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Here’s what was surprising about Kilauea’s 3-month-long eruption

Researchers revealed new insight into the Hawaiian volcano’s most recent eruption.

53min

Dracula ant's killer jaws are nature's fastest mover at 200 mph

Tropical insect uses lethal speed of its spring-loaded mandibles to stun or kill prey Move aside cheetah and peregrine falcon, there is a new contender for the title of fastest animal on Earth: the Dracula ant. Scientists have discovered that the small tropical insect can snap its mandibles at up to 90 metres a second (more than 200 mph), the fastest animal movement on record. The ants use the ex

5min

Streaming Isn’t Everything, and Blu-Rays Are Back to Prove It

As the gaps in streaming libraries become greater, so does physical media's comeback story.

Rosetta witnesses birth of baby bow shock around comet

A new study reveals that, contrary to first impressions, Rosetta did detect signs of an infant bow shock at the comet it explored for two years – the first ever seen forming anywhere in the solar system.

Regeringen vendt på pesticid-tallerkenen: Kræver sprøjtefri zoner ved drikkevand

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Miljøministeren vil nu arbejde for et forbud mod at sprøjte marker, hvorfra regnvandet siver ned til drikkevandsboringer. Selv samme krav afviste regeringen ellers ved sidste års forlig.

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LATEST

Rethinking school suspensions: School climate offers a clue

Now, researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Virginia have found that when educators and administrators focus on creating a positive school climate, the likelihood of a student being suspended decreases by approximately 10 percent.

now

Low-cost catalyst from U of T Engineering boosts hydrogen production from water

A future powered by carbon-free fuel depends on our ability to harness and store energy from renewable but intermittent sources, such as solar and wind. Now, a new catalyst developed at U of T Engineering gives a boost to a number of clean energy technologies that depend on producing hydrogen from water.

now

Coral larvae use sound to find a home on the reef

A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is starting to unravel that mystery. Researchers found that the soundscape of a reef–the combined sounds of all animals living nearby–might play a major role in steering corals towards healthy reef systems and away from damaged ones.

now

#BlackGirlMagic: Black women in STEM are driving forward — educators need to catch up

The need for more scientists and engineers is a persistent issue plaguing industries throughout the United States. Several initiatives created to prioritize science, technology, engineering and mathematics in schools are helping educators prepare more diverse students and workers for STEM fields. However, these efforts might be falling short when it comes to representation of people of color, acco

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3D printing offers helping hand to patients with arthritis

3D printing can cut the cost of adaptive aids that help people with hand arthritis. Current products are quite expensive, and more so to create customized versions, but 3D printing drops the cost by an average of 94 percent for 20 different handheld devices.

now

Seeing small-molecule interactions inside cells

Like people in a large company, proteins in cells constantly interact with each other to perform various jobs. To develop new disease therapies, researchers are trying to control these interactions with small-molecule drugs that cause specific proteins to associate more or less with their "coworkers." Now, researchers reporting in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry have developed a method to visual

now

Why We Love Spotify’s Annual Wrap-Ups

Way back in June, my cousin and I joined the pilgrimage of people who came of age in the mid-aughts trekking to New York City to see the musical adaptation of Mean Girls on Broadway. Though we were definitely going ironically, I believe that familiarity with the material is critical to appreciating any theatrical performance, so on our drive up, I cranked the campy, sugared soundtrack on repeat u

3min

Virgin Galactic could reach space for the first time this week

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3min

8,300-Year-Old Stone Snake Heads Reveal Stone Age Ritual Ceremonies

What might be passed over as two oddly shaped rocks are the work of Stone Age artisans who sculpted the rocks into beady-eyed snake heads, archaeologists have found.

4min

What I Learned from an Ocean Radioactivity Testing Project

Enlisting the public in water sampling after the Fukushima disaster helped build and spread scientific knowledge — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

7min

Chemical engineers advance olefins production through computational modeling

Olefins are simple compounds of hydrogen and carbon but represent the building blocks of chemistry, and are vital for the synthesis of materials from polymers and plastics to petrochemicals. However, olefin production requires the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels, energy intensive "cracking" facilities, and limited production control.

7min

Astronomers find that dark matter dominates across cosmic time

In findings published today in The Astrophysical Journal, University of Texas at Austin astronomers report that they have stumbled on an extraordinary galaxy that may corroborate a recently contested theory about dark matter.

7min

Minister afviser genberegning af Baltic Pipe i lyset af Parisaftalen

Hvis vi lever op til Paris-aftalen, skal vi være CO2-neutrale i 2050. Alligevel budgetteres gasledningen med at skulle tilbagebetales helt frem til 2053. En genberegning er ikke relevant, hedder det i et svar fra ministeren.

12min

Declining snowpack over Western US mapped at a finer scale

Researchers mapped the changes in snow mass from 1982 to 2016 onto a grid of squares 2.5-miles on a side over the entire contiguous U.S. Grid size for previous studies was about 40 miles on a side. Since 1982, some parts of the West have a 41 percent reduction in the yearly maximum mass of snow.

13min

Secrets of iron storage in algae

New research shows that phytoplankton iron storage strategies may determine which species thrive in changing oceans and impact marine food webs, according to a recent article. The research examined two primary methods of iron storage and found that one makes species more resilient against shortages of the rare and essential element.

13min

RUDN medics called the world to action against hepatitis in Somalia

Using mathematical statistics methods, RUDN medics analyzed the data of 30 studies of the cases of hepatitis in Somalia. The studies also included Somali people who immigrated to Italy, the United States, United Kingdom and Libya and were screened for hepatitis viruses The research demonstrated critical spread rates of 5 types of viral hepatitis. The authors emphasize that, according to the result

22min

Pain: Perception and motor impulses arise in brain independently of one another

Pain is a negative feeling that we want to get rid of. In order to protect our bodies, we react for example by withdrawing the hand. This action is usually understood as the consequence of the perception of pain. Scientists from the Technical University of Munich has shown that perception, the impulse to act and provision of energy to do so take place in the brain simultaneously and not, as expect

22min

Students around the globe collect quality, eye-opening research data on mammals

Researchers at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and NC State University, running a large-scale camera-trap study called eMammal, recently enlisted the help of K-12 students from 28 schools and four countries — the United States, India, Mexico and Kenya. What the researchers, and the kids, discovered was surprising. 'These camera traps yielded thousands of images with a total 83 native mammal spe

22min

Sort sne, boblende gas og varmt vand: Her er tre af klimaets dominoeffekter

Det menneskeskabte CO2-udslip har sat skub i en række dominoeffekter. Det er blandt andet derfor, at indlandsisen forsvinder.

23min

Killing the liver-stage malaria parasite with baculovirus: a drug discovery approach

Currently, few antimalarial treatments exist that effectively kill liver-stage malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax, which can lay dormant for months or even years. Researchers have reported a new drug that could eliminate liver-stage malaria parasites completely. Using an insect virus, known as a baculovirus, the researchers investigated the ability of baculovirus to mediate innate immunity against

27min

Development of world's first vertical Ga2O3 transistor through ion implantation doping

Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) demonstrate a vertical Ga2O3 metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) that adopts an all-ion-implanted process for both n-type and p-type doping, paving the way for new generations of low-cost and highly-manufacturable Ga2O3 power ele

27min

New method for studying ALS more effectively

The neurodegenerative disease ALS causes motor neuron death and paralysis. However, long before the cells die, they lose contact with the muscles as their axons atrophy. Researchers have now devised a new method that radically improves the ability to study axons and thus to better understand the pathological development of ALS.

27min

New model in the fight against African swine fever

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published a new scientific report on the current status of the spread of African swine fever within the EU. The report describes, among other things, which management measures EU member states should take if an isolated outbreak of the virus infection occurs, i.e. if it is detected far away from the current spread.

27min

Your weight history may predict your heart failure risk

In a medical records analysis of information gathered on more than 6,000 people, researchers conclude that simply asking older adult patients about their weight history at ages 20 and 40 could provide real value to clinicians in their efforts to predict patients' future risk of heart failure, heart attacks or strokes.

27min

Computer model flags aggressive prostate cancer

Researchers have developed a computer model that can predict the course of a patient’s prostate cancer. More than one million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year. One of the key challenges is to differentiate between aggressive and non-aggressive disease. The new model could help solve this issue. In a new study in Cancer Cell , the researchers collected patient data from close to 30

40min

New York Times: Hackerangreb på Marriott sporet til kinesiske hackere

Hackerangreb mod hotelkæde var gennemført af hackere for Kinas Statssikkerhedsministerium og kan være del af en større kinesisk efterretningsoperation.

42min

Study highlights potential benefits of continuous EEG monitoring for infant patients

A recent retrospective study evaluating continuous electroencephalography (cEEG) of children in intensive care units found a higher than anticipated number of seizures. The work also identified several conditions closely associated with the seizures, and suggests that cEEG monitoring may be a valuable tool for helping to identify and treat neurological problems in patients who are 14 months old or

44min

Seeing small-molecule interactions inside cells (video)

Like people in a large company, proteins in cells constantly interact with each other to perform various jobs. To develop new disease therapies, researchers are trying to control these interactions with small-molecule drugs that cause specific proteins to associate more or less with their 'coworkers.' Now, researchers reporting in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry have developed a method to visual

44min

Fallen through the net?

Using long-term data from the "Butterfly Monitoring Germany" citizens' research project, scientists have now investigated the matter using butterflies as an example. According to the research, there are more butterfly species in Natura 2000 areas than elsewhere. However, the same decline in the numbers of species regardless whether the communities are located within or outside the protected areas.

44min

An intellectually active lifestyle protects against neurodegeneration in Huntington's

Researchers from IDIBELL and the University of Barcelona (UB), in collaboration with several hospitals, have discovered that an intellectually active lifestyle confers protection against neurodegeneration in people with Huntington's disease, delaying the onset of symptoms and loss of grey matter in the brain.

44min

Scientists develop a cellulose biosensor material for advanced tissue engineering

I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University teamed up together with Irish colleagues to develop a new imaging approach for tissue engineering. The team produced so-called 'hybrid biosensor' scaffold materials, which are based on cellulose matrices labeled with pH- and calcium-sensitive fluorescent proteins. These materials enable visualization of the metabolism and other important biomarke

44min

Tube travel linked to the spread of flu-like illnesses

Despite the commuter cold being a widely accepted concept, it has never been proven that public transport contributes to the spread of airborne infections. Now new research on the London underground commute has proven a link does exist.

44min

New transport mechanism of nanomaterial through a cell membrane: membrane stretching

The team of theoretical physics at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, led by Dr. Vladimir Baulin, designed a research project to investigate the interaction between nanotube and lipid membranes. The researchers studied what they call a 'model bilayer', composed only by one type of lipid, and they observed that it is possible to control the transport of nanomaterial across a cell membrane b

44min

Pitt chemical engineers advance olefins production through computational modeling

New research from the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering has introduced a method to effectively screen different catalysts that convert light alkanes to olefins. With light alkanes being abundant in the Marcellus and Utica shale reserves, this methodology may provide a more economical solution for olefins production.

44min

Chickens to be marker of Anthropocene

New research shows the age of man — the Anthropocene — will be defined by the chicken.

44min

Lung lavage as new test method improves tuberculosis diagnosis in rhinoceros

An international team of scientists led by institutes in Berlin and Jena, Germany, performed repeated lung lavage as a new approach for tuberculosis diagnosis in rhinoceros. Subsequent genetic tests reliably identified mycobacteria in the animals' respiratory fluids — with minimal stress and risk for the rhinos. The study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.

44min

New research questions the 'Glass Cliff' and corroborates the persistent 'Glass Ceiling'

Are women more likely to be appointed to leadership positions in crisis situations when companies are struggling with declining profits?

44min

Record-wet and record-dry months increased in regions worldwide

More and more rainfall extremes are observed in regions around the globe — triggering both wet and dry records, a new study shows. Yet there are big differences between regions: The central and Eastern US, northern Europe and northern Asia have experienced heavy rainfall events that have led to severe floods in recent past. In contrast, most African regions have seen an increased frequency of mon

44min

Antipsychotic treatment and risk of unexpected death in children, young people

Antipsychotic medications can have adverse effects, including those that are life-threatening. This observational study examined the association of antipsychotic medications prescribed for children and young adults without psychosis and risk of unexpected death, which includes deaths due to unintentional drug overdose or cardiovascular/metabolic causes. About 250,000 children and young people (age

44min

Are suicidal thoughts, attempts more likely in people with eczema?

Eczema (atopic dermatitis) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that affects millions of adults and children and has been associated with depression and anxiety. Evidence on the association between eczema and suicidal thoughts or attempts has been inconclusive. This study evaluated the association between eczema and suicidal thoughts and attempts by analyzing the combined results of 15 studies i

44min

Do negative public attitudes toward weight loss surgery stop some patients from having surgery?

Most patients who qualify for weight loss surgery don't have the procedure despite its safety and effectiveness. One reason may be negative public attitudes toward weight loss surgery. This study assessed attitudes toward weight loss surgery with a national survey that included about 950 respondents. Nearly half reported they thought most people who had weight loss surgery did it for cosmetic reas

44min

Dana Foundation

Brain Awareness Week 2019 is Coming

Brain Awareness Week (BAW) 2019 (March 11-17) is only three months away, so it’s time to start planning your BAW activities and taking advantage of the resources we offer on the BAW website ! Every March, BAW, the global campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research, unites the efforts of partner organizations worldwide in a week-long celebration of the brai

51min

For retailers, the smartphone is future of store experience

Retailers are taking back some control of the store experience with smartphone app features that let customers do things like scan and pay, as well as download digital maps.

55min

Air France gets new CEO

Air France on Wednesday appointed a new chief executive, who will have the difficult task of piloting the airline out of difficult relations with its unions that have hobbled its performance.

55min

Genetic study of people with acne raises prospect of new treatment

Researchers think differences in hair follicle shape may increase risk of condition The world’s first genetic study of people with acne has raised the prospect of new treatments for those with severe cases of the skin condition. The study of almost 27,000 people, including 5,602 with severe acne, identified genetic differences that were more common in people with the skin condition. Scientists fo

Deep-learning technique reveals 'invisible' objects in the dark

Small imperfections in a wine glass or tiny creases in a contact lens can be tricky to make out, even in good light. In almost total darkness, images of such transparent features or objects are nearly impossible to decipher. But now, engineers have developed a technique that can reveal these "invisible" objects, in the dark.

Marketing: Putting a price on reputation

As Christmas shopping gets into full swing, new research reveals how reputation influences our purchasing decisions and the price we are willing to pay relative to other product features.

Fighting obesity: Could it be as plain as dirt?

It costs the global economy an estimated US $2 trillion annually and has been dubbed a modern day health epidemic, but new research has unearthed a possible cure for obesity — and it is as plain as dirt!

The stiffest porous lightweight materials ever

Researchers have developed and manufactured a family of architectures that maximizes the stiffness of porous lightweight materials. It's practically impossible to develop stiffer designs.

