In an era of rising grocery costs, eggs remain one of the most accessible and complete protein sources for families. New research from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) is investigating how chickens age to help keep that high-quality protein on dinner tables. [...]
Inspired by the simple mechanism of a seesaw—when one side goes up, the other side goes down—researchers asked an intriguing question: Could a single molecule switch between two different roles like a seesaw? This idea led to the creation of a new type of artificial protein called the "seesaw protein." [...]
Antarctica plays a crucial role in Earth's climate system by reflecting solar radiation back into space. The large white ice surfaces and clouds play a decisive role in this process. However, how clouds actually form in Antarctica, how they interact with the atmosphere and what role aerosols play in this process has not been sufficiently researched to date. Engaging in the SANAT flight campaign, the Alfred Wegener Institute, the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research and the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry aim to help close this knowledge gap. The flight-based aerosol measurements conducted in Antarctica are the first of their kind in 20 years and also the first to extend deep into the interior. [...]
Advances in supercomputing have made solving a long‐standing astronomical conundrum possible: How can we explain the changes in the chemical composition at the surface of red giant stars as they evolve? [...]
Hundreds of thousands of marine animals are killed every year after becoming accidentally caught in commercial fishing nets. Sharks, skates and rays are at particular risk, alongside turtles, seals, whales and dolphins, many of which are endangered. [...]
Recurrent droughts, conflict, and changing land use have placed significant strain on pastoral populations in the dryland regions of Africa, resulting in numerous crises that require humanitarian intervention. Pastoralism is both an economic activity and a cultural identity rooted in the interaction of people, animals, and the environment. Livestock-keeping, mobility, and flexible resource management are central to pastoralist livelihoods. [...]
Space junk returning to Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found. [...]
Ribosomes, the cell's protein-making factories, consume large amounts of energy as they build the proteins that keep cells alive and functioning. When cells experience stress—such as lack of nutrients or sudden drops in temperature—they quickly switch into survival mode. New research from the Schuman Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt now reveals an unexpected way cells manage this transition: by pairing up inactive ribosomes using a ribosomal RNA link. This RNA-based mechanism reveals a previously unknown role for ribosomal RNA in the cellular stress response. The new study is published in Science. [...]
She had brown eyes and black hair. She was almost 5 feet, 7 inches tall and chewed tobacco. She was in her 20s, carried heavy loads with her left arm and had given birth. We don't know her name, but after her death in the 19th century, her body was stolen and used for anatomical and surgical training by students from the Medical College of Virginia. For more than 100 years, she lay among at least 46 others in a disused well on East Marshall Street in Richmond, before it was hurriedly excavated in 1994 during construction of the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building on Virginia Commonwealth University's campus. [...]
Almost half a century ago, a remarkable molecule called metallocene took center stage in chemistry, earning Geoffrey Wilkinson and Ernst Otto Fischer the Nobel Prize. These organic compounds, made of a transition metal "sandwiched" between two flat, ring-shaped organic layers, have since become an integral part of new-age polymers, materials, and pharmaceuticals. [...]
A stream of charged particles known as the solar wind flows from the sun toward Earth. Here, it meets Earth's magnetic fields, which shield our planet like a giant umbrella. The Space Umbrella project needs your help investigating this dynamic region, where NASA's Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) mission has been collecting data since 2015. The MMS mission investigates how the sun and Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other in a process that is important to the sun, other planets, and everywhere in the universe. [...]
Approximately 9,000 years ago, human communities in Southwest Asia underwent a dramatic transformation, known as the Neolithic revolution. This period was marked by pronounced changes in how they lived and sourced food, with a shift from living on the move, hunting and gathering to permanently residing in one place, farming and herding of animals. [...]
When we hear certain sounds, our brains often pair them with specific shapes. For example, most people will associate a sharp-sounding word with a jagged, pointed shape, while a soft, rolling word is linked to something smooth and curved. This fascinating phenomenon is known as the bouba-kiki effect. [...]
As countries strive to achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, a new international study published in Nature Communications brings together 19 researchers in 13 institutions—including Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS), former CSIS Ph.D student Zhenci Xu and two former CSIS visiting students Zhimeng Jiang and Xutong Wu—to present a comprehensive framework for understanding and managing cross-scale socioeconomic and environmental interconnections and feedback. [...]
Since the third Gaia data release in 2022, wide binary stars with separation greater than several thousand astronomical units have been intensely investigated across the world, to probe the nature of gravity in the low acceleration regime, weaker than about 1 nanometer per second squared. [...]
An international team of scientists led by the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) has presented REGALADE, an unprecedented catalog covering the entire sky and bringing together nearly 80 million galaxies. The work, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, marks a turning point for astronomy and opens up a new scenario that allows researchers to explore cosmic events with a degree of precision never before achieved. [...]
