think about transistors. My colleagues and I focused on a less visible part of the problem: the components that deliver power to those transistors. A chip needs more than electricity. It needs electricity supplied at the right voltage, with fluctuations kept under control. Making the hardware that does this smaller is an important challenge—and one that led my colleagues and me to build tiny magnetic devices called stripline microinductors.
- A research team wanted to better understand how the forces between particles inside a material change. They discovered that by confining one-dimensional classical spin chains inside a mirror box cavity with light, they could force these magnetic particles to organize and undergo a phase transition. Their work provides the simplest exactly solvable examples showing that light can create new phase transitions with materials.
- The totality of bacteria, viruses and fungi that exist in and on a multicellular organism forms its natural microbiome. The interactions between the body and these microorganisms significantly influence the host organism's functions and health. Among other things, researchers have shown that the microbiome plays an important role in defense against pathogens. On the other hand, they suspect that imbalances in the microbiome's composition are linked to the development of so-called environmental diseases, such as chronic inflammation.
- While ammonia (NH₃) is best known for its role in fertilizer production, it is attracting attention as a carbon-free hydrogen carrier, potentially offering a practical way to store and transport clean fuel. Despite this promise, NH₃ synthesis still depends on high-temperature, high-pressure processes that are difficult to scale up sustainably. The reason behind this is the extremely strong bond between nitrogen atoms in nitrogen gas (N₂), which requires a lot of energy to break.
- Human intelligence is still a bit of an enigma. Researchers have some ideas about why advanced intelligence evolved in humans, but they have not come to a conclusive answer. One prominent idea is that intelligence serves a social function. In their new study, a group of researchers led by Jonathan Egeland reports additional evidence supporting this idea. According to their research, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, greater intelligence seems to garner more respect, but only when it's applied to tasks that help others.
- Scientists studying the neurology of tame foxes identified changes in a part of the brain that has previously been associated with aggression, according to a new paper that compared the brains of domesticated, aggressive and wild foxes. The changes occurred in an area at the base of the brain called the ventromedial hypothalamus, which is known to drive aggression, control decisions related to energy use and play an important role in maternal instincts and social behaviors in mice.
- Ruthenium (Ru) is a valuable metal used in catalysts to speed up chemical reactions in many industrial processes. It can help improve efficiency and reduce the energy needed for chemical production. However, because it is rare and expensive, scientists are looking for ways to make better use of it.
- A study co-led by a University of California, Riverside, biomedical scientist has identified new targets for coronavirus antiviral drugs, including treatments that may be less vulnerable to the rapid evolution of these viruses.
- For roughly five centuries from about 1300, Europe experienced periods of unusually cold weather and extreme conditions collectively known as the Little Ice Age. Transylvania, a historical region in modern-day Romania, was also affected, but information about just how severe things were had been scattered in old town records, church logs, travelogs and administrative and monastic diaries.
- Scientists examining data collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found that dozens of small galaxies contain far less oxygen than their stars are estimated to have produced. The researchers, including a Rutgers astrophysicist, studied 37 dwarf galaxies, which are much smaller than the Milky Way and considered to be nearby, within 22 million light-years of Earth. The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal.
- Research led by atmospheric scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory sheds new light on one of the fundamental challenges of weather forecasting: determining the conditions under which a cloud will produce rain—and how much rain it will produce.
- A genome contains all of the DNA of every living organism, but its contents don't stop there—most of these structures also contain snippets of DNA that can copy and paste themselves to "infect" a genome, expanding its size. Precisely why that happens remains a mystery.
- An international research team led by Curtin University has for the first time uncovered unequivocal evidence of fossilized red blood cells and amino acids of collagen, reshaping our understanding of fossil preservation and molecular longevity in deep time.
- It's a dizzyingly busy time for scientists searching for life on distant planets. To date, astronomers have cataloged more than 6,000 planets beyond our solar system and are searching the atmospheres of the most promising worlds for chemicals that might be byproducts of life. Astrobiologists are particularly interested in atmospheres like Earth's that trap enough heat to support liquid water on the planet's surface, which scientists consider the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life as we know it.
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