Light-induced modification of a carboxylic acid with an aminocyclopropenone

Researchers report that carboxylic acids, functional groups contained in biomolecules, drugs, and materials can be readily modified by light-induced organic reactions using an aminocyclopropenone. This discovery opens up new pathways for carboxylic acid modification with potential applications including determination of drug target proteins, elucidation of protein function, and synthesis of functi

New foldable drone flies through narrow holes in rescue missions

A research team has developed a new drone that can retract its propeller arms in flight and make itself small to fit through narrow gaps and holes. This is particularly useful when searching for victims of natural disasters.

Researchers reverse engineer way pine trees produce green chemicals worth billions

Researchers have reverse engineered the way a pine tree produces a resin, which could serve as an environmentally friendly alternative to a range of fossil-fuel based products worth billions of dollars.

New insight into stem cell behavior 'highlights therapeutic target for cancer treatment'

Research led by the University of Plymouth and Technische Universität Dresden has identified a new therapeutic target for cancer treatment and tooth regeneration — a protein called Prominin-1.

Insight into cause of rare disorder may aid quest for treatments

New findings about the causes of a rare genetic disorder that affects mainly boys, known as MeCP2 duplication syndrome, may inform the development of treatments for the condition.

Obtaining polyester from plant oil

University of Konstanz chemist Professor Stefan Mecking publishes a new catalysis concept for obtaining polyester from castor oil.

More 'heatwave' summers will affect animals

Heatwaves similar to those experienced in Europe in 2018 can have a very negative impact on animals. A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that overheated birds have smaller offspring, and that those that are born may have lower chances of survival.

Mini-detectors for the gigantic?

The gravitational waves created in the depths of space indeed reach Earth. Their effects, however, are so small that they could only be observed so far using kilometer-long measurement facilities. Physicists therefore discuss whether Bose-Einstein condensates with their ordered quantum properties could also detect these waves. Prof. Ralf Schützhold from HZDR and TU Dresden has now looked at these

How bullying affects the brain

The effects of constantly being bullied are more than just psychological. Research now shows that there may be physical structural differences in the brains of adolescents who are regularly victimized, and this could increase the chance that they suffer from mental illness.

Verizon takes $4.6B charge on internet ventures

Shares of Verizon slipped before the opening bell Wednesday with the company taking a $4.6 billion hit on what's become an expensive internet foray that's never panned out.

Learning genetic risk can change how your body works

Simply learning of a genetic risk can alter your physiology, research shows, causing lower performance on exercise tests or altering hormones that indicate fullness after a meal. Millions of people in the United States alone have submitted their DNA for analysis and received information that not only predicts their risk for disease but, it turns out, in some cases might also have influenced that

VIDEO: Kosmonauter efterforsker mystisk hul på rumvandring

Tirsdag var russiske kosmonauter på en mere end syv timers lang rumvandring, hvor de indsamlede billeder og prøver fra det 1,5-2 millimeter store hul i rumkapslen Soyuz MS-09

TED Talks Daily (SD video)

Why you should treat the tech you use at work like a colleague | Nadjia Yousif

Imagine your company hires a new employee and then everyone just ignores them, day in and day out, while they sit alone at their desk getting paid to do nothing. This situation actually happens all the time — when companies invest millions of dollars in new tech tools only to have frustrated employees disregard them, says Nadjia Yousif. In this fun and practical talk, she offers advice on how to

Putting a price on reputation

Consumers are willing to pay more for products that not only have the features they want but also are delivered by businesses with a good reputation, new research has found.

Mayors And Governors Rebut Trump Administration Position At Climate Summit

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Federal officials at the U.N. climate meeting are ignoring climate science and touting coal and fossil fuels. But local and state authorities pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their own. (Image credit: Josh Edelson /AFP/Getty Images)

Parents talk to kids about tech but not what they watch

Parents spend more time talking with children about the mechanics of using their mobile devices than about what their kids watch and download on them, according to a new study. The findings came from a small, recent study of 75 children and their families in which the children wore recording devices at home. The devices recorded talking, conversations, or other sounds nearby, as well as audible s

An end to suffering: 10 quotes on Buddhist philosophy

Buddhism has been applied differently across the planet as it enters new cultures. The underlying philosophical foundation is applicable to diverse situations, whether religious or secular. But it is a practice, not a belief, and must be treated as a discipline for retraining consciousness. None As with most articles, I posted my recent piece on busyness being a modern sickness on social media. I

Airbus says improper settings played role in Mali helicopter crash

European aircraft manufacturer Airbus said Wednesday that an investigation had found improper settings to have been one factor behind the deadly 2017 crash of a German military helicopter in a UN operation in Mali.

SFU scientists automated electrolyte composition analysis for aluminium production

A team from Siberian Federal University (SFU) suggested a new method for automatic composition analysis of electrolyte samples from electrolysis baths. It will provide for more accurate technological control and increase the efficiency of aluminium production. The article of the scientists was published in the Crystals journal.

New method for studying ALS more effectively

The neurodegenerative disease ALS causes motor neuron death and paralysis. However, long before the cells die, they lose contact with the muscles as their axons atrophy. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now devised a new method that radically improves the ability to study axons and thus to better understand the pathological development of ALS.

University of Miami medical team reports acute findings from Havana embassy phenomenon

A team of University of Miami Miller School of Medicine faculty, along with collaborators from the University of Pittsburgh, today presented the first report of acute symptoms and clinical findings in 25 diplomatic personnel living in the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba, who experienced severe neurosensory symptoms after exposure to a unique sound and pressure phenomenon.

Development of world's first vertical Ga2O3 transistor through ion implantation doping

New foldable drone flies through narrow holes in rescue missions

A research team from the University of Zurich has developed a new drone that can retract its propeller arms in flight and make itself small to fit through narrow gaps and holes. This is particularly useful when searching for victims of natural disasters.

European network of protected areas has not yet been able to stop the decline of butterflies in Germany

The Natura 2000 network of protected areas runs across the EU as a conservation network for biodiversity. However, only a few studies have so far analysed whether these refuges actually have a positive effect on species diversity. Studies have predominately focussed on birds and have not shown any clear trends. Using long-term data from the "Butterfly Monitoring Germany" citizens' research project

The Case for Viral ‘Call-Out’ Culture

Meme-ifying a racist rant isn’t frivolous: It’s crafting a nuanced picture of American racism—and laughing at it.

Declining snowpack over western US mapped at a finer scale

Researchers have now mapped exactly where in the Western U.S. snow mass has declined since 1982.

Researchers reverse engineer way pine trees produce green chemicals worth billions

Washington State University researchers have reverse engineered the way a pine tree produces a resin, which could serve as an environmentally friendly alternative to a range of fossil-fuel based products worth billions of dollars.

UFZ model in the fight against African swine fever

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published a new scientific report on the current status of the spread of African swine fever (ASF) within the EU. The report describes, among other things, which management measures EU member states should take if an isolated outbreak of the virus infection occurs, i.e. if it is detected far away from the current spread. The scientific basis for these

Cheap oil is blocking progress on climate change

The relationship between supply and demand, a fundamental economic concept, holds that when the price of something rises, people use less of it. Similarly, when prices fall, they use more.

How stereo was first sold to a skeptical public

When we hear the word "stereo" today, we might simply think of a sound system, as in "turn on the stereo."

'Eavesdropping' on groupers' mating calls key to survival

Eavesdropping on groupers mating in their natural habitats isn't creepy. In fact, it's imperative to ensuring their survival. For years, scientists have used passive acoustic monitoring techniques to study the behavior of fishes. A particular application of this technique is used to observe the reproductive cycle of fishes, including groupers.

Fighting obesity — could it be as plain as dirt?

It costs the global economy an estimated US $2 trillion annually and has been dubbed a modern day health epidemic, but new research from the University of South Australia has unearthed a possible cure for obesity — and it is as plain as dirt!

Putting a price on reputation

As Christmas shopping gets into full swing, new research reveals how reputation influences our purchasing decisions and the price we are willing to pay relative to other product features.

Deep-learning technique reveals 'invisible' objects in the dark

Deep-learning technique reveals transparent objects in the dark.

Eligibility criteria unfairly limit minorities' access to hip and knee replacement surgeries

In a study of medical records pulled from a national database, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have found that underrepresented populations are less likely than others to be eligible for hip or knee replacement surgeries

The stiffest porous lightweight materials ever

Researchers at ETH have developed and manufactured a family of architectures that maximises the stiffness of porous lightweight materials. It's practically impossible to develop stiffer designs.

DNA study shows stethoscopes loaded with bacteria, including staphylococcus

Stethoscopes carried by health care practitioners are loaded with diverse bacteria, including some that can cause healthcare-associated infections, according to a study published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. The research also reviewed the effectiveness of cleaning methods, finding a standardized approach to b

Excess body weight responsible for nearly 4 percent of cancers worldwide

Excess body weight accounted for approximately 3.9 percent of all cancers worldwide in 2012, a figure that is expected to rise in the coming decades given current trends.

Nyheder – Forskning – Videnskab

Kandidat i social datavidenskab

Uddannelses- og forskningsminister Tommy Ahlers har godkendt en helt ny kandidatuddannelse i social datavidenskab…

Parents Are Biased Against Even Quality ‘Urban’ Schools

In recent years, many of America’s urban schools have improved significantly. A 2016 report from the Urban Institute found that while all the country’s public-school students improved in the decade starting in 2005, the gain for those in large cities was double that of the U.S. average; the advances are especially pronounced in kids’ reading scores. With these strides, the achievement gap between

Research unlocks secrets of iron storage in algae

New research shows that phytoplankton iron storage strategies may determine which species thrive in changing oceans and impact marine food webs, according to a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research examined two primary methods of iron storage and found that one makes species more resilient against shortages of the rare and essential element.

Your drinking water could be saltier than you think (even if you live in a capital)

As the drought drags on, small communities in eastern Australia are turning to emergency water supplies. Often, this means bore water, which has prompted health fears over its high salt content.

More heatwave summers will affect animals

Lung lavage as new test method improves tuberculosis diagnosis in rhinoceros

Diseases and tuberculosis in particular can pose considerable challenges for wildlife. In order to avoid epidemics within populations or to treat individual animals belonging to highly endangered species, fast and reliable tests are paramount. However present tuberculosis testing in rhinos relies on skin tests developed in the 1960s and designed for cattle bearing high risk of false diagnosis in r

Obtaining polyester from plant oil

The development of future technologies that are not based on mineral oil and can be used for producing chemicals and plastics is one of the major tasks in modern materials science and a key challenge that needs to be addressed if sustainable industrial production is to have a future. A range of theoretical concepts and laboratory processes must be devised and tested to resolve challenges and probl

Scientists discover stability in hybrid photoelectric nanomaterials

A team of Siberian scientists and foreign colleagues calculated the parameters that influence the intensity of the reaction between carbon nanotubes and phthalocyanines—complex nitrogen-containing compounds. Hybrid constructions based on them are considered as new materials for solar cell batteries, sensors and optic devices. The work was published in Applied Surface Science.

Minority-led firms more likely to face survival threats

Nearly half of firms run by ethnic minority entrepreneurs have experienced an "existential crisis" threatening their survival in the past five years, a major new survey of London firms has revealed.

Wet season changes under future climate change could harm 'vulnerable' Africa

Later and more intense rainy seasons across parts of Africa due to climate change could have damaging consequences, a new study has found.

Diamonds are forever – whether made in a lab or mined from the Earth

It's diamond season. Almost 40 percent of American engagements happen between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day, with Christmas the most popular day to pop the question – and hand over a sparkly piece of ice. Jewelry stores do at least double their usual monthly sales in December.

Teenage sexting: We're letting young people down by not talking about it

Sexting among young people has become a hotly debated topic over the past few years. Over the same period, our understanding of sexting has evolved. What was originally understood as sending naked or semi-naked images has now expanded to also include videos and text messages of a sexual nature.

More Floods and More Droughts: Climate Change Delivers Both

More records for both wet and dry weather are being set around the globe, according to a study published Wednesday.

WSU researchers reverse engineer way pine trees produce green chemicals worth billions

Alzheimer's drug may help battle antibiotic resistance

Dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria could soon be targeted with a drug initially developed to treat Alzheimer's disease. University of Queensland-led research investigated the antibacterial properties of metal transport drug, PBT2.

Mapping the big blue: Laser-induced technology to help mineral exploration at oceanic depths

Scientists have successfully measured zinc samples under deep-sea conditions. Their method could support sustainable extraction of raw seabed materials.

Arsenic contamination is common in Punjabi wells, study finds

While most Americans have access to safe, potable water, populations in some regions of the world are not as fortunate. In fact, the majority of some 90 million people who live in the Punjab areas of Pakistan and India drink and cook with untreated well water that they collect themselves from privately-owed wells on their properties.

Salmonella-udbrud: Kigger supermarkeds-bonner igennem for medisterpølser

Undersøgelser tyder på, at det største danske salmonellaudbrud siden 2014 skyldes medisterpølse. Myndigheder kortlægger patienternes indkøb op til sygdommen.

Where's my package? Common carrier freight lockers can ease city traffic and prevent failed deliveries

Online shopping is a big convenience for many Americans, but porch piracy can ruin the experience. For example, Mikaela Gilbert lived in a row house in West Philadelphia while she studied systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. By her junior year, Gilbert had lost enough packages to thieves that she devised an elaborate three-pronged security strategy.

Five reasons why 2018 was a big year for palaeontology

A lot happened in the world of palaeontology in 2018. Some of the big events included some major fossil finds, a new understanding of our reptile ancestors and a major controversy whose outcome could rewrite human history. The Conversation Africa asked Dr. Julien Benoit to discuss five important moments in palaeontology you may have missed during 2018, and what they mean – particularly for Africa

Coral larvae found to prefer a noisy environment

A team of researchers with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has found that coral larvae prefer to set up a new home in a place noisy with other living organisms over a barren soundless site. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes experiments they carried out around reefs in the Caribbean Sea and what they learned from them.

New ways to make plant-based medicines in space and on earth

How can you make medicines in space?

Distortion of water droplet surface may increase the likelihood of the droplet freezing

Clouds are a big source of uncertainty in computer simulations used to study Earth systems. To reduce that uncertainty, researchers study the formation of ice in clouds. This formation influences precipitation rates, large-scale cloud motions, and cloud optical properties. This research helps to address a long-standing mystery. For more than 50 years, scientists wanted to know why water droplets w

'Eavesdropping' on groupers' mating calls key to survival

Many fish produce sounds for courtship and mating, navigation, and defending their territories. Scientists analyze these sounds to study their behavior such as reproduction. Since grouper spawning is brief and it takes them a long time to reach sexual maturity, they are vulnerable to overfishing. 'Eavesdropping' on them is key to their survival. Researchers have developed a novel acoustic monitori

Rigshospitalet udbetaler merarbejdstimer til overlæger i strid med overenskomst

Honorering af overarbejde og manglende dokumentation heraf får Rigsrevisionen til at rette skarp kritik mod Rigshospitalet for at bryde overenskomsten.

