Today's nearly $70 billion U.S. biofuels economy is powered by two technology toolboxes. Biochemical technologies—used to produce around 17 billion gallons of ethanol annually—leverage microorganisms to convert plant biomass sugars into alcohols, other biofuels, or chemicals. Chemical technologies, the second toolbox, use catalysts to turn biomass and wastes into similar target products. [...]
The transition from water to land is a question that still intrigues scientists. Those ancient organisms would have needed to adapt to several new challenges to life out of water. So, how did they do it? [...]
Odin was a kelpie. Attentive and protective, with a happy smile and an endless hope for food, he succumbed to a terminal disease late last year. At his death, a deep sense of grief ripped through the household of one of us (Andrew): While Odin was not human, he was an irreplaceable member of the family. [...]
Clathrate hydrates are crystalline structures formed at the bottom of seafloors, created by water molecules trapping methane, carbon dioxide or other molecules. While these materials are underutilized in technology, a University of Oklahoma researcher is helping scientists better understand them through a trailblazing study. [...]
Argonne and Northwestern University scientists teamed up to understand how light interacts with metallic nanoframes, with implications for biosensing, quantum information science and beyond. [...]
Museum collections have underpinned scientific research for centuries. But physical specimens in boxes and drawers don't easily lend themselves to the research techniques of the new millennium. "How can we apply these techniques to natural history collections, especially when much of the intrinsic information a specimen has to offer is difficult to quantify?" asks Katja Seltmann, director of UC Santa Barbara's Cheadle Center for Biodiversity & Ecological Restoration. Enter the Big Bee Project: a pioneering initiative to bring natural history collections into the century of AI, big data and networked databases. [...]
Understanding gene expression within the body has been a boon for 21st century biology and therapeutics, but most discoveries that use these technologies only focus on one organ or one small area of tissue. At the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME), Assoc. Prof. Nicolas Chevrier's group has developed a new system to understand how diseases affect molecules, cells, tissues, and organs across the whole body—a major goal of both scientists and physicians. The interdisciplinary work was led by Maggie Clevenger, a staff scientist in the lab, and involved several industrial and academic collaborators. [...]
It's fairly common for members of the public to ask bug experts if ticks that hitchhike into a house on people or dogs can actually survive indoors for any length of time. A new study provides the first scientific evidence that the answer is yes, showing that two species of ticks can live at least one week, and up to about three weeks, on hard-surface and carpeted floors. [...]
It is not unusual for laboratory monkeys to engage in abnormal repetitive behaviors (ARBs), such as pacing and hair-plucking. Conventional thinking is that these actions are linked to recent stresses or current housing conditions. But a new study published in the journal Biology Letters suggests the causes are often cumulative negative experiences that build up over an animal's entire life. [...]
Can light behave like a whirlwind? It turns out it can—and such "optical tornadoes" have now been created in an extremely small structure by scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, the Military University of Technology, and the Institut Pascal CNRS at Université Clermont Auvergne. This discovery opens a new pathway for creating miniature light sources with complex structures, potentially enabling the development of simpler and more scalable photonic devices in the future, for applications such as optical communication and quantum technologies. The research is published in the journal Science Advances. [...]
Researchers at the University of Seville's Food Color and Quality Laboratory have studied the effects of different cooking methods used for tomatoes and carrots (in the oven, microwave or air fryer, among others) on the amount of carotenoids that are potentially available for absorption by the body following the digestion of these foods. According to the study, the bioavailability index varies significantly depending on how these foods are cooked. Carotenoids are compounds of great importance due to their positive health effects. [...]
For many people, "protein" is the key element of a food order. However, beyond the preferred choice of meats or plant-based alternatives, proteins encompass a large class of complex biomolecules whose chemical structure is encoded in our genes. Proteins have critical functions in living cells; they help repair and build body tissues, drive metabolic reactions, maintain pH and fluid balance, and keep our immune systems strong. [...]
A new study finds that commercial satellite imagery data often outperforms public data sets when identifying surface water, but that public data sets may be better at detecting water hidden by forest cover. Satellite imagery is a powerful tool for mapping surface water, from the movement of rivers and streams to water levels and even water temperatures. The effectiveness of those satellites depends on their ability to identify water in the images they capture. [...]
The astronaut who prompted NASA's first medical evacuation earlier this year said Friday that doctors still don't know why he suddenly fell sick at the International Space Station. [...]
