In 2020, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as the primary trade framework for the three countries. The agreement is now being reviewed by the three countries. In a new report by the Brookings Institution, experts delved into what the agreement has meant for the three countries, and how the three states can ensure that the partnership can be successful going forward. [...]
Language skills like reading, writing, listening, and speaking are essential for effective communication in English and are closely linked to educational and professional success both locally and internationally. In many non-English-speaking countries, students learn English as a foreign language (EFL) for their future endeavors, making it important to create classroom environments that support effective learning and communication. [...]
Adelaide University researchers and industry partners have uncovered scientific evidence that daily probiotic and postbiotic supplementation can significantly boost gut and skin health in dogs, offering pet owners a promising alternative to antibiotics. [...]
A new study led by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin reveals how the loss of large mammals can ripple through ecosystems in unexpected ways, even affecting amphibian larvae living in temporary ponds. By examining changes in nutrient dynamics over more than two decades, the researchers show that declines in large herbivores are associated with a system-wide reduction in nitrogen isotope values in aquatic habitats, highlighting how disruptions in terrestrial wildlife populations can cascade across ecosystem boundaries. [...]
Rob Moore is a recognized leader in the development of autonomous science and self-driving laboratories at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). A Tennessee native who spent five years as a U.S. Navy submarine officer, Moore joined ORNL in 2019 to perform research in the syntheses and characterization of quantum materials. [...]
A new study shows how fast-growing poplar plantations can improve functional connectivity for forest birds in fragmented agricultural landscapes, provided they are strategically located and species have moderate to high dispersal capacity. The findings suggest that managed forests may contribute not only to biomass supply, but also to biodiversity conservation in highly human-modified regions. [...]
Caring for a spouse with dementia is arguably one of the most emotionally and physically demanding roles a person can take on, but new research from Rice University suggests the experience is not defined by the diagnosis alone. It is shaped by the relationship behind it. The study, published in Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine, examines how relationship dynamics influence the mental and physical health of people caring for spouses with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. [...]
Why are flowers so different from one another? Much of the answer lies with pollinators: Their preferences and morphologies have helped generate an exceptional diversity of flowers in terms of shape, size, color and scent, forcing them to adapt so they can reproduce effectively. [...]
Distributed fiber-optic sensors are widely used to monitor temperature and strain in infrastructure, but their spatial resolution has long been limited. In a new study, researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology and Yokohama National University, Japan, have demonstrated that operating near a previously avoided frequency regime and suppressing signal distortions allows reflection-based sensing to achieve a world-record spatial resolution of 6 mm among single-end-access configurations. This enables precise monitoring of temperature and strain in infrastructure. [...]
A new study finds the proteins responsible for controlling which genes are expressed in a genome do more than simply turn a gene on or off. Essentially, each type of protein that interacts with a gene produces different behaviors—a finding with ramifications for everything from biomedical therapeutics to biological computing. A paper on the study, "Epigenome Regulators Imbue a Single Eukaryotic Promoter with Diverse Gene Expression Dynamics," is published in the journal iScience. [...]
In about one out of every 1,000 pregnancies, the neural tube, a key nervous system structure, fails to close properly. Georgia Tech physicists are now helping explain why this happens, having uncovered the physics that drive neural tube closure in a pregnancy's earliest stages. [...]
Chemistry involves the fundamental interplay between the structures and properties of molecules. Notably, subtle changes in molecular structure and crystal packing can be amplified into macroscopic phenomena such as optical responses. Zn(II) is an earth-abundant and low-toxicity metal, and paddlewheel-type Zn(II) dimers are well-established structural motifs. They are traditionally regarded as electronically silent structural units. Recently, a study hypothesized that combining this flexible metal-carboxylate scaffold with π-extended emissive ligands and aromatic fluorination could unlock new, adaptive excited-state behavior under external stimuli. [...]
Researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) model that can more accurately predict how proteins interact with one another—an advancement that could accelerate drug discovery and deepen insights into diseases such as cancer. [...]
The Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission, run by the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies (IPOA) at the University of Barcelona and led by Maite Mascort and Esther Pons, has identified a papyrus containing a fragment of Homer's "Iliad" inside a Roman-era tomb dating to approximately 1,600 years ago, in the Egyptian town of Al Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus. The discovery is exceptional: it is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process. [...]
The sun continuously blasts charged, magnetic field-carrying particles, or plasma, in all directions. This solar wind interacts with the magnetic fields and atmospheres of several of our solar system's planets and other bodies, sculpting long magnetic tails of charged particles—magnetotails—that stretch into space behind them. [...]
In an e-commerce warehouse, worker performance is influenced by the performance of those around them, despite a system that discourages interaction, according to research from Caitlin Ray, ILR assistant professor in the Human Resource Studies Department. [...]
