How do cells know when to activate or slow down their activity? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) provides new insights by studying TORC2, an essential but still poorly understood protein complex. Using ultra-high-resolution imaging, scientists were able to observe its structure in detail for the first time. [...]
The "turnpike" toll road system deserves far more credit for improving roads in eighteenth-century England and Wales, a new study argues. Analysis of nearly 100 travelers' diaries reveals that turnpiking improved comfort and reduced danger on the roads, as well as speeding up wheeled vehicle journeys. [...]
Long-duration spaceflight can chip away at an astronaut's health, prompting scientists to find new ways to make living in space easier on the body. The journey to outer space is incredibly dangerous, but crews must also face day-to-day hazards, such as exposure to cancer-causing radiation, microgravity and extreme isolation. [...]
With nearly 400 years under its cork, glass is still the top choice for consumers when it comes to packaging preferences for wine, but sustainability concerns may open the way to other container types, a study by food science and economics researchers has found. [...]
Think you're shopping intelligently for a used car? New research from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin suggests you might be overly influenced by the first digit on the odometer, when you're determining the car's worth. The study is published in the Journal of Marketing Research. [...]
Eastern Africa's Turkana Rift is both a hotbed for fossil discoveries of our earliest ancestors and a literal hotbed of volcanic activity caused by shifting tectonic plates. Now researchers have found that Earth's underlying crust in the region has been significantly thinned, presaging Africa's eventual breakup—and with that finding, the researchers offer a new perspective on how Turkana's world-famous fossil record of human evolution came to be. The findings are published in Nature Communications. [...]
Modern medicine has played a significant role in improving the length and quality of our lives. While many treatments may seem like miracles, they are the result of a lengthy, rigorous research process. Drug discovery is a particularly time-consuming and costly activity that is fraught with complex challenges and labor-intensive bouts of trial and error. [...]
A new study published in Earth's Future introduces the eLTER Framework of Standard Observations (eLTER SO)—a structured, harmonized system designed to support consistent long-term environmental observation across Europe. The paper, "Achieving harmonized and integrated long-term environmental observation of essential ecosystem variables - The eLTER Framework of Standard Observations," explains how the eLTER Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI) is improving the comparability and coordination of environmental data across diverse ecosystems and research fields. [...]
Scientists in Sweden have taken an important step toward fighting potato late blight, a plant disease that once triggered a historic famine in Ireland and now threatens to spread globally due to climate change. A new study reports the synthesis of a peptide that specifically attacks Phytophthora infestans (P. infestans) to protect potato and tomato crops—without harm to other plants. The work was carried out by researchers at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in collaboration with research partners in Italy, India and Australia. [...]
Along the northeast side of the Capital Beltway in Maryland, green spaces weave through the developed landscape. [...]
As conflict intensifies in the Middle East, energy markets swing wildly and the cost of living keeps climbing, a pressing question is emerging for anyone who is tied in to the fluctuating energy and food markets: how do we build resilience? [...]
New research shows that variation in mating behaviors, parental care and differences in ornamentation of the sexes in bird species is driven by demographics rather than vice versa. An international team of researchers from the UK, China, Germany and Hungary looked at 261 species of birds from 69 avian families, running statistical models to investigate the relationship between demographics, adult sex ratio (ASR), breeding behaviors and parental cooperation. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Communications. [...]
Chicken eggs are already used to harvest helpful proteins called antibodies to protect humans from viruses such as influenza. Now, a breakthrough at the University of Missouri could one day lead to chickens that produce other useful medical proteins in their eggs. [...]
The search for life beyond Earth has traditionally focused on exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars, which is a G-type star. However, low-mass stars, which are designated as K-type and M-type stars, have rapidly become a target for astrobiology, primarily due to their much longer lifetimes. This also means the habitable zone (HZ), which is the distance from a star where liquid water could exist, is much smaller than our solar system's HZ, and is referred to as the liquid water habitable zone (LW-HZ). In contrast, another type of HZ that involves a star's ultraviolet (UV) radiation potentially enabling life-harboring conditions is known as UV-HZ. [...]
As far as research subjects go, it's not always easy to find common ground with a single-celled bacterium. Yet the more Paul Wiggins studies his model bacteria, Acinetobacter baylyi, the more he sees surprising commonalities between their behavior and our own as humans. [...]
Researchers at University of Toronto's Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry have made a key discovery about how certain bacterial strains produce a set of economically valuable chemicals—opening the door to new, more sustainable production methods. The finding, published in Nature Microbiology, shows how a family of molecules used in everything from cleaning products to cosmetics to nutritional supplements could be made via bacterial fermentation instead of from palm oil, as they are today. [...]