In crowds, most people are strangers to you, and everyone else for that matter. However, until now, the effect of stranger-to-stranger interactions on the choices people make in crowds has not been properly examined. Ziqi Wang and Federico Toschi from the TU/e Department of Applied Physics and Science Education, along with Alessandro Gabbana at the University of Ferrara in Italy, explored how strangers influence people's choices in crowds at Eindhoven Centraal railway station. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
For the first time in Brazil, researchers have identified a field of tektites. These are natural glasses formed by the high-energy impact of extraterrestrial bodies against Earth's surface. These structures, named geraisites in honor of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where they were first discovered, constitute a new strewn field. This expands the incomplete record of impacts in South America. [...]
A small but mighty piece of lab equipment, about the size of a cellphone, has arrived at the International Space Station after launching with NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 mission. NASA aims to use the off-the-shelf device, called a microplate reader, to conduct vital biological research in space and get real-time access to data. [...]
Ribonucleotide reductases (RNR) are indispensable enzymes that convert ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides (dNTPs), the precursors to make up DNA. Because DNA synthesis is fundamental to cell survival, RNR activity must be tightly controlled. In bacteria, this control is exerted by a specialized transcriptional regulator, NrdR, which has no equivalent in eukaryotic organisms and therefore represents a potential selective target for antimicrobial development. Despite its central role, the structural basis of NrdR's function and the mechanisms by which it senses cellular nucleotide levels and modulates RNR expression have remained only partially understood. [...]
With a new mathematical model, a team of biophysicists has revealed fresh insights into how biological tissues are shaped by the active motion of structural imperfections known as "topological defects." Published in Physical Review Letters, the results build on our latest understanding of tissue formation and could even help resolve long-standing experimental mysteries surrounding our own organs. [...]
When 200 natural accessions of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana grown in a nitrate-enriched medium were compared, one observation stood out: some accessions formed significantly longer lateral roots than others. Genetic analysis revealed a difference in a gene called MEKK14. [...]
Human beings are social animals; they need places to relax, connect with others, and feel a sense of belonging beyond the demands of home and work. Traditionally, these "third places" are thought to be limited to cafes, clubs, gardens, and other neighborhood community spots. However, with an increase in digitally shaped life schedules, a new question arises: Do online spaces offer the same social values as offline ones? [...]
Green hydrogen production technology, which utilizes renewable energy to produce eco-friendly hydrogen without carbon emissions, is gaining attention as a core technology for addressing global warming. Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, a process that separates hydrogen and oxygen by applying electrical energy to water, requiring low-cost, high-efficiency, high-performance catalysts. [...]
Preschool-age children are most engaged in pretend play 10–15 minutes after playing begins. In addition, girls exhibit higher organizational skills, according to a study conducted by researchers from SWPS University and Istanbul University. The paper "The Dynamics of Pretend Play: Exploring Organization, Elaboration, and Imagination in Early Childhood" was published in the journal Early Education and Development by psychologists Natalia Józefacka, Ph.D., from the Institute of Psychology at SWPS University and Beyza Hamamcı, Ph.D., from Istanbul University. The publication is part of a larger study on how self-regulation develops in children and how young children, depending on their age and gender, are able to adapt to the demands of their environment. [...]
Every year, billions of birds undertake extraordinary migrations, crossing vast deserts and open seas with no place to stop, feed, or rest. A new international study published in iScience by a consortium of researchers from Tour du Valat, CEFE/CNRS, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle and Swiss Ornithological Institute reveals that small migratory birds adjust how high they fly over these ecological barriers, and that their strategies depend on wing morphology and plumage color. [...]
Messages intended to suppress votes can be precisely delivered to particularly vulnerable and consequential groups of people via social media and keep millions of them from casting ballots, according to a new study that is the first to quantify the effect of this kind of microtargeting on voter turnout. A team led by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recruited more than 10,000 people across the United States—a group representative of the country's voting population—to install an app that captured every ad they viewed for the six weeks leading up to the November election in 2016. [...]
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have identified the true source of a magnetic effect seen in the material ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂), helping resolve an active debate in the rapidly growing field of altermagnetism. The study is published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. [...]
Researchers have long been puzzled by the observed cooling of the eastern tropical Pacific and the Southern Ocean accompanying global warming. Existing climate models have failed to capture this pattern. At the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, researchers have come a significant step closer to the answer: Using a new generation of more physical climate models, they have demonstrated the first successful representation of the observed trend in a climate simulation and have delivered an explanation of the underlying mechanisms. [...]
A protein called neurofilament light chain (NfL)—studied in humans in the context of neurodegenerative diseases and aging—is also detectable in the blood of numerous animals, and NfL levels increase with age in mice, cats, dogs and horses. Experts from the DZNE and the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) at the University of Tübingen report these findings in PLOS Biology. In their view, this biomarker could help to assess the biological age of animals and estimate their life expectancy. [...]