Astronomers confirm extended atmosphere on accretion disk of X-ray binary

Astronomers use stellar eclipses to study the atmosphere of accretion disks around compact stars. SRON-researchers observed this method on a low-mass X-ray binary. They find a thicker atmosphere than predicted and distinguish two different gas components. The research was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Arctic Report Card tracks region's environmental changes

NOAA's annual report card on the Arctic, released today at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in Washington, D.C., measures the changing climate of the polar region including warmer air and ocean temperatures and declines in sea-ice that are driving shifts in animal habitats.

New research on deep reefs finds 195 species of coral

Queensland Museum scientists have used remotely operated vehicles and specialised diving techniques to find 195 coral species in deeper reef areas in the Great Barrier Reef region.

Killing the liver-stage malaria parasite with baculovirus: a drug discovery approach

Currently, few antimalarial treatments exist that effectively kill liver-stage malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax, which can lay dormant for months or even years. Researchers at Kanazawa University have reported a new drug that could eliminate liver-stage malaria parasites completely. Using an insect virus, known as a baculovirus, the researchers investigated the ability of baculovirus to mediate i

Light-induced modification of a carboxylic acid with an aminocyclopropenone

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in The Journal of Organic Chemistry that carboxylic acids, functional groups contained in biomolecules, drugs, and materials can be readily modified by light-induced organic reactions using an aminocyclopropenone. This discovery opens up new pathways for carboxylic acid modification with potential applications including determination of drug target protein

Attention, please! Anticipation of touch takes focus, executive skills

A study by the University of Washington and Temple University examines what happens in children's brains when they anticipate a touch to the hand, and relates this brain activity to the executive functions the child demonstrates on other mental tasks.

Maintaining the unlimited potential of stem cells

Scientists from the Salk Institute discovered a new protein complex that keeps the brakes on stem cells, allowing them to maintain their indefinite potential. The new complex, called GBAF and detailed in Nature Communications on Dec. 3, 2018, could provide a future target for regenerative medicine.

Drones help map sea level rise

Drones can be used to create low-cost and accurate 3-D maps of coastal areas, new research shows. The technique – developed by the University of Exeter – was tested at beaches where sea turtles nest, allowing scientists to see how rising sea levels will affect them. It combines drones and photogrammetry (extracting measurements from photographs) with accurate GPS satellite location to create detai

'Leaving no one behind' conveys a paternalistic approach to development

The term "leaving no one behind," now at the centre of a United Nations framework and campaign, has gained centre stage in the era of sustainable development goals (SDGs).

How Islamic State's destruction of ancient Palmyra played out on Arabic-language Twitter

Pictures of the destruction of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra have become iconic images of the conflict in Syria. These have been widely shared around the world as symbols of Islamic State's barbarism – profiled alongside their extensive human rights violations, such as the massacre of the Yazidi people.

DIY Don’t rely on tap water. Neti pots are a great way to clear out your nasal passages—but you need to use them the right way. Otherwise, you could end up exposing your brain to flesh-eating…

How to get nuanced details at the top of the world

At the top of the world, once permanently frozen soil holds vast pools of carbon. Microbes could free that carbon under the right conditions. To predict how the Arctic will respond to seasonal freeze-thaw-growing conditions, scientists need data. They built a system that gathers detailed data. It obtained data for a year, took measurements deep underground, and monitored a wide area on the surface

During droughts, bacteria help sorghum continue growing

The devastating effects of drought are expected to increase in severity and frequency in the coming years. To protect the world's food supply, scientists turn to genetic engineering. Now, a team of researchers has discovered how changes in the microbiome—the ecosystem of bacteria and other microorganisms attached to the roots of plants and in the soil surrounding it—may improve drought tolerance i

Don't worry about screen time – focus on how you use technology

Many Americans find themselves bombarded by expert advice to limit their screen time and break their addictions to digital devices – including enforcing and modeling this restraint for the children in their lives. However, over 15 years of closely observing people and talking with them about how they use technological tools, I've developed a more nuanced view: Whether a technology helps or hurts s

A radical new neural network design could overcome big challenges in AI

Researchers borrowed equations from calculus to redesign the core machinery of deep learning so it can model continuous processes like changes in health.

I Sæby lægger de datacentret i fjernvarmens baghave for at få fat i overskudsvarmen

Sæby Varmeværk vil i samarbejde med privat investeringsselskab opføre et datacenter. Varmeværket skal levere kølingen og aftage overskudsvarmen. På den måde sikrer værket sig de symbiosefordele, som de fleste store datacentre i resten af landet mangler.

An Upheaval at the Ends of the World

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It was not so long ago—only 108 years, within a great grandma’s memory—that a person’s eyes first beheld the South Pole. When Roald Amundsen made it to the bottom of the world in 1911, it marked a new chapter in the human story. Our curious, inventive, and adaptable species, born on the sunny savannah, had reached that last spot of remote desolation on our home planet. Little did we know that les

IIT researchers show how plants can generate electricity to power LED light bulbs

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Pontedera (Pisa, Italy), discovered that living plants are literally 'green' power source: they can generate, by a single leaf, more than 150 Volts, enough to simultaneously power 100 LED light bulbs. Researchers also showed that an 'hybrid tree' made of natural and artificial leaves can act as an innovative 'green'

Declining snowpack over western US mapped at a finer scale

'Eavesdropping' on groupers' mating calls key to survival

Your weight history may predict your heart failure risk

In a medical records analysis of information gathered on more than 6,000 people, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers conclude that simply asking older adult patients about their weight history at ages 20 and 40 could provide real value to clinicians in their efforts to predict patients' future risk of heart failure, heart attacks or strokes.

Developing brains of premature babies benefit from caffeine therapy

New research by the University of Calgary's Dr. Abhay Lodha, MD, shows early caffeine treatment of premature babies born less than 29 weeks' gestation has no long-term negative effects on brain development.

Pollen dispersal in traditional processing of buckwheat

In order to better understand the source and significance of crop pollen in archaeological sites, a recent study on the process of pollen dispersal in buckwheat traditional processing was published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences.

Ellen Trane igen klar med penge til Cochrane

Efter to måneders afbrydelse har Sundhedsministeriet nu genoptaget udbetalingen af finanslovsmidler til Det Nordiske Cochrane Center, der har været omgærdet af kaos de seneste måneder.

The eradication of the tsetse fly will boost the livestock sector in Senegal

Tstetes flies have been eradicated in an entire region of Senegal. This victory was due to be announced by Senegal's president at a ceremony on Dec. 8. It is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between CIRAD, the Institut Sénégalais de recherches agricoles (ISRA), Senegalese veterinary services, the Ministry of Agriculture and the International Atomic Energy Agency. After several other stage

Quantum Computing Needs You to Help Solve Its Core Mystery

Come get your qubits! The builders of quantum computers want more coders to use their machines and figure out what they're actually good for.

An Intel Breakthrough Rethinks How Chips Are Made

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Intel recently demonstrated Foveros, a method of stacking logic chips vertically that could reinvigorate Moore’s Law.

Scientists develop method to calculate transparent materials porosity

Applying a new method, technologists and materials scientists will be able to quickly, accurately and nondestructively obtain information about the microstructure and functionality of transparent materials including single crystals, glasses, and ceramics. The article has been published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

Periodic radio signal detected from the blazar J1043+2408

Using Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO), astronomers have detected a periodic signal in the radio light curve of the blazar J1043+2408, which could be helpful in improving our understanding about the nature of blazars in general. The finding was presented in a paper published November 30 on arXiv.org.

Most Americans are clueless about state government. You?

Americans trust their state governments to handle issues as important as education and health care and pay them more than a trillion dollars in taxes annually. And yet, they know very little about state government, a new survey finds. Almost half of those surveyed couldn’t say what their state spent the most on; even fewer knew which state issues were most controversial. Fewer than 20 percent cou

The Recurring Dread of a Paralyzing Illness

In 2014, as summer transitioned into fall, many of Riley Bove’s friends, colleagues, and family members came down with a particularly nasty cold. People were off sick from work, and kids were staying home from school, so when Bove’s 4-year-old son Luca developed some breathing problems, she wasn’t especially concerned. But a few days later, Luca’s symptoms took a strange turn. When he tried getti

Buzz! Slap! Ow! Taking the virus out of a mosquito's bite

They approach with the telltale sign — a high-pitched whine. It's a warning that you are a mosquito's next meal. But that mosquito might carry a virus, and now the virus is in you. Now, with the help of state-of-the-art technology, researchers at the University of Missouri can see how a virus moves within a mosquito's body, which could lead to the prevention of mosquitoes transmitting diseases.

Research unlocks secrets of iron storage in algae

UFZ model in the fight against African swine fever

Russian scientists create one-of-a-kind technology for brain disorders treatment

New brain disorders prophylaxis and treatment system has been developed by the scientists of Ural Federal University, Russia. The article was published in Mobile Information Systems journal.

Boron nitride and silver nanoparticles to help get rid of carbon monoxide emissions

Russian chemists from NUST MISIS have developed a new hybrid catalyst for carbon monoxide oxidation consisting of hexagonal boron nitride and silver nanoparticles. This material makes it possible to get a full conversion of carbon monoxide at only 194 degrees Celsius. As stated in the Journal of Catalysis, this temperature is nowhere near the process's record temperatures, but in the future, chemi

How bacterial communities transport nutrients

Under threat of being scrubbed away with disinfectant, individual bacteria can improve their odds of survival by joining together to form colonies, called biofilms. What Arnold Mathijssen, postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering at Stanford University, wanted to understand was how stationary biofilms find food once they've devoured nearby nutrients.

Syv kvinder har fået konstateret kræft efter mangelfuld brystundersøgelse

735 kvinder har fået en mangelfuld brystundersøgelse på Ringsted Sygehuse. Syv kvinder har efterfølgende fået konstateret kræft.

Improved understanding of the pathology of dwarfism may lead to new treatment targets

Pseudoachondroplasia (PSACH) is a severe inherited dwarfing condition In PSACH, a genetic mutation leads to abnormal retention of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of cartilage-producing cells (chondrocytes), which interferes with function and cell viability. Investigators describe how this protein accumulation results in 'ER stress' and initiates a h

Faster, cheaper test can help predict risk of metastasis in prostate cancer patients

A report describes a new assay to assess copy number alterations that is cheaper, faster, reproducible, and requires less tissue than other diagnostic techniques and has the potential to significantly enhance prostate cancer evaluation.

Fire's effects on soil moisture, runoff

The 2011 Las Conchas mega-fire in New Mexico burned more than 150,000 acres and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Now, using data from the fire, researchers have created an experimental model that will help us better understand the interactions of fire and water in the soil.

College textbooks largely overlook the most common animals

A recent study of textbooks aimed at introductory biology courses finds that they devote less than one percent of their text to discussing insects, which make up more than 60 percent of animal species. The study authors argue that this provides a poor foundation for understanding ecosystems, biodiversity, and other core aspects of biological research.

Researchers find positive visual contagion in Barbary macaques

A pair of researchers at the University of Roehampton has found that captive Barbary macaques are capable of engaging in positive visual contagion—a behavior normally only seen in humans. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Juliette Berthier and Stuart Semple describe their experiments with Barbary macaques living in a park in the U.K. and what they learned from it.

New research explores how the Olympic Games have shaped New Zealand identity

Politics and sport have always fascinated Victoria University of Wellington graduate Micheal Warren, who is graduating with a Ph.D. in Political Science this week—and his doctoral research provided an opportunity to combine the two.

Algorithms to locate centrioles in the cell

Investigators from the Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Group at the University of Extremadura are studying signaling mediated by a pathway known as planar cell polarity (PCP), which regulates the coordinated orientation of cells during organogenesis, the process of organ formation in living organisms. This pathway has been highly conserved on the evolutionary scale, and one of its key function

Novel approach to perovskite solar cells – cheaper production and high efficiency

A team of chemists from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania together with physicists from Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) science institute, Germany, offers a novel approach for selective layer formation in perovskite solar cells. The molecule, synthesised by the KTU chemists, assembles itself into a monolayer, which can cover a variety of surfaces and can function as an economical hol

Hot possums risk losing their homes

As our world is warming under climate change, heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense, yet the vulnerability of our wildlife to such events is poorly understood. New research from Australia's Wet Tropics indicates that the area where maximum temperatures are survivable for the green ringtail possum (Pseudochirops archeri) could shrink by over 85 percent this century due to climate change

Ni/MWCNT-based electrochemical sensor for fast detection of phenol in wastewater

In a paper published in Nano, researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology have discovered a low cost and non-enzymatic phenol sensor that exhibits high sensitivity, good selectivity, reproducibility, and stability which has potential application in phenol detection in discharged wastewater.

Researchers developing nonopioid drug for chronic pain

Researchers are developing a drug — now in its earliest stages — that can treat certain types of chronic pain without the addictive consequences of opioids.

Green production of chemicals for industry

Industry consumes large quantities of crude oil to produce basic substances for drugs, cosmetics, plastics, or food. However, these processes consume a lot of energy and produce waste. Biological processes with enzymes are far more sustainable. The protein molecules can catalyze various chemical reactions without auxiliary materials or solvents being required. But they are expensive and, hence, ha

Arctic permafrost might contain 'sleeping giant' of world's carbon emissions

As temperatures rise in the Arctic, permafrost, or frozen ground, is thawing. As it does, greenhouse gases trapped within it are being released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, leading to previously underestimated problems with ocean acidification and potential mercury poisoning.

New method gives microscope a boost in resolution

Scientists at the University of Würzburg have been able to boost current super-resolution microscopy by a novel tweak. They coated the glass cover slip as part of the sample carrier with tailor-made biocompatible nanosheets that create a mirror effect. This method shows that localizing single emitters in front of a metal-dielectric coating leads to higher precision, brightness and contrast in Sing

Acne study reveals genes for hair follicles are partly to blame

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The genes involved in producing hair follicles are partly to blame for acne, according to an analysis of the DNA of over 5000 people with severe acne

Researchers developing nonopioid drug for chronic pain

Researchers from the Virginia Tech School of Neuroscience are teaming with the University of California San Diego and the U.S. National Institutes of Health to develop a drug — now in its earliest stages — that can treat certain types of chronic pain without the addictive consequences of opioids.

What's behind smelly wine

Aging often improves the flavor of wine, but sometimes the beverage emerges from storage with an unpleasant smell. One of the prime culprits is hydrogen sulfide, which can give the affected wine an aroma of sewage or rotten eggs. In a report in ACS' >Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers have now identified some potential sources of this stinky compound.

Image: ICESat-2 reveals profile of ice sheets

Less than three months into its mission, NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, is already exceeding scientists' expectations. The satellite is measuring the height of sea ice to within an inch, tracing the terrain of previously unmapped Antarctic valleys, surveying remote ice sheets, and peering through forest canopies and shallow coastal waters.

Anti-GMO sentiment has repercussions for developing world

Anti-GMO sentiment holds back agricultural advancement in the developing world, but an Iowa State University agronomist hopes his research will clarify the scientific consensus and spark wider acceptance of the technology in Africa.