Natural resources—such as fossil fuels, water, and minerals—are materials found in the environment that are essential for life and highly utilized in production. Though these resources are viewed as essential to economic development and wealth, many resource-rich countries have paradoxically struggled with limited economic growth and unstable political institutions. This phenomenon, known as the "resource curse," challenges the notion that resource abundance automatically translates into economic prosperity and raises the question of how these regions fall into this trap while other less resource-rich countries manage to leverage their resources for sustainable development. [...]
Too much stress can make even a rock crack. But before rocks reach their breaking point, they "sigh" a chemical warning by releasing nuclides, a type of atom defined by the number of neutrons as well as protons in the nucleus. Scientists have studied these naturally occurring geochemical emissions for more than half a century, but struggled to link nuclide release to the timing of rock breakage. Now, an international team of scientists from universities in China (led by Xin Luo at Hong Kong University and Yifeng Chen at Wuhan University) and the United States (led by Michael Manga at the University of California, Berkeley) has cracked that mystery, by creating a model to connect nuclide signal fluctuations to progressive changes in rock structure that lead to critical failure. [...]
For decades, technology in schools meant desktop computers and basic digital instruction. Today, more immersive tools are beginning to reach children, changing how they interact with information and their surroundings. As these tools become more advanced, researchers at USF are examining whether they align with how children think and learn. [...]
For more than 100,000 years, the Methana volcano in Greece appeared dormant. No lava, no explosions, no ash clouds. It appeared extinct, like many other volcanoes today. An international research team led by ETH Zurich has reconstructed a detailed, long-term history of the Methana volcano. Their work is published in the journal Science Advances, and their conclusion is striking: While Methana appeared silent at the surface, enormous amounts of magma were steadily accumulating deep within its magma chambers. [...]
To ensure a robust domestic supply chain in the U.S., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are using bacterial proteins to separate the rare-earth elements that are ubiquitous in magnets, batteries, and electronics. These proteins, called lanmodulin, evolved in bacteria that use rare-earth elements to power their metabolism. But to scale up and advance biomining technology, researchers need a faster way to find and design better proteins. [...]
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team now is targeting as soon as early September 2026 for launch, ahead of the agency's commitment to flight no later than May 2027. [...]
Genome duplication probably gave biodiversity a decisive evolutionary boost. A Chinese-German research team led by Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz has now investigated the early phases of the process known as rediploidization. The results show that the fusion of chromosome sets is asynchronous. The research is published in the journal Nature. [...]
Simulating how atoms and molecules move over time is a central challenge in computational chemistry and materials science. Classical machine learning approaches to molecular dynamics (MD) encode fundamental physical principles directly into their model architectures, most notably energy conservation and equivariance, the requirement that predicted forces remain consistent regardless of how a molecule is oriented in space. These so-called inductive biases have long been considered essential for reliable, physically meaningful MD models. But are they truly indispensable? [...]
An origami-inspired reflectarray antenna developed by researchers at Institute of Science Tokyo enables CubeSats to achieve high antenna gain while fitting within the tight size constraints of small satellites. Weighing just 64 grams, it folds compactly inside a 3U CubeSat for launch and expands in space. Such designs could support higher data-rate communications, expanding the capabilities of future CubeSat missions, including deep-space and lunar exploration. [...]
Chickens and eggs are among the most common foods on modern Korean tables. Understanding their history can enrich our understanding of Korean food culture, agriculture, and animal domestication. It has been widely assumed that chickens dispersed from China to Japan through Korea; however, the role of the Korean Peninsula has remained largely unknown. [...]
Amber from the Kachin region of Myanmar has preserved a wealth of fossils, offering insights into the diversity of the Cretaceous fauna of a 100-million-year-old forest ecosystem. The site continues to yield previously unknown species. LMU researchers have now discovered the fossil of a true bug (Heteroptera) with an unusual morphological feature for insects—large claws on its front legs which recall the grasping appendages of crabs. These so-called chelae, which function like pincers or forceps, are extremely rare in insects. The finding is reported in the journal Insects. [...]
Canyons in eastern Utah will churn this spring with huge volumes of water—as much as 50,000 toilets flushing constantly at the same time—in a desperate attempt to maintain electricity generation for thousands of homes across much of the Western U.S. [...]
California has one of the highest rates of wildfire-driven deforestation in the world, and the trend has accelerated over the past three decades, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, assessed the state's wildfire-driven deforestation rates and reforestation needs between 1991 and 2023. It found that deforestation in California's conifer-dominated forests increased exponentially over the study period, taking place primarily on USDA Forest Service and private lands. Meanwhile, reforestation efforts are not keeping pace with the losses. [...]
New analytical methods developed at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions have increased our understanding of how bacteria manage DNA. The methods have enabled researchers to uncover how the sequence, physical shape and flexibility of DNA guide the activity of an enzyme called DNA gyrase, which previously got all the credit for managing DNA. The work uncovers that certain attributes of DNA are major players in this game. The study, which appears in Nature Communications, has implications for antibiotic design. [...]