Researchers at Northumbria University have used the most powerful space telescope ever built to answer one of the longest-standing puzzles in planetary science—why does Saturn appear to spin at a different speed depending on how you measure it? The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, reveal for the first time the complex patterns of heat and electrically charged particles in Saturn's aurora, and show that the entire system is driven by a self-sustaining feedback loop powered by the planet's own northern lights. [...]
For decades, the college athlete's world has been split between the classroom and the playing field––and now there's a third role: chief marketing officer. Name, image and likeness policies provide athletes income through endorsements and sponsorships, and while NIL doesn't force athletes to choose between school and sports, it does crank up the pressure, new research from the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota suggests. [...]
Researchers at the Würzburg site of the Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat have succeeded in transferring the topological quantum Hall and spin Hall effects to a hybrid light-matter system by harnessing targeted material design. The team led by Professor Sebastian Klembt generated this optical quantum phenomenon by using polaritons—hybrid light-matter particles. This advance paves the way for optical information processing. The results have been published in Nature Communications. [...]
Social media have become an integral part of everyday life for most people. Many of us follow companies on social media and react to images and campaigns that resonate with us. [...]
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has long been seen as a reliable engine of economic growth, bringing jobs, productivity gains and new technologies into host economies. But new research suggests the reality is far more complex, and far less predictable. [...]
Understanding what triggers large volcanic eruptions is crucial for hazard assessment, but the exact mechanism driving these eruptions is still poorly understood. The prevailing theory is that volatile exsolution—gas coming out of magma—is a main driver of eruptions, particularly in volcanoes rich in silica. However, a new study, published in Nature Communications, posits that it is actually gas being dissolved back into the magma that leads to the pressurization needed for large eruptions. [...]
An international research team led by the University of Vienna has produced, for the first time, high-resolution global maps of invasion risk for thousands of alien plant species under current conditions and future climate and land use scenarios. Their results show that global hotspots of plant invasion risk will shift geographically, with temperate regions facing increasing risks, while risks may decline in some subtropical areas. The study was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. [...]
As bubbles rippled across the frigid Finnish lake, diver Daan Jacobs emerged from a hole carved out of the thick, crackling ice. [...]
Peri-urban agriculture in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) is in a critical situation after decades of decline. A new study conducted by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) highlights the dramatic reduction of peri-urban farming in the region, with losses of up to 70% of agricultural land, largely driven by urban expansion, real estate speculation, and the low profitability of the agricultural sector. Currently, only 8.5% of the metropolitan region is devoted to agriculture, equivalent to about 16 square meters per inhabitant. [...]
Archaeologists working in Egypt's Nile Delta may have discovered a tomb or temple dating back around 2,600 years while testing a new technology designed to locate structures buried deep beneath the surface. The team was studying the Buto (Tell el-Fara'in) site, the ruins of an ancient city that was occupied from the Predynastic period (around 3800 BCE) to the Early Islamic era (7th century CE). [...]
Proteins are far more than nutrients we track on a food label. Present in every cell of our bodies, they work like nature's molecular machines. They walk, stretch, bend, and flex to do their jobs, pumping blood, fighting disease, building tissue, and many other jobs too small for the eye to see. Their power doesn't come from shape alone, but from how they move. [...]
A multi-institutional team of scientists, co-led by Northwestern University, has taken a crucial step toward implantable "living pharmacies"—tiny devices containing engineered cells that continuously produce medicines inside the body. In a new study published in Device, the team engineered cells to simultaneously produce three different biologics—an anti-HIV antibody, a GLP-1-like peptide used to treat type 2 diabetes, and leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and metabolism. When implanted under the skin of a small animal model, the device kept drug-producing cells alive and stably delivered all three therapies at once. [...]
Personality tests are widely used in workplaces to shape recruitment, leadership training and team building. But what if artificial intelligence could make them faster, smarter and more accurate? New research from the University of East London (UEL) suggests that machine learning could significantly improve the way organizational psychologists and managers use one of the most widely used personality tools, the DISC assessment. [...]
A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Month image. IC 486 lies right on the edge of the constellation Gemini (the Twins), about 380 million light-years from Earth. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, it features a bright central bar-shaped structure from which its spiral arms unfurl, wrapping around the core in a smooth, almost ring-like pattern. [...]
How do cells ensure that the "blueprints" of genetic information-RNA are accurate and intact before they are exported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm for protein production? A study led by Professor Yongsheng Shi's team at the University of California, Irvine, published in the journal Molecular Cell, has unveiled a previously undefined key mechanism within the cell: the LENG8 protein. [...]
Since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February, Iran has retaliated by targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shutting down the narrow channel of water. [...]