As coral reefs struggle to survive in warming oceans, scientists across the world are scrambling to find ways to help these vital ocean ecosystems. An interdisciplinary team at the University of Miami has discovered a new way to help lab-grown baby corals survive through the often-difficult early life stage. By growing these tiny baby corals on cement tiles formulated with sodium carbonate, which raises the alkalinity of the water, the team was able to show that young mountainous star corals are able to survive much better than the average lab-grown corals. Because survivorship among these young corals is often challenging, the technique could prove useful for coral restoration efforts across the globe. [...]
For the first time, a team of researchers from Stellenbosch University (SU) and the Agricultural Research Council has successfully edited the DNA of a woody crop plant in Africa by making precise changes to its genetic material. This is a major milestone for plant biotechnology on the continent. Using CRISPR technology—a tool that enables scientists to cut and edit DNA at very specific points—the researchers switched off a single gene (VvDMR6.1) in grapevine plants. This gene is linked to how plants respond to disease. The researchers say that this change made the plants less vulnerable to downy mildew, a major disease that affects vineyards around the world. [...]
The cosmological constant is the mathematical description of the energy that drives the ever-accelerating expansion of the cosmos. It's also the source of one of the most enduring and confounding problems in modern physics. [...]
Composed of five or more elements in nearly equal amounts, high-entropy alloys (HEAs) have emerged as promising catalysts due to their compositionally complex surfaces that can accelerate chemical reactions. Until now, scientists have not been able to precisely engineer these surface structures at the nanoscale, making it difficult to study how particle shape influences catalytic performance. Now, a study led by Northwestern University professors Chad A. Mirkin and Christopher M. Wolverton has solved that problem. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. [...]
How can the mild flavor of flaxseed oil be preserved for longer? A research team led by Roman Lang from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich has investigated this question. As the team demonstrates in its study, natural precursors of bitter-tasting compounds can be gently removed from the oil using bleaching earth (magnesium-aluminum silicate). [...]
For people living in some parts of the United States, their accent might not just indicate where they live, but also who they think they are. In a small study in rural northwestern Ohio, researchers found that men who had a "country" identity—for example, a love of hunting and guns, pickup trucks and country music—showed different vowel patterns in their pronunciations than did their neighbors who showed more interest in pursuits like theater, golf and rock music. [...]
A research team with scientists from MARUM—Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen studied the hemispheric origin of Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) and found a high Southern Hemispheric contribution over the past 800,000 years. The results, now published in the journal Nature Communications, highlight an important and direct pathway from high southern latitudes to the tropical oceans. [...]
At the School of Design, interior design faculty Elif and Alp Tural teach students how empathy, accessibility, and well-being can shape the spaces designers create. After earning their degrees at Arizona State University, the Turals moved to Blacksburg, where they now help prepare the next generation of interior designers in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. Their approach asks students to think carefully about how spaces affect the people who use them every day. [...]
Today, I want to walk you through a deceptively simple innovation from the lab at Loughborough University (PI: Prof Marco Peccianti): what happens when we decorate a spintronic heterostructure with a sparse layer of plasmonic nanoparticles? This isn't just a lab curiosity—it's a step toward making terahertz sources more efficient, compact, and practical for real-world applications like high-speed communications, noninvasive imaging, and advanced spectroscopy. [...]
Researchers from Google DeepMind in Berlin, BIFOLD, and the Technical University of Berlin have introduced a new machine learning method—Euclidean Fast Attention (EFA)—that enables global atomic interactions in chemical systems to be represented more efficiently. This could allow chemical and materials science processes to be simulated more accurately in the future, potentially accelerating the development of new drugs, more efficient batteries, and more sustainable materials. [...]
In the spring, ants are once again hard at work. Beyond their everyday presence, ants are also key model organisms in cutting-edge evolutionary genetics research, helping scientists understand how social behavior and cooperation evolve. [...]
Efforts to rescue a humpback whale stranded for weeks on Germany's Baltic Sea coast were complicated Monday when the animal unexpectedly swam away but then appeared to have got stuck again. [...]
A prototype shoe made entirely from pure mycelium, the root-like network of fungi, will debut at Milan Design Week. The project is a collaboration between researcher and designer Lars Dittrich of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and head shoemaker Marie De Ryck at La Monnaie/De Munt. It reframes how living materials enter application, moving beyond substitution toward a model in which design mediates between advanced biomaterials research and the demands of traditional craft. [...]
For the first time, a stem cell model has produced a structure resembling an early human embryo with a yolk-sac-like structure, from a single starting stem cell population and without direct genetic manipulation. The models were made at University of Michigan Engineering. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences provided monkey embryo data to help confirm that the Michigan team was indeed seeing a yolk-sac-like structure in their models. The work is published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. [...]