Researchers discover unusual new type of phase transformation in a transition metal

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have discovered an unusual new type of phase transformation in the transition metal zirconium. The mechanism underlying this new type of phase transition is the first of its kind that has ever been observed, and only could be seen with the application of very high pressures. The research was recently published by Physical Review B as a Rapi

How mapping the Galápagos could create more sustainable cities

The Galápagos Islands remain one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet—with tortoises, finches and iguanas dotting just 3,000 square miles of land.

To guide cancer therapy, device quickly tests drugs on tumor tissue

MIT researchers have 3-D printed a novel microfluidic device that simulates cancer treatments on biopsied tumor tissue, so clinicians can better examine how individual patients will respond to different therapeutics—before administering a single dose.

DTU: Brug af fup-tidsskrifter skæmmer universitetets renommé

Masser af utryghed, mistede citationer og synlighed er ifølge DTU nogle af de værste konsekvenser ved brug af predatory publishers.

Popular Science

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Your Christmas tree's environmental impact has nothing to do with whether it's real or fake

Environment Don't stress about what kind you buy—stress about what you do about it after the holidays. Environmentally conscious consumers often ask me whether a real Christmas tree or an artificial one is the more sustainable choice.

Københavns Kommune har fundet lokaler til nyt lægehus på Amager

Et nuværende jobcenter skal fremover huse Københavns Kommunes nye store lægehus på Amager, hvor der er plads til fem praktiserende læger med tilknyttet klinikpersonale.

Skrottet vikaraftale får Lemvig-læger til at true med ophør

Lægedækningen i Lemvig vakler. Flere læger har meldt ophør, mens de tilbageværende læger er stærkt utilfredse med en opsagt vikaraftale. Uden en ny aftale risikerer de lokale PLO-læger at forsvinde, lyder advarslen.

How skin cells protect themselves against stress

The skin is our largest organ, and, among other things, it provides protection against mechanical impacts. To ensure this protection, skin cells have to be connected to one another especially closely. Exactly how this mechanical stability is provided at the molecular level was unclear for a long time. Researchers led by Prof. Carsten Grashoff from the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology at the Uni

Kød, kød og atter kød: Hver dansker spiser i snit 52 kilo om året

Mange danskere – især mænd – spiser alt for meget kød i forhold til anbefalingerne. Hver fjerde dansker tager dog en kødfri aften mindst en gang om ugen.

An invention enables the production of a natural sweetener

A research group from Oulu University has developed a method capable of producing the natural sweetener brazzein. Production of brazzein as a good tasting sweetener has long been in development but until now, no solution for commercial production has been found.

Researchers suggest broiler chicken is the hallmark of the Anthropocene

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A team of researchers from several institutions in the U.K. and one in South Africa has come to the conclusion that the broiler chicken offers perhaps the most striking evidence of the rise of the Anthropocene. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group outlines their reasons for choosing the chicken as a signal of human biosphere reconfiguration.

New book among first to examine how people with disabilities can take legal, decision-making lead in lives

For decades, increasing numbers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have lived their adult lives under legal guardianships. A new book co-authored by University of Kansas and Syracuse University researchers is among the first to explore a fundamentally new way of empowering people with disabilities to retain legal agency while still receiving necessary assistance: supported

Radical environmentalists are fighting climate change – so why are they persecuted?

Climate change, deforestation, widespread pollution and the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity all define living in our world today – an era that has come to be known as "the Anthropocene". These crises are underpinned by production and consumption which greatly exceeds global ecological limits, but blame is far from evenly shared.

New X-ray imaging approach could boost nanoscale resolution for advanced photon source upgrade

A longstanding problem in optics holds that an improved resolution in imaging is offset by a loss in the depth of focus. Now, scientists are joining computation with X-ray imaging as they develop a new and exciting technique to bypass this limitation.

What's behind smelly wine

Aging often improves the flavor of wine, but sometimes the beverage emerges from storage with an unpleasant smell. One of the prime culprits is hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which can give the affected wine an aroma of sewage or rotten eggs. In a report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers have now identified some potential sources of this stinky compound.

Tovala Steam Oven Review: Interesting, But Undercooked

This countertop oven toasts, bakes, reheats, broils, and steams—but the concept doesn't quite succeed.

Many babies are crummy sleepers, confirming what millions of parents already know

A new survey suggests that lots and lots of babies aren’t sleeping through the night. The results may prompt new parents to lower their expectations.

Image of the Day: Bad Behavior

A deep learning program can identify cells with higher metastatic potential based on the way they look and move.

If Only Superhero Movies Were More Like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Since the dawn of the 21st century, there have been six different Spider-Man movies, and that’s not including a spate of other spinoffs, franchise crossovers, and already planned sequels. Three talented actors (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland) have played the role, making the web-slinging superhero this generation’s James Bond—a mantle solemnly passed from handsome 20-something to

The New Authoritarians Are Waging War on Women

Edmon de Haro When Americans look abroad these days, they see Donald Trumps everywhere: In Brazil, whose new president, Jair Bolsonaro, endorses torture, threatens to pull out of the Paris climate-change agreement, and suggests that his country was better off under military rule. In the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte has overseen the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged dru

Science-Based Medicine

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Release Active Drugs – Homeopathy By Another Name

A Russian company is marketing "release active drugs" as a new medical technology, but it is just bogus homeopathy dressed up with new jargon.

The stiffest porous lightweight materials ever

Researchers at ETH have developed and manufactured a family of architectures that maximises the stiffness of porous lightweight materials. It's practically impossible to develop stiffer designs.

Fossils key to fulfilling Darwin's 160-year-old prediction

A new study by researchers at the University of Salford has shown that fossils are likely to be key to fulfilling a prediction made by Charles Darwin more than 160 years ago.

More floods and water scarcity ahead, but there is still time to mitigate their severity

Flooding and water scarcity in Europe will increase in the coming decades, but to a much lesser extent if the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change are met.

The real history of quantum biology

Quantum biology, a young and increasingly popular science genre, isn't as new as many believe, with a complicated and somewhat dark history, explain the founders of the world's first quantum biology doctoral training centre.

Scientists create way to power pacemaker with light

University of Chicago scientists have pioneered a technique that could one day create a pacemaker that operates using tiny pulses of light.

Trump’s Evangelical Advisers Could Help Him Secure a Win on Sentencing Reform

Long-stalled legislation on sentencing reform may squeeze through Congress in the last few weeks of this session. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Tuesday that the Senate will take up the FIRST STEP Act, which would create some flexibility around sentencing and release for certain inmates held in federal prisons. President Donald Trump has been a major backer of the bill—“Go fo

Workplace exposure to pesticides and metals linked to heightened heart disease risk

Workplace exposure to metals and pesticides is linked to a heightened risk of heart disease in Hispanic and Latino workers, reveals new research.

Virksomhed bliver dagligt ramt af cyberangreb: »Det tog noget tid at få hul igennem til ledelsen«

I revisionsfirmaet PwC’s Cybercrime Survey 2017 svarede 24 procent, at den største cybertrussel var topledelsens manglende forståelse for problemet.

CFCS: Meget høj cybertrussel mod it-systemer bag biler, fly og tog

Cyberkriminalitet kan i værste fald påvirke drift og sikkerhed i transportsektoren og svække kundernes tillid, anfører CFCS.

If you think black holes are strange, white holes will blow your mind

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White holes are black ones in reverse, spewing out matter– and they could give us our first glimpse of the quantum source of space-time, says physicist Carlo Rovelli

Google Glass Wasn't a Failure. It Raised Crucial Concerns

With each new device, we open up a legal conversation about privacy standards. Google Glass was a rare example of people pushing back.

How WhatsApp Fuels Fake News and Violence in India

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The messaging app owned by Facebook has become a major channel for hate speech and false stories in India. The government is demanding changes.

How Self-Driving Cars Handle Tricky Highway Merges

For tech that can struggle to understand how humans drive, the communication-heavy, high-speed highway merge is no easy thing.

Cold-stunned turtles flown from New England to Florida Keys

Officials say 32 cold-stunned Kemp's ridley sea turtles rescued off New England's coast have arrived in the Florida Keys to warm up at the Turtle Hospital.

China’s losing its taste for nuclear power. That’s bad news.

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Once nuclear’s strongest booster, China is growing wary about its cost and safety.

Paul Ryan’s Compromised Legacy

As he readies his escape from the wreckage wrought by the blue wave, Paul Ryan is patting himself on the back for a job well done. During an exit interview on November 30, the lame-duck House speaker and Republican leader declared: “I’d say we became a pretty good governing party … I think history is going to be very good to this majority.” His self-assessment is not universally shared. The ex-Re

The End of DACA Would Be a Blow to Science

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America could lose not just the “Dreamers” but also their vital research — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

How This Supercolony of 1.5 Million Penguins Stayed Hidden for Nearly 3,000 Years

Sometimes we miss one or two, sometimes we miss millions.

Copper compound as promising quantum computing unit

Quantum computers could vastly increase the capabilities of IT systems, bringing major changes worldwide. However, there is still a long way to go before such a device can actually be constructed, because it has not yet been possible to transfer existing molecular concepts into technologies in a practical way. This has not kept researchers around the world away from developing and optimising new i

Silica paradox: Scientists discover seemingly 'impossible' material

An international team of physicists and materials scientists from NUST MISIS, Bayerisches Geoinstitut (Germany), Linkoping University (Sweden), and the California Institute of Technology (U.S.) has discovered an "impossible" modification of silica-coesite-IV and coasite-V materials, which seems to defy the generally accepted rules for the formation of chemical bonds in inorganic materials formulat

When less is more: A promising approach for low-cell-number epigenomic profiling

Scientists at Kyushu University and Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan have developed a technique that enables analysis of DNA-protein interactions using very small numbers of cells, ranging from 100 to 1,000. Their method could capture previously unexamined epigenomic information, facilitate biomarker discovery and open new avenues for precision medicine.

UN chief returns as climate talks teeter closer to collapse

The United Nations secretary-general flew back to global climate talks in Poland Wednesday to appeal to countries to reach an agreement, as some observers feared the meeting might end without a deal.

Finding Alien Life May Require Giant Telescopes Built in Orbit

Influential astrophysicists, roboticists and astronauts say that orbital construction could spark a renaissance in space science and exploration — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Hitachi moves to buy ABB's power grid unit for $7bn: report

Japan's Hitachi is moving to purchase the power grid business of Swiss engineering giant ABB for a deal worth as much as $7.05 billion, local media reported Wednesday.

The US Lost 1 Warship in WWI. 100 Years Later, We Know What Caused the Sinking.

A new exploration of a 100-year-old shipwreck reveals the weapon that brought the vessel down.

Future Humans May Call Us the 'Chicken People,' and Here's Why

Domesticated chickens, it turns out, could be a signpost for future archaeologists that screams, "Humans were here!"

Nyt plastmateriale baner vejen for elektronik i varme motorer

Et nyt materiale skabt ud fra to organiske polymerer kan bruges til elektronikkomponenter, der virker ved op til 220 grader celsius.

‘Little Foot’ skeleton analysis reignites debate over the hominid’s species

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Long-awaited analyses of the Little Foot skeleton have researchers disagreeing over resurrecting a defunct species name.

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What Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s visit to Congress taught us (spoiler: not a lot)Google Sundar Pichai

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Endangered relative of the hedgehog may be thriving in Vietnam

The Hainan gymnure is a stinky but spine-free relative of the hedgehog that we thought was rare – a new discovery in northern Vietnam suggests we were wrong

Why practicing empathy matters, and how VR can help

Virtual reality fills us with awe and adrenaline — and the technology is only at a crude stage, explains VR filmmaker Danfung Dennis. It's capable of inspiring something much greater in us: empathy. With coming technological advancements in pixel display, haptics, and sound tracking, VR users will finally be able to know what it's like to really take another person's perspective. Empathy is inher

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How the Minority Wins

There’s no greater evidence of the passage of time than the Republican Party’s autopsy report on its failed 2012 election cycle. “By the year 2050 we’ll be a majority-minority country and in both 2008 and 2012 President Obama won a combined 80 percent of the votes of all minority groups,” former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said at a 2013 press conference announcing the repo

Hollywood Still Doesn’t Know What to Make of Childless Women

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“I was jealous. Your beauty, your bravery, your motherhood. You seemed to surpass me in every way.” That’s Elizabeth I, queen of England, meeting her cousin Mary I for the first and only time, in one of the climactic moments of the new movie Mary Queen of Scots . The scene is a strange one for several reasons, the first being its fanciful fabrication—the two queens, in reality, never met in perso

Direktøren måtte overveje, om virksomheden var stor nok til robotter

Omkostningerne er den største barriere for at automatisere produktionen, når man er en mindre virksomhed, for hvordan ved man, om investeringen kommer igen, siger direktør i JO Safety.

College textbooks largely overlook the most common animals

VIDEO: Cosmonauts Slice Spacecraft For Clues To Cause Of Mysterious Hole

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A small hole in spacecraft Soyuz MS-09 has sparked an investigation into its origin. Cosmonauts spent hours on a spacewalk to gather samples in hopes of determining its cause. (Image credit: NASA via AP)

College textbooks largely overlook the most common animals

VIDEO: Cosmonauts Slice Spacecraft For Clues On Cause Of Mysterious Hole

300+

A small hole in spacecraft Soyuz MS-09 has sparked an investigation into its origin. Cosmonauts spent hours on a spacewalk to gather samples in hopes of determining its cause. (Image credit: AP)

Advanced DNA Technology May Help To Identify Korean War Unknowns

The Pentagon is exhuming all of the more than 650 Korean War unknowns in a Honolulu military cemetery. Advances in DNA technology and other forensics make their identification highly likely.

Alstom, Siemens offer Brussels merger concessions

French and German engineering giants Alstom and Siemens said Wednesday they had offered EU regulators concessions they believed would meet concerns over the planned merger of their railway businesses.

Russian official threatens to block Google

A Russian communications official has threatened to block Google in Russia unless it complies with a law banning certain websites.

Trump Steals a Page From Newt Gingrich

300+

Live from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump sparred with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday as Vice President Mike Pence stared into the middle distance. Although the subject at hand was the border wall, the headlines were all about aggressive body language and raised voices. It was an extraordinary event—a public tussle in a setting assoc

The US has blamed Chinese state hackers for the Marriott hotel data breach

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Samples cut around Soyuz hole in spacewalk

Cosmonauts have cut samples from around a hole, which Moscow says may have been caused by a drill.

InSight Mars lander takes its first selfie

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NASA's InSight lander isn't camera-shy. The spacecraft used a camera on its robotic arm to take its first selfie—a mosaic made up of 11 images. This is the same imaging process used by NASA's Curiosity rover mission, in which many overlapping pictures are taken and later stitched together. Visible in the selfie are the lander's solar panel and its entire deck, including its science instruments.

Verdenskendt klimaforsker: Indlandsisen er dødsdømt, uanset hvad vi gør

Selv hvis vi stopper udledning af CO2 og overholder Parisaftalens målsætninger, smelter Grønlands indlandsis. Spørgsmålet er bare hvor hurtigt, viser ny forskning.

Tysk regning for Femern eksploderer: Nu koster hele forbindelsen 92 milliarder

Den tyske rigsrevision advarer om, at der skal investeres mindst 30 milliarder kroner i Tyskland for at udbygge jernbanen og erstatte Femernsund-broen. Dermed er den rentable investering i en fast forbindelse for længst forduftet.

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LATEST

‘Creative’ AlphaZero leads way for chess computers and, maybe, science | Sean Ingle

Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov likes what he sees of computer that could be used to find cures for diseases Garry Kasparov is not only humanity’s greatest ever chess player but its highest-profile victim of artificial intelligence. His loss to IBM’s super computer Deep Blue in 1997 made global headlines and left him feeling bitter and, well, blue. Yet there is a warm glint in his eye w

3min

Car-hailing firm Didi has a new dispatching algorithm that adapts to rider demand

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3min

Moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with fewer hospitalizations

A study of the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention of I.R.C.C.S. Neuromed (Pozzilli, Italy), in collaboration with the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Boston), highlights that people who consume alcohol moderately (one glass of wine a day), in the general framework of Mediterranean diet principles, have a lower risk of being hospitalized compared to

15min

Gigantisk accelerator skal løse de største fysikgåder

Cern planlægger nu en accelerator med en omkreds på 100 km og syv gange højere energi end verdens i dag største accelerator, LHC. Giganten skal opdage mørkets partikler og genskabe universets dramatiske fødsel i miniformat.

16min

Sundhed får sin egen direktør i KL

Sundhed og ældre bliver et selvstændigt center i Kommunernes Landsforening med Kristian Heunicke som direktør. Han mener, at KL er blevet voksen på sundhedsområdet.

Grønland smelter: Sneen er sort som kul

Isen på Grønland reflekterer rekord-lidt sollys på grund af kul- og sodpartikler. Og det sætter gang i en ond spiral.

Eyes in the sky capture carbon, other climate culprits

A growing fleet of satellites is monitoring man-made greenhouse gas emissions from space, spurred by the need to track down major sources of climate changing gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.

Google grilled in Congress: What's ahead for tech companiesGoogle Sundar Pichai

U.S. lawmakers' grilling of Google CEO Sundar Pichai may have sounded like a broken record, but it amplified the prickly issues facing tech companies as Democrats prepare to take control of the House next month.

After quakes and flooding, Japan picks 'disaster' as 2018 symbol

Japan on Wednesday selected the Chinese character for "disaster" as its "defining symbol" for 2018, a year that saw the country hit by deadly floods, earthquakes and storms.

Washington state combats collisions with new wildlife bridge

Before descending the Cascade Mountains on its final stretch to Seattle, Interstate 90 cuts through a mountain pass of old growth forests and wetlands.

Red gold: Afghanistan saffron production grows

Starting before dawn has even broken, Afghanistan's army of saffron pickers shift their way across sun-baked fields to pluck brightly the coloured crocuses that are providing the country's farmers with a new means of income.

Russian spacewalkers take sample of mystery hole at space station

Using knives and shears, a pair of Russian spacewalkers Tuesday cut samples of material around a mysterious hole in a Soyuz spacecraft docked on the International Space Station that a Moscow official suggested could have been deliberate sabotage.

Tencent Music raises $1 billion in US IPO

Tencent Music, the streaming division of Chinese technology giant Tencent, said Tuesday it will raise $1.07 billion from the pricing of its US public share offering.

Fire's effects on soil moisture, runoff

Fire and water. Timeless, opposing forces, they are actually linked in powerful ways that can have major impacts on communities and ecosystems.

Troede persondata var sløret: Cpr-numre lækket i offentligt Kombit-dokument

Kommunernes it-fællesskab, Kombit, troede, de havde sløret navne, adresser og CPR-numre på personer fra Roskilde Kommune i et dokument, der lå frit tilgængeligt på nettet. Men kopierede man skærmbillederne ind i Word, var sløringen forsvundet og personoplysninger fuldt synlige.

Still have your childhood teddy? The psychological power of the toys we keep

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Infants often find comfort in ‘transitional objects’ that help them on the path to independence. Guardian readers discuss the security blankets and teddies they have held close When he was four years old, Chris had a piece of blue cloth he took everywhere with him, which he called Boo-Boo. Now 60, a retired teacher, husband and father of three adult children, he still remembers the feeling of saf

Fire's effects on soil moisture, runoff

The 2011 Las Conchas mega-fire in New Mexico burned more than 150,000 acres and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Now, using data from the fire, researchers at Los Alamos have created an experimental model that will help us better understand the interactions of fire and water in the soil.

Improved understanding of the pathology of dwarfism may lead to new treatment targets

Pseudoachondroplasia (PSACH) is a severe inherited dwarfing condition In PSACH, a genetic mutation leads to abnormal retention of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of cartilage-producing cells (chondrocytes), which interferes with function and cell viability. In a report in The American Journal of Pathology, investigators describe how this protein acc

Faster, cheaper test can help predict risk of metastasis in prostate cancer patients

A report in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics describes a new assay to assess copy number alterations that is cheaper, faster, reproducible, and requires less tissue than other diagnostic techniques and has the potential to significantly enhance prostate cancer evaluation.

Vind med Ingeniørens julekalender: 12. december

Vær med i Ingeniørens julekalender 2018. Hver dag med nye præmier!

'Planet of the chickens': How the bird took over the world

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With around 23 billion chickens on the planet at any one time, the bird is a symbol of our times, say scientists.

Two Questions About a Surreal Oval Office Exchange

Please read my colleagues Russell Berman , Elaina Plott , and Amanda Mull on the spectacle that took place this afternoon in the Oval Office. Like all but a handful of people, I saw this exchange first online, then in TV replays. Here are two body-language questions I wish I’d had the opportunity to judge up-close and in person: Did Donald Trump register that Chuck Schumer was mocking him, to his

The Atlantic Daily: Rifts and Taxes

What We’re Following Reality Show(down): “If we don’t get what we want … I will shut down the government,” President Donald Trump declared at what began as a pleasant-enough meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office, negotiating a spending bill to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of next week. The meeting turned into

How Apollo 8 Astronauts took the famous 'Earthrise' photograph

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Frank Borman was the Commander of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. The astronauts took an iconic photo of the Earth rising above the lunar surface.

Poland climate summit protest limits anger young activists

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Protesters are frustrated by strict controls on protests at the UN climate summit in Poland.

Little Aphids Ride Big Ones To Safety

When trouble lurks, juvenile aphids drop off of the plants they're eating and hitch a ride on bigger aphid escapees. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

A tax hike on alcohol is the obesity fix Australians need to swallow

The national health impact could be substantial, preventing more than 190,000 cases of diabetes and 16,000 cases of cancer We don’t often equate the kilojoules we drink in our glass of wine or pint of beer with the weight that accumulates around our middle. But our new study shows increasing the price of alcohol is the foremost value-for-money policy option to prevent obesity in Australia. The st

Novel technique may significantly reduce breast biopsies

A novel technique that uses mammography to determine the biological tissue composition of a tumor could help reduce unnecessary breast biopsies, according to a new study.

Sun-soaking device turns water into superheated steam

Engineers have built a device that soaks up enough heat from the sun to boil water and produce 'superheated' steam hotter than 100 degrees Celsius, without any expensive optics.

It Could Be the Age of the Chicken, Geologically

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With 65 billion chickens consumed each year, the signature fossil of the modern epoch may be the leftovers.

New review of scientific studies confirms food cravings can be reduced

Food craving, the intense desire to eat certain foods, can sabotage efforts to maintain healthy eating habits and body weight, no matter the time of year. However, an examination of 28 current peer-reviewed scientific studies largely substantiates findings that changes in diet, prescription medications, physical activity and bariatric surgery reduce craving.

New models sense human trust in smart machines

New 'classification models' sense how well humans trust intelligent machines they collaborate with, a step toward improving the quality of interactions and teamwork.

Climate change: Arctic reindeer numbers crash by half

Climate change in the Arctic has caused the wild reindeer population to crash by 56%, a report says.

5min

The costs and trade-offs of reforming long-term care for older people

New research reveals the costs and trade-offs of reforming long-term care for older people in England. The report comes ahead of a long-awaited government Green Paper on Social Care. It shows that a £36,000 lifetime cap on care costs for older people (similar to that recommended by Dilnot in 2011) would cost £3.6 billion by 2035, and that rolling out a minimum level of social care to all older peo

10min

Brain activity shows development of visual sensitivity in autism

Research investigating how the brain responds to visual patterns in people with autism has shown that sensory responses change between childhood and adulthood.

10min

Dracula ants possess fastest known animal appendage: The snap-jaw

Move over, trap-jaw ants and mantis shrimp: There's a faster appendage in town. According to a new study, the Dracula ant, Mystrium camillae, can snap its mandibles at speeds of up to 90 meters per second (more than 200 mph), making it the fastest animal movement on record.

11min

When humans are wiped from Earth, the chicken bones will remain

When humans have vanished from Earth, one of the most enduring marks of our impact will be the sudden appearance of copious chicken bones in the fossil record

23min

Coral likes to make its ocean home in places with noisy neighbours

As larvae, corals drift around the ocean searching for somewhere to live – and they seem to appreciate a spot in an area full of loud fish

23min

Monkeys chill out just from seeing their friends being groomed

Barbary macaques became more relaxed and friendlier after seeing another macaque being groomed – a finding that may help explain ‘head orgasm’ videos

23min

Nearly 200 Great Barrier Reef coral species also live in the deep sea

There are more coral species lurking in the deep ocean that previously thought. That could be good news for their shallow water counterparts.

25min

Russian Astronauts Inspect Mysterious Hole in Spacecraft

The astronauts Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Prokopyev examined a small hole on the Soyuz Capsule during a spacewalk. That hole has lead to some speculation in the Russian news media about an act of sabotage by the United States.

47min

Health You inhale so automatically that you might not even realize how you know to do it in the first place. The way your body knows how much to breathe has a lot to do with why you breathe in the first place.

What Sundar Pichai Couldn’t Explain to Congress

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The parade of Silicon Valley figures to Capitol Hill continued today when Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, the core of the Alphabet holding company, went before the House Judiciary Committee. Like every other tech company hearing , it was more hackneyed than illuminating, more painful than inspiring. Pichai is a polished executive who rose through Google’s ranks. He is not a boy king like Mark Z

Congresswoman, Interrupted

It’s a situation familiar to many women: You’re in a contentious meeting with male colleagues. Your turn to talk comes around, and just as you get going, someone else raises their voice. Then another person. Within seconds, your colleagues are talking among themselves, and you’re trying to find a place to jump back into the conversation you were leading just moments before. Today it happened in f

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: Wall Brawl

Written by Madeleine Carlisle ( @maddiecarlisle2 ), and Olivia Paschal ( @oliviacpaschal ). Today in 5 Lines Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he would let the Senate vote on a bipartisan criminal-justice reform bill , the First Step Act, backing down from his earlier reluctance to bring the measure to the floor. President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senat

Amazon’s Holiday Toy Catalog Is Advertising Parents Actually Want

And some people are mad they didn't get one.

Popular Science

Where to find self-driving cars on the road right nowUS Uber Lyft Self Driving

Technology Autonomous cars seem futuristic, but they’re already on the streets. A roundup of what's going on, and where, in the world of autonomous vehicles.

Whole-body PET/MRI provides one-stop shop for staging high-risk prostate cancer patients

New research shows that molecular imaging–specifically, PSMA PET/MR–performs as well as currently used tools and provides additional information on tumor location that could help guide treatment for prostate cancer patients. The research is featured in the December 2018 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (http://jnm.snmjournals.org).

Trump administration rolls back clean water protections

The US government on Tuesday unveiled a plan to roll back clean water rules protecting the nation's waterways and wetlands, fulfilling a pledge from President Donald Trump to farmers and supporters who view environmental regulations as too strict.

Scary warming at poles showing up at weird times, places

Scientists are seeing surprising melting in Earth's polar regions at times they don't expect, like winter, and in places they don't expect, like eastern Antarctica.

Inaccurate prescribing warnings in electronic medical record systems

Electronic prescribing is becoming widespread. All states allow it, some states require it, and many institutions now mandate electronic prescribing. Many electronic prescribing systems use computerized decision support algorithms that give automated warnings or alerts at the time of prescribing if a potential prescribing error is identified — for example, regarding dosing or contraindications.

FSU researchers find racial inequity among adolescents receiving flu vaccine

Black adolescents living in the United States tend to receive the influenza vaccine at significantly lower rates than their white and Hispanic counterparts, according to Florida State University researchers.

The Man Who Photographed His Future Deaths

Phillip Toledano’s obsession with death began with a DNA test. When his father was diagnosed with terminal dementia, the elder Toledano came to live with his son, who would care for him during his harrowing, drawn-out final days. This got Toledano, a photographer, thinking about his own mortality. When, and how, would he die? He purchased a mail-order DNA test to try to find some answers. Like th

Trying to get people to agree? Skip the French restaurant and go out for Chinese food

When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate better and reach deals faster, according to new research.

Taming turbulence: Seeking to make complex simulations a breeze

Previously intractable problems for designing fusion experiments, improving weather models, and understanding astrophysical phenomena such as star formation will be more easily addressed without the need for expensive supercomputers using a new model.

Disruption of circadian rhythm as risk factor for diseases

Scientists report a time-keeping mechanism in liver cells that helps sustain key organ tasks can contribute to diseases when its natural rhythm is disrupted.

Gut microbiome may affect some anti-diabetes drugs

Why do orally-administered drugs for diabetes work for some people but not others? According to researchers, bacteria that make up the gut microbiome may be the culprit.

McDonald's unveils plan for cutting antibiotics in beef

McDonald's announced a plan on Tuesday for a phased reduction of antibiotics in beef, expanding a health-oriented reform to a new meat source other than chicken.

The Co-Opting of French Unrest to Spread Disinformation

In an echo of the US in 2016, accounts linked to Russia and right-wing conspiracy theorists are spreading misinformation on Twitter.

New models sense human trust in smart machines

New 'classification models' sense how well humans trust intelligent machines they collaborate with, a step toward improving the quality of interactions and teamwork.

Pregnant women, young children most likely to use bed nets to prevent malaria

When households in sub-Saharan Africa don't have an adequate number of insecticide-treated bed nets, pregnant women and children under five are the most likely family members to sleep under the ones they have, leaving men and school-aged children more exposed to malaria, new Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) research suggests.

New review of scientific studies confirms food cravings can be reduced

Trying to get people to agree? Skip the French restaurant and go out for Chinese food

When people in a business negotiation share not just a meal but a plate, they collaborate better and reach deals faster, according to new research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Egypt threatens Apple with legal action under competition law

Egypt has warned it will take legal action against Apple if the US tech giant fails to remove alleged "restrictions" on local distributors within 60 days.

Spacewalking astronauts check site of capsule leak

Spacewalking astronauts ripped through thick insulation on a capsule docked to the International Space Station on Tuesday, looking for clues to a mysterious drilled hole that leaked precious cabin air four months ago.

Letters: ‘Newton’s First Law of Motion Doesn’t Apply to Millennial Careers’

Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials. According to a new report by economists at the Federal Reserve, Millennials have consumption preferences similar to those of older generations, yet are less well off than members of earlier generations were at around the same age. The American system is working against Millennials, Derek Thompson wrote last week—and then blaming

Mystery Blast Sank The USS San Diego in 1918. New Report Reveals What Happened

A team of researchers had been trying to determine whether the armored cruiser was lost to sabotage, an accident or an attack. (Image credit: Courtesy of U.S. Navy)

Congress Blew Its Hearing With Google CEO Sundar Pichai

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The House Judiciary Committee spent more time on partisan squabbles than urgent questions around Google's data and privacy practices.

Study: 50% of people pursuing science careers in academia will drop out after 5 years

The study tracked the careers of more than 100,000 scientists over 50 years. The results showed career lifespans are shrinking, and fewer scientists are getting credited as the lead author on scientific papers. Scientists are still pursuing careers in the private sector, however there are key differences between research conducted in academia and industry. None A new study reveals that half of pe

Cannibalism? Nope, This 8,000-Year-Old Man Was Likely Burned in a Ritual

The shattered skull of a hunter who lived about 8,000 years ago isn’t evidence of cannibalism, as scientists previously thought. Rather, the hunter died in a grisly murder, new research suggests.

A Brawl With the President on Live TV

It was Chuck Schumer’s smirk that said it all. The Senate minority leader had just lobbed an honest-to-goodness zinger at President Donald Trump. Inside the Oval Office. With the television cameras running. “When the president brags that he won North Dakota and Indiana, he’s in real trouble,” Schumer cracked to the press in the middle of a White House meeting on government funding between the pre

What Was the Coldest Act of Revenge of All Time?

Stephanie Barron, author, That Churchill Woman After Waterloo, the British exiled Napoleon, who had conquered most of Europe, to St. Helena —an island so remote and tiny, it can barely be found on a map. Kind of like banning Donald Trump from Twitter for life. Bill Peschel, author, Writers Gone Wild Alexander Pope and Edmund Curll. Angry that the bookseller was publishing his poem without permiss

Nasa's IceSat space laser makes height maps of Earth

One of the most powerful Earth observation tools ever put in orbit is now gathering data about the planet.

Burger King’s 1-Cent Whopper Is a Taste of the Robo-Car Future

With the spread of self-driving technology, gimmicks like the Whopper Detour will become much more pervasive—and a little bit creepy.

The Arctic Is Not Doing Well (at All)

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The Arctic is warming faster than ever.

The Art of the Farm-Bill Deal

At least one saga of congressional bickering came closer to an end Monday night, when negotiators finally released the details of the 2018 farm bill, a massive piece of legislation, generally renewed every five years, that governs the United States’ agriculture and nutrition policy. This year’s bill skirts many of the most contentious points of debate that had held up its passage: It does not inc

Trump Keeps Invoking Terrorism to Get His Border Wall

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Troops on the ground. Drones in the sky. Aggressive terror-related investigations in the United States. Donald Trump and Barack Obama differ significantly on style, but not much separates them when it comes to counterterrorism policy. Except, however, at least one issue: immigration. The “migrant caravan” of Trump’s dark pre-midterm warnings has stopped short of the United States. Much of it now

Australia's new national space agency to be based in Adelaide

Agency aims to boost commercial ties with the global aerospace industry Adelaide has been chosen as the location of Australia’s new national space agency. The federal government has set aside $41m for the new agency, which aims to boost commercial ties with the global aerospace industry worth billions. Continue reading…

Taming turbulence: Seeking to make complex simulations a breeze

For scientists wrestling with problems as diverse as containing superhot plasma in a fusion reactor, improving the accuracy of weather forecasts, or probing the unexplained dynamics of a distant galaxy, turbulence-spawning shear flow is a serious complicating factor.

Environment To capitalize on the sun's rays, countries like China need to part the smog. Clouds are descending over solar energy, in the form of particulate matter from air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and wildfires.

Are you stressed? Your eyes may provide a window into your mental workload

With nearly breakneck speed, the demands of work productivity in today's society seem to have increased tenfold. Enter multitasking as a way to cope with the insistence that tasks be completed almost immediately. Previous studies on workload and productivity include physical aspects, such as how much a person walks or carries, but they do not take into account a person's state of mind. Now, resear

Stop sterilizing your dust

A new study has found that an antimicrobial chemical called triclosan is abundant in dust — and linked to changes in its genetic makeup. The result is dust with organisms that could cause an antibiotic-resistant infection.

When we reach and grasp, our neurons work as a team

New research reveals how the nerve cells responsible for motor control modify their activity as we reach and grasp for objects. The new findings upend the established understanding of how the brain undertakes this complex task and could have implications for the development of neuroprosthetics. The apparent simplicity of picking up a cup of coffee or turning a doorknob belies the complex sequence

Will a new pest beat transgenic corn to African farms?

An analysis of dozens of previous scientific studies on the safety of Bt corn, a genetically modified crop capable of resisting pests, upholds the conclusion that the GM crop is safe for humans and the environment. Bt corn could help farmers in Africa to combat an emerging pest capable of devastating their crops, but fear of GM crops in Africa has slowed adoption of the technology, says Walter Su

Life Deep Underground Is Twice the Volume of the Oceans: Study

Scientists estimate that subterranean organisms constitute a massive amount of carbon, 245 to 385 times greater than that contained in all humans.

Miracle On Your Street: How The Post Office Handles Holidays

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Is the USPS headed for a revamp? (Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Collagen-munching enzyme helps tumors spread

Researchers have unraveled how a cancer-critical enzyme sits on cell surfaces. The enzyme enables tumor cells to tunnel through collagen, creating a convenient path for tumors to spread cancer throughout the body. The finding is an important step toward the development of pharmaceuticals that can prevent and treat the spreading of cancers in the body. In order to spread cancer, tumor cells must m

Melting ice art installation opens at London's Tate Modern

An art installation featuring 30 blocks of ice brought from Greenland has been unveiled in London.

USC study examines disruption of circadian rhythm as risk factor for diseases

USC scientists report a time-keeping mechanism in liver cells that helps sustain key organ tasks can contribute to diseases when its natural rhythm is disrupted.

Taming turbulence: Seeking to make complex simulations a breeze

Are you stressed? Your eyes may provide a window into your mental workload

Scientists Don't Stay for Long in Their Jobs Anymore: Study

Plus, more scientists nowadays spend their entire careers in supporting roles, rather than leading their own research programs.

What social stress in monkeys can tell us about human health

A new study examines one key stress-inducing circumstance — the effects of social hierarchy — and how cells respond to the hormones that are released in response to that stress.

Hypoxic dead zones found in urban streams, not just at the coast

A new study finds that hypoxic dead zones occur in nutrient-laden urban streams, not just in coastal waters. The research shows that intense storm flows can erode some stream channels to become a series of pools that trap nutrient-laden runoff. The elevated nutrient levels in the water spur greater consumption of dissolved oxygen by bacteria, causing the pools to become hypoxic until the next stor

Guidelines for the therapeutic use of melatonin

Professors discuss the general criteria to be considered when prescribing the pineal hormone as a health supplement. The guidelines will help health professionals to analyze, understand and interpret the effects of melatonin.

Historic earthquakes test Indonesia's seismic hazard assessment

Using data gleaned from historical reports, researchers have now identified the sources of some of the most destructive Indonesian earthquakes in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara, using these data to independently test how well Indonesia's 2010 and 2017 seismic hazard assessments perform in predicting damaging ground motion.

Google CEO spars with lawmakers on bias, privacyGoogle Sundar Pichai

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai parried US lawmakers Tuesday over complaints of political bias and intrusive data collection as the internet giant came under heavy criticism from conservatives.

Verizon slashes value of assets by $4.6 bnVerizon eSIM Yahoo

Verizon announced Tuesday that it will slash $4.6 billion in value from assets purchased from Yahoo because of disappointing performance.

Small islands plead for action at UN climate talks

Ministers from nations imperilled by rising seas and temperatures on Tuesday called for drastic action at UN climate talks deadlocked over a refusal by big polluters to embrace landmark environmental data.

Target to pay $3M to resolve Massachusetts Medicaid claim

Target Corp. has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve allegations that it violated rules of Massachusetts' Medicaid program.

Trump Administration Redefines "Waters of the U.S."

New rules would cut protections for intermittent streams and some wetlands — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Hypoxic dead zones found in urban streams, not just at the coast

Hypoxic dead zones, which occur when dissolved oxygen levels in water drop so low that fish and other aquatic animals living there suffocate, are well-documented problems in many coastal waters.

Historic earthquakes test Indonesia's seismic hazard assessment

New study finds employee incentives can lead to unethical behavior in the workplace

Considering end-of-year bonuses for your employees? Supervisors be forewarned, a new study finds that while incentive rewards can help motivate and increase employee performance it can also lead to unethical behavior in the workplace.

Science Both the Atlantic and Pacific areas saw a record number and intensity of storms. Hurricane season is over at long last—a lengthy one for both the Atlantic and Pacific regions. The Atlantic saw two historic hurricanes make landfall in the United…

Hypoxic dead zones found in urban streams, not just at the coast

A Duke-led study finds that hypoxic dead zones occur in nutrient-laden urban streams, not just in coastal waters. The research shows that intense storm flows can erode some stream channels to become a series of pools that trap nutrient-laden runoff. The elevated nutrient levels in the water spur greater consumption of dissolved oxygen by bacteria, causing the pools to become hypoxic until the next

What social stress in monkeys can tell us about human health

A new University of Washington-led study examines one key stress-inducing circumstance — the effects of social hierarchy — and how cells respond to the hormones that are released in response to that stress.

How returning to a prior context briefly heightens memory recall

Returning to the context where a memory was formed temporarily brings back vivid details of the episode by increasing the electrical excitability of the engrams that store the memory in the brain, a new study shows.

Discovery of new neural mechanism underlying anxiety points to possible treatments

According to some estimates, up to one in three people around the world may experience severe anxiety in their lifetime. Researchers have now revealed a previously unknown mechanism underlying anxiety. Targeting this biochemical pathway may help develop new therapies for alleviating the symptoms of anxiety disorders.

ICESat-2 reveals profile of ice sheets, sea ice, forests

With each pass of the ICESat-2 satellite, the mission is adding to datasets tracking Earth's rapidly changing ice.

Copper compound as promising quantum computing unit

Chemists have now synthesized a molecule that can perform the function of a computing unit in a quantum computer.

BMI is a good measure of health after all, new study finds

A new study supports body mass index as a useful tool for assessing obesity and health.

Calibrating cosmic mile markers

New work provides the best-yet calibrations for using type Ia supernovae to measure cosmic distances, which has implications for our understanding of how fast the universe is expanding and the role dark energy may play in driving this process.

Criminalisation & repressive policing of sex work linked to increased risk of violence

Sex workers who face repressive policing are more likely to experience violence and poorer health and well-being, according to new research published in PLOS Medicine.

Temple-led research team traces pathway to cardioprotection in post-ischemic heart failure

During an ischemic attack, the heart is temporarily robbed of its blood supply. The aftermath is devastating: reduced heart contractility, heart cell death, and heart failure. Contributing to these changes is a signaling molecule, G protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2), which following ischemia accumulates in mitochondria. A Temple-led research team shows that blocking GRK2 localization to mit

Rapid ELISA-Based Measurement Of Protein Phosphorylation

In this article, RayBiotech will present a study in which the phosphorylation of two proteins, STAT1 (Tyr701) and Mek1 (Ser217/221), is detected in response to various agonists. Data from the RayBio® Phosphorylation ELISA kits will be compared to traditional immunoblotting.

Russia Wants to Extend U.S. Space Partnership. Or It Could Turn to China.

500+

Moscow argues that it has much to offer, but analysts say it is short of cash. In any event, Washington is already planning an American-led lunar station.

Vows: Arts Meets Science and Chemistry Wins the Day

Paul Romer had a doubly big day: he was married to Caroline Weber in the morning and then accepted a Nobel Prize in the evening.

Photo Gallery: A Look at 20 Years of Drought Ravaging Southeast Iran

Hashem Shakeri documents the loss of the Hamoun Wetlands in Sistan and Baluchestan Province*.

Rapid ELISA-Based Measurement Of Protein Phosphorylation

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells control the information rate of the optic nerve [Neuroscience]

Information transfer in the brain relies upon energetically expensive spiking activity of neurons. Rates of information flow should therefore be carefully optimized, but mechanisms to control this parameter are poorly understood. We address this deficit in the visual system, where ambient light (irradiance) is predictive of the amount of information…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Interplay of the Norrin and Wnt7a/Wnt7b signaling systems in blood-brain barrier and blood-retina barrier development and maintenance [Neuroscience]

β-Catenin signaling controls the development and maintenance of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and the blood–retina barrier (BRB), but the division of labor and degree of redundancy between the two principal ligand–receptor systems—the Norrin and Wnt7a/Wnt7b systems—are incompletely defined. Here, we present a loss-of-function genetic analysis of postnatal BBB and BRB…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

TRPV1 pore turret dictates distinct DkTx and capsaicin gating [Pharmacology]

Many neurotoxins inflict pain by targeting receptors expressed on nociceptors, such as the polymodal cationic channel TRPV1. The tarantula double-knot toxin (DkTx) is a peptide with an atypical bivalent structure, providing it with the unique capability to lock TRPV1 in its open state and evoke an irreversible channel activation. Here,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Role of human Hv1 channels in sperm capacitation and white blood cell respiratory burst established by a designed peptide inhibitor [Physiology]

Using a de novo peptide inhibitor, Corza6 (C6), we demonstrate that the human voltage-gated proton channel (hHv1) is the main pathway for H+ efflux that allows capacitation in sperm and permits sustained reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in white blood cells (WBCs). C6 was identified by a phage-display strategy whereby…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

PYL8 mediates ABA perception in the root through non-cell-autonomous and ligand-stabilization-based mechanisms [Plant Biology]

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a key role regulating root growth, root system architecture, and root adaptive responses, such as hydrotropism. The molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate the action of core ABA signaling components in roots are not fully understood. ABA is perceived through receptors from the PYR/PYL/RCAR…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Hinge region of Arabidopsis phyA plays an important role in regulating phyA function [Plant Biology]

Phytochrome A (phyA) is the only plant photoreceptor that perceives far-red light and then mediates various responses to this signal. Phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of oat phyA have been extensively studied, and it was shown that phosphorylation of a serine residue in the hinge region of oat phyA could regulate the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Metabolic network-based stratification of hepatocellular carcinoma reveals three distinct tumor subtypes [Systems Biology]

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most frequent forms of liver cancer, and effective treatment methods are limited due to tumor heterogeneity. There is a great need for comprehensive approaches to stratify HCC patients, gain biological insights into subtypes, and ultimately identify effective therapeutic targets. We stratified HCC patients…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Correction for Yoon et al., Control of movement vigor and decision making during foraging [Corrections]

NEUROSCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES Correction for “Control of movement vigor and decision making during foraging,” by Tehrim Yoon, Robert B. Geary, Alaa A. Ahmed, and Reza Shadmehr, which was first published October 15, 2018; 10.1073/pnas.1812979115 (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 115:E10476–E10485). The authors note that, due to a printer’s…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Retraction for Baradaran-Heravi et al., Gentamicin B1 is a minor gentamicin component with major nonsense mutation suppression activity [Retractions]

GENETICS Retraction for “Gentamicin B1 is a minor gentamicin component with major nonsense mutation suppression activity,” by Alireza Baradaran-Heravi, Jürgen Niesser, Aruna D. Balgi, Kunho Choi, Carla Zimmerman, Andrew P. South, Hilary J. Anderson, Natalie C. Strynadka, Marcel B. Bally, and Michel Roberge, which was first published March 13, 2017;…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

In This Issue [This Week in PNAS]

Commuting patterns influence housing and job choices Beijing subway map. Image courtesy of iStock/LordRunar. Few longitudinal studies have examined links between job and housing dynamics and commuting patterns of urban residents. Jie Huang et al. (pp. 12710–12715) conducted a 7-year study that tracked transit smartcards of 4,248 commuters in Beijing,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

There is no evidence that pupil mimicry is a social phenomenon [Social Sciences]

When you look at someone with large pupils, your own pupils dilate as well; when you look at someone with small pupils, your own pupils constrict. This phenomenon is referred to as pupil mimicry. Recently, in PNAS, Prochazkova et al. (1) claim that pupil mimicry reflects trust and theory of…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Reply to Mathot and Naber: Neuroimaging shows that pupil mimicry is a social phenomenon [Social Sciences]

We recently reported that an individual’s pupils mimic changes in the pupils of his or her interaction partner, that mimicking dilating pupils associates with more trust in economic games, and that such pupil mimicry-related trust tracked neural activation in brain areas associated with theory of mind (1). Our findings confirm…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Profile of Akiko Iwasaki [Profiles]

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has made significant contributions toward understanding innate and adaptive immunity. Her achievements include the demonstration of tissue-specific properties of dendritic cells (DCs), discovery of a pathway by which immune responses to viruses can…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Navigating the fitness landscape using multiallele genome editing [Microbiology]

What are the cellular limits that constrain the maximal rate of microbial cell duplication? What are the genetic determinants conferring maximal microbial growth rates? In the case of Cyanobacteria—an ecologically ubiquitous and diverse phylum of prokaryotes capable of oxygenic photosynthesis—these have increasingly become questions of both applied and fundamental significance….

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Puzzling conformational changes affecting proteins binding to the RNA polymerase [Microbiology]

RNA polymerase (RNAP) secondary-channel binding proteins have similar structures and directly bind to RNAP itself, unlike many transcriptional factors that instead interact with DNA. Since these proteins have different functions yet bind to the same site on RNAP, competition for binding determines the ensuing regulatory effects (1–5). In PNAS, Kim…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Temperature throws a developmental switch [Developmental Biology]

A tantalizing task in the postgenomic era is to decipher the basis of gene–environment interactions or, to phrase it more explicitly, How do environmental cues regulate decisions on organismal developmental fate? In PNAS, Romney et al. (1) shine some light on how a developmental decision can be influenced by external…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Alternative pathway to reduced artemisinin susceptibility in Plasmodium falciparum [Microbiology]

Malaria case management across endemic regions of the globe relies on artemisinin (ART) combination therapies for the rapid treatment of acute Plasmodium infection and prevention of severe disease. However, the efficacy of combination therapy is threatened by reduced sensitivity of Plasmodium falciparum to ART and partner drugs, which, in turn,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Intrinsic cellular chirality regulates left-right symmetry breaking during cardiac looping [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

The vertebrate body plan is overall symmetrical but left–right (LR) asymmetric in the shape and positioning of internal organs. Although several theories have been proposed, the biophysical mechanisms underlying LR asymmetry are still unclear, especially the role of cell chirality, the LR asymmetry at the cellular level, on organ asymmetry….

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Visualizing atomic sizes and molecular shapes with the classical turning surface of the Kohn-Sham potential [Chemistry]

The Kohn–Sham potential veff(r) is the effective multiplicative operator in a noninteracting Schrödinger equation that reproduces the ground-state density of a real (interacting) system. The sizes and shapes of atoms, molecules, and solids can be defined in terms of Kohn–Sham potentials in a nonarbitrary way that accords with chemical intuition…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Eurasian river spring flood observations support net Arctic Ocean mercury export to the atmosphere and Atlantic Ocean [Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences]

Midlatitude anthropogenic mercury (Hg) emissions and discharge reach the Arctic Ocean (AO) by atmospheric and oceanic transport. Recent studies suggest that Arctic river Hg inputs have been a potentially overlooked source of Hg to the AO. Observations on Hg in Eurasian rivers, which represent 80% of freshwater inputs to the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Strong impact of wildfires on the abundance and aging of black carbon in the lowermost stratosphere [Environmental Sciences]

Wildfires inject large amounts of black carbon (BC) particles into the atmosphere, which can reach the lowermost stratosphere (LMS) and cause strong radiative forcing. During a 14-month period of observations on board a passenger aircraft flying between Europe and North America, we found frequent and widespread biomass burning (BB) plumes,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

The calculation of transcript flux ratios reveals single regulatory mechanisms capable of activation and repression [Biochemistry]

The regulation of transcription allows cells to adjust the rate of RNA polymerases (RNAPs) initiated in a promoter-specific manner. Classically, transcription factors are directed to a subset of promoters via the recognition of DNA sequence motifs. However, a unique class of regulators is recruited directly through interactions with RNAP. Surprisingly,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Phage Mu Gam protein promotes NHEJ in concert with Escherichia coli ligase [Biochemistry]

The Gam protein of transposable phage Mu is an ortholog of eukaryotic and bacterial Ku proteins, which carry out nonhomologous DNA end joining (NHEJ) with the help of dedicated ATP-dependent ligases. Many bacteria carry Gam homologs associated with either complete or defective Mu-like prophages, but the role of Gam in…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Structural snapshots of OxyR reveal the peroxidatic mechanism of H2O2 sensing [Biochemistry]

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a strong oxidant capable of oxidizing cysteinyl thiolates, yet only a few cysteine-containing proteins have exceptional reactivity toward H2O2. One such example is the prokaryotic transcription factor OxyR, which controls the antioxidant response in bacteria, and which specifically and rapidly reduces H2O2. In this study, we…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

NETSeq reveals heterogeneous nucleotide incorporation by RNA polymerase I [Biochemistry]

DNA sequence motifs that affect RNA polymerase transcription elongation are well studied in prokaryotic organisms and contribute directly to regulation of gene expression. Despite significant work on the regulation of eukaryotic transcription, the effect of DNA template sequence on RNA polymerase I (Pol I) transcription elongation remains unknown. In this…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

UBL domain of Usp14 and other proteins stimulates proteasome activities and protein degradation in cells [Biochemistry]

The best-known function of ubiquitin-like (UBL) domains in proteins is to enable their binding to 26S proteasomes. The proteasome-associated deubiquitinating enzyme Usp14/UBP6 contains an N-terminal UBL domain and is an important regulator of proteasomal activity. Usp14 by itself represses multiple proteasomal activities but, upon binding a ubiquitin chain, Usp14 stimulates…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Mechanistic insights into the interactions of NAP1 with the SKICH domains of NDP52 and TAX1BP1 [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

NDP52 and TAX1BP1, two SKIP carboxyl homology (SKICH) domain-containing autophagy receptors, play crucial roles in selective autophagy. The autophagic functions of NDP52 and TAX1BP1 are regulated by TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1), which may associate with them through the adaptor NAP1. However, the molecular mechanism governing the interactions of NAP1 with…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Dual functions for OVAAL in initiation of RAF/MEK/ERK prosurvival signals and evasion of p27-mediated cellular senescence [Cell Biology]

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) function through a diverse array of mechanisms that are not presently fully understood. Here, we sought to find lncRNAs differentially regulated in cancer cells resistant to either TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) or the Mcl-1 inhibitor UMI-77, agents that act through the extrinsic and intrinsic apoptotic pathways,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Cancer-associated fibroblasts suppress SOX2-induced dysplasia in a lung squamous cancer coculture [Cell Biology]

Tumorigenesis depends on intricate interactions between genetically altered tumor cells and their surrounding microenvironment. While oncogenic drivers in lung squamous carcinoma (LUSC) have been described, the role of stroma in modulating tissue architecture, particularly cell polarity, remains unclear. Here, we report the establishment of a 3D coculture system of LUSC…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Coordinated histone modifications and chromatin reorganization in a single cell revealed by FRET biosensors [Cell Biology]

The dramatic reorganization of chromatin during mitosis is perhaps one of the most fundamental of all cell processes. It remains unclear how epigenetic histone modifications, despite their crucial roles in regulating chromatin architectures, are dynamically coordinated with chromatin reorganization in controlling this process. We have developed and characterized biosensors with…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Evolution of host support for two ancient bacterial symbionts with differentially degraded genomes in a leafhopper host [Evolution]

Plant sap-feeding insects (Hemiptera) rely on bacterial symbionts for nutrition absent in their diets. These bacteria experience extreme genome reduction and require genetic resources from their hosts, particularly for basic cellular processes other than nutrition synthesis. The host-derived mechanisms that complete these processes have remained poorly understood. It is also…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Germline genetic polymorphisms influence tumor gene expression and immune cell infiltration [Genetics]

Cancer immunotherapy has emerged as an effective therapy in a variety of cancers. However, a key challenge in the field is that only a subset of patients who receive immunotherapy exhibit durable response. It has been hypothesized that host genetics influences the inherent immune profiles of patients and may underlie…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Transcriptional landscape of B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia based on an international study of 1,223 cases [Genetics]

Most B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP ALL) can be classified into known major genetic subtypes, while a substantial proportion of BCP ALL remains poorly characterized in relation to its underlying genomic abnormalities. We therefore initiated a large-scale international study to reanalyze and delineate the transcriptome landscape of 1,223…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Molecular mechanisms of biogenesis of apoptotic exosome-like vesicles and their roles as damage-associated molecular patterns [Immunology and Inflammation]

Recent research has led to contradictory notions regarding the conventional theory that apoptotic cell death can evoke inflammatory or immunogenic responses orchestrated by released damage-associated patterns (DAMPs). By inducing IL-1β from bone marrow-derived macrophages in an effort to determine the inflammatory mediators released from apoptotic cells, we found that exosomal…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

CD226 regulates natural killer cell antitumor responses via phosphorylation-mediated inactivation of transcription factor FOXO1 [Immunology and Inflammation]

Natural killer (NK) cell recognition of tumor cells is mediated through activating receptors such as CD226, with suppression of effector functions often controlled by negative regulatory transcription factors such as FOXO1. Here we show that CD226 regulation of NK cell cytotoxicity is facilitated through inactivation of FOXO1. Gene-expression analysis of…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Citrate-based materials fuel human stem cells by metabonegenic regulation [Medical Sciences]

A comprehensive understanding of the key microenvironmental signals regulating bone regeneration is pivotal for the effective design of bioinspired orthopedic materials. Here, we identified citrate as an osteopromotive factor and revealed its metabonegenic role in mediating citrate metabolism and its downstream effects on the osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Structure and architecture of immature and mature murine leukemia virus capsids [Microbiology]

Retroviruses assemble and bud from infected cells in an immature form and require proteolytic maturation for infectivity. The CA (capsid) domains of the Gag polyproteins assemble a protein lattice as a truncated sphere in the immature virion. Proteolytic cleavage of Gag induces dramatic structural rearrangements; a subset of cleaved CA…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Comparative genomics reveals the molecular determinants of rapid growth of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 [Microbiology]

Cyanobacteria are emerging as attractive organisms for sustainable bioproduction. We previously described Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 as the fastest growing cyanobacterium known. Synechococcus 2973 exhibits high light tolerance and an increased photosynthetic rate and produces biomass at three times the rate of its close relative, the model strain Synechococcus elongatus…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Staphylococcus aureus coagulases are exploitable yet stable public goods in clinically relevant conditions [Microbiology]

Coagulation is an innate defense mechanism intended to limit blood loss and trap invading pathogens during infection. However, Staphylococcus aureus has the ability to hijack the coagulation cascade and generate clots via secretion of coagulases. Although many S. aureus have this characteristic, some do not. The population dynamics regarding this…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

DksA-DnaJ redox interactions provide a signal for the activation of bacterial RNA polymerase [Microbiology]

RNA polymerase is the only known protein partner of the transcriptional regulator DksA. Herein, we demonstrate that the chaperone DnaJ establishes direct, redox-based interactions with oxidized DksA. Cysteine residues in the zinc finger of DksA become oxidized in Salmonella exposed to low concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The resulting disulfide…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Integrative approach using Yersinia pestis genomes to revisit the historical landscape of plague during the Medieval Period [Microbiology]

Over the last few years, genomic studies on Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of all known plague epidemics, have considerably increased in numbers, spanning a period of about 5,000 y. Nonetheless, questions concerning historical reservoirs and routes of transmission remain open. Here, we present and describe five genomes from the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Emergent elasticity in the neural code for space [Neuroscience]

Upon encountering a novel environment, an animal must construct a consistent environmental map, as well as an internal estimate of its position within that map, by combining information from two distinct sources: self-motion cues and sensory landmark cues. How do known aspects of neural circuit dynamics and synaptic plasticity conspire…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

The adult oligodendrocyte can participate in remyelination [Neuroscience]

Endogenous remyelination of the CNS can be robust and restore function, yet in multiple sclerosis it becomes less complete with time. Promoting remyelination is a major therapeutic goal, both to restore function and to protect axons from degeneration. Remyelination is thought to depend on oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, giving rise to…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Forecasting innovations in science, technology, and education [Introductions]

Human survival depends on our ability to predict future outcomes so that we can make informed decisions. Human cognition and perception are optimized for local, short-term decision-making, such as deciding when to fight or flight, whom to mate, or what to eat. For more elaborate decisions (e.g., when to harvest,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

The role of industry-specific, occupation-specific, and location-specific knowledge in the growth and survival of new firms [Colloquium Paper]

How do regions acquire the knowledge they need to diversify their economic activities? How does the migration of workers among firms and industries contribute to the diffusion of that knowledge? Here we measure the industry-, occupation-, and location-specific knowledge carried by workers from one establishment to the next, using a…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Intrinsically ultrastrong plasmon-exciton interactions in crystallized films of carbon nanotubes [Applied Physical Sciences]

In cavity quantum electrodynamics, optical emitters that are strongly coupled to cavities give rise to polaritons with characteristics of both the emitters and the cavity excitations. We show that carbon nanotubes can be crystallized into chip-scale, two-dimensionally ordered films and that this material enables intrinsically ultrastrong emitter–cavity interactions: Rather than…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Contact mechanics between the human finger and a touchscreen under electroadhesion [Applied Physical Sciences]

The understanding and control of human skin contact against technological substrates is the key aspect behind the design of several electromechanical devices. Among these, surface haptic displays that modulate the friction between the human finger and touch surface are emerging as user interfaces. One such modulation can be achieved by…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Jump rope vortex in liquid metal convection [Applied Physical Sciences]

Understanding large-scale circulations (LSCs) in turbulent convective systems is important for the study of stars, planets, and in many industrial applications. The canonical model of the LSC is quasi-planar with additional horizontal sloshing and torsional modes [Brown E, Ahlers G (2009) J Fluid Mech 638:383–400; Funfschilling D, Ahlers G (2004)…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Engineered occluded apo-intermediate of LacY [Biochemistry]

The lactose permease of Escherichia coli (LacY) utilizes an alternating access symport mechanism with multiple conformational intermediates, but only inward (cytoplasmic)- or outward (periplasmic)-open structures have been characterized by X-ray crystallography. It is demonstrated here with sugar-binding studies that cross-linking paired-Cys replacements across the closed cytoplasmic cavity stabil

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Mechanism of the E2 to E1 transition in Ca2+ pump revealed by crystal structures of gating residue mutants [Biochemistry]

Ca2+-ATPase of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SERCA1a) pumps two Ca2+ per ATP hydrolyzed from the cytoplasm and two or three protons in the opposite direction. In the E2 state, after transferring Ca2+ into the lumen of sarcoplasmic reticulum, all of the acidic residues that coordinate Ca2+ are thought to be protonated, including…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Genetically encodable bioluminescent system from fungi [Biochemistry]

Bioluminescence is found across the entire tree of life, conferring a spectacular set of visually oriented functions from attracting mates to scaring off predators. Half a dozen different luciferins, molecules that emit light when enzymatically oxidized, are known. However, just one biochemical pathway for luciferin biosynthesis has been described in…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

A2A adenosine receptor functional states characterized by 19F-NMR [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

The human proteome contains 826 G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR), which control a wide array of key physiological functions, making them important drug targets. GPCR functions are based on allosteric coupling from the extracellular orthosteric drug binding site across the cell membrane to intracellular binding sites for partners such as G…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Bottom-up modeling of chromatin segregation due to epigenetic modifications [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

We use a chromosome-scale simulation to show that the preferential binding of heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) to regions high in histone methylation (specifically H3K9me3) results in phase segregation and reproduces features of the observed Hi-C contact map. Specifically, we perform Monte Carlo simulations with one computational bead per nucleosome and…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Benefits of phenotypic plasticity for population growth in varying environments [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

Phenotypic plasticity refers to the capacity of the same organisms to exhibit different characteristics under varied environmental conditions. A plastic developmental program allows organisms to sense environmental cues in early stages of life and express phenotypes that are better fitted to environments encountered later in life. This is often considered…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Molecular mechanism of fusion pore formation driven by the neuronal SNARE complex [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

Release of neurotransmitters from synaptic vesicles begins with a narrow fusion pore, the structure of which remains unresolved. To obtain a structural model of the fusion pore, we performed coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of fusion between a nanodisc and a planar bilayer bridged by four partially unzipped SNARE complexes. The…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Molecular structure of the ATP-bound, phosphorylated human CFTR [Biophysics and Computational Biology]

The cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is an anion channel important in maintaining proper functions of the lung, pancreas, and intestine. The activity of CFTR is regulated by ATP and protein kinase A-dependent phosphorylation. To understand the conformational changes elicited by phosphorylation and ATP binding, we present here the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Directing the reactivity of metal hydrides for selective CO2 reduction [Chemistry]

A critical challenge in electrocatalytic CO2 reduction to renewable fuels is product selectivity. Desirable products of CO2 reduction require proton equivalents, but key catalytic intermediates can also be competent for direct proton reduction to H2. Understanding how to manage divergent reaction pathways at these shared intermediates is essential to achieving…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Single-atomic cobalt sites embedded in hierarchically ordered porous nitrogen-doped carbon as a superior bifunctional electrocatalyst [Chemistry]

Exploring efficient and cost-effective catalysts to replace precious metal catalysts, such as Pt, for electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) holds great promise for renewable energy technologies. Herein, we prepare a type of Co catalyst with single-atomic Co sites embedded in hierarchically ordered porous N-doped carbon…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Twin-Win Model: A human-centered approach to research success [Colloquium Paper]

A 70-year-old simmering debate has erupted into vigorous battles over the most effective ways to conduct research. Well-established beliefs are being forcefully challenged by advocates of new research models. While there can be no final resolution to this battle, this paper offers the Twin-Win Model to guide teams of researchers,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Temperature-dependent vitamin D signaling regulates developmental trajectory associated with diapause in an annual killifish [Developmental Biology]

The mechanisms that integrate environmental signals into developmental programs remain largely uncharacterized. Nuclear receptors (NRs) are ligand-regulated transcription factors that orchestrate the expression of complex phenotypes. The vitamin D receptor (VDR) is an NR activated by 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 [1,25(OH)2D3], a hormone derived from 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC). VDR signaling is best

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Modeling research universities: Predicting probable futures of public vs. private and large vs. small research universities [Colloquium Paper]

The future of the American academic research enterprise is considered. Data are presented that characterize the resources available for the 160 best-resourced research universities, a small subset of the 2,285 4-year, nonprofit, higher education institutions. A computational model of research universities was extended and used to simulate three strategic scenarios:…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

How science and technology developments impact employment and education [Colloquium Paper]

A better understanding of how developments in science and technology influence the creation of new occupations and subsequent changes in educational programs can help decision makers at all levels of our society. As a result of research and development efforts, innovations are achieved, resulting in the creation of new occupations…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Skill discrepancies between research, education, and jobs reveal the critical need to supply soft skills for the data economy [Colloquium Paper]

Rapid research progress in science and technology (S&T) and continuously shifting workforce needs exert pressure on each other and on the educational and training systems that link them. Higher education institutions aim to equip new generations of students with skills and expertise relevant to workforce participation for decades to come,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Opportunities to observe and measure intangible inputs to innovation: Definitions, operationalization, and examples [Colloquium Paper]

Measuring the value of intangibles is not easy, because they are critical but usually invisible components of the innovation process. Today, access to nonsurvey data sources, such as administrative data and repositories captured on web pages, opens opportunities to create intangibles based on new sources of information and capture intangible…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Macroscopic dynamics and the collapse of urban traffic [Colloquium Paper]

Stories of mega-jams that last tens of hours or even days appear not only in fiction but also in reality. In this context, it is important to characterize the collapse of the network, defined as the transition from a characteristic travel time to orders of magnitude longer for the same…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Quantifying the role of mineral bridges on the fracture resistance of nacre-like composites [Engineering]

The nacreous layer of mollusk shells holds design concepts that can effectively enhance the fracture resistance of lightweight brittle materials. Mineral bridges are known to increase the fracture resistance of nacre-inspired materials, but their role is difficult to quantify due to the lack of experimental systems where only this parameter…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Ancient DNA of the extinct Jamaican monkey Xenothrix reveals extreme insular change within a morphologically conservative radiation [Evolution]

The insular Caribbean until recently contained a diverse mammal fauna including four endemic platyrrhine primate species, all of which died out during the Holocene. Previous morphological studies have attempted to establish how these primates are related to fossil and extant platyrrhines, whether they represent ancient or recent colonists, and whether…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Phylogenomics and the evolution of hemipteroid insects [Evolution]

Hemipteroid insects (Paraneoptera), with over 10% of all known insect diversity, are a major component of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Previous phylogenetic analyses have not consistently resolved the relationships among major hemipteroid lineages. We provide maximum likelihood-based phylogenomic analyses of a taxonomically comprehensive dataset comprising sequences of 2,395 single-copy, pr

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

The unusual rainbow trout sex determination gene hijacked the canonical vertebrate gonadal differentiation pathway [Evolution]

Evolutionary novelties require rewiring of transcriptional networks and/or the evolution of new gene functions. Sex determination (SD), one of the most plastic evolutionary processes, requires such novelties. Studies on the evolution of vertebrate SD revealed that new master SD genes are generally recruited from genes involved in the downstream SD…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Quantifying the risk of hemiplasy in phylogenetic inference [Evolution]

Convergent evolution—the appearance of the same character state in apparently unrelated organisms—is often inferred when a trait is incongruent with the species tree. However, trait incongruence can also arise from changes that occur on discordant gene trees, a process referred to as hemiplasy. Hemiplasy is rarely taken into account in…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

SUMOylation of PCNA by PIAS1 and PIAS4 promotes template switch in the chicken and human B cell lines [Genetics]

DNA damage tolerance (DDT) releases replication blockage caused by damaged nucleotides on template strands employing two alternative pathways, error-prone translesion DNA synthesis (TLS) and error-free template switch (TS). Lys164 of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) is SUMOylated during the physiological cell cycle. To explore the role for SUMOylation of PCNA…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

ERVmap analysis reveals genome-wide transcription of human endogenous retroviruses [Immunology and Inflammation]

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are integrated retroviral elements that make up 8% of the human genome. However, the impact of ERVs on human health and disease is not well understood. While select ERVs have been implicated in diseases, including autoimmune disease and cancer, the lack of tools to analyze genome-wide, locus-specific…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Precise tracking of vaccine-responding T cell clones reveals convergent and personalized response in identical twins [Immunology and Inflammation]

T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire data contain information about infections that could be used in disease diagnostics and vaccine development, but extracting that information remains a major challenge. Here we developed a statistical framework to detect TCR clone proliferation and contraction from longitudinal repertoire data. We applied this framework to…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

News Feature: Targeting metastasis to halt cancer’s spread [Medical Sciences]

Studies reveal the mechanisms behind tumor metastasis and how to stymie it. But primary tumors still get the lion’s share of researchers’ attention. When a cancer cell spreads from a primary tumor to the brain, it immediately meets a formidable opponent: the astrocyte. These stalwart defenders protect against any would-be…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Vision for a systems architecture to integrate and transform population health [Colloquium Paper]

Entities involved in population health often share a common mission while acting independently of one another and perhaps redundantly. Population health is in everybody’s interest, but nobody is really in charge of promoting it. Across governments, corporations, and frontline operations, lack of coordination, lack of resources, and lack of reliable,…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Mutations in Plasmodium falciparum actin-binding protein coronin confer reduced artemisinin susceptibility [Microbiology]

Drug resistance is an obstacle to global malaria control, as evidenced by the recent emergence and rapid spread of delayed artemisinin (ART) clearance by mutant forms of the PfKelch13 protein in Southeast Asia. Identifying genetic determinants of ART resistance in African-derived parasites is important for surveillance and for understanding the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Discovery of Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus-encoded circular RNAs and a human antiviral circular RNA [Microbiology]

Noncoding RNAs have substantial effects in host–virus interactions. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are novel single-stranded noncoding RNAs which can decoy other RNAs or RNA-binding proteins to inhibit their functions. The role of circRNAs is largely unknown in the context of Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV). We hypothesized that circRNAs influence viral infection…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Individual synaptic vesicles mediate stimulated exocytosis from cochlear inner hair cells [Neuroscience]

Spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (sEPSCs) measured from the first synapse in the mammalian auditory pathway reach a large mean amplitude with a high level of variance (CV between 0.3 and 1). This has led some to propose that each inner hair cell (IHC) ribbon-type active zone (AZ), on average, releases…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Mechanically activated ion channel PIEZO1 is required for lymphatic valve formation [Physiology]

PIEZO1 is a cation channel that is activated by mechanical forces such as fluid shear stress or membrane stretch. PIEZO1 loss-of-function mutations in patients are associated with congenital lymphedema with pleural effusion. However, the mechanistic link between PIEZO1 function and the development or function of the lymphatic system is currently…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

TOR and RPS6 transmit light signals to enhance protein translation in deetiolating Arabidopsis seedlings [Plant Biology]

Deetiolation is an essential developmental process transforming young plant seedlings into the vegetative phase with photosynthetic activities. Light signals initiate this important developmental process by triggering massive reprogramming of the transcriptome and translatome. Compared with the wealth of knowledge of transcriptional regulation, the molecular mechanism underlying this light-trigger

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Measurability of the epidemic reproduction number in data-driven contact networks [Population Biology]

The basic reproduction number is one of the conceptual cornerstones of mathematical epidemiology. Its classical definition as the number of secondary cases generated by a typical infected individual in a fully susceptible population finds a clear analytical expression in homogeneous and stratified mixing models. Along with the generation time (the…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

The chaperone effect in scientific publishing [Colloquium Paper]

Experience plays a critical role in crafting high-impact scientific work. This is particularly evident in top multidisciplinary journals, where a scientist is unlikely to appear as senior author if he or she has not previously published within the same journal. Here, we develop a quantitative understanding of author order by…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Scientific prize network predicts who pushes the boundaries of science [Colloquium Paper]

Scientific prizes confer credibility to persons, ideas, and disciplines, provide financial incentives, and promote community-building celebrations. We examine the growth dynamics and interlocking relationships found in the worldwide scientific prize network. We focus on understanding how the knowledge linkages among prizes and scientists’ propensities for prizewinning relate to knowledge pathways.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Changing demographics of scientific careers: The rise of the temporary workforce [Colloquium Paper]

Contemporary science has been characterized by an exponential growth in publications and a rise of team science. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of awarded PhD degrees, which has not been accompanied by a similar expansion in the number of academic positions. In such…

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences current issue

Tracking job and housing dynamics with smartcard data [Social Sciences]

Residential locations, the jobs–housing relationship, and commuting patterns are key elements to understand urban spatial structure and how city dwellers live. Their successive interaction is important for various fields including urban planning, transport, intraurban migration studies, and social science. However, understanding of the long-term trajectories of workplace and home location,…

Biologists are one step closer to creating snake venom in the lab

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Milking snakes for venom may soon no longer be needed to make antidotes for bites.

Trump’s Reality Show in the Oval Office

It was clear almost immediately at the start of Trump’s administration that Mexico would not be funding a border wall. Two years in, it’s unclear whether the United States will ever be funding one either. On Tuesday, the president gathered in the Oval Office with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to negotiate the terms of spending bills needed to keep the

Wait…Maybe the Hippies Weren't Right

A recent proposal about consciousness is fascinating—but it’s not science — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Gift Guides Presents for the people who are, uh, less concerned about the planet than you are. Presents for the people who are, uh, less concerned about the planet than you are.

New ‘microneedle patch’ could help heart attack patients regrow tissue

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Heart attacks leave scar tissue on the heart, which can reduce the organ's ability to pump blood throughout the body. The microneedle patch aims to deliver therapeutic cells directly to the damaged tissue. It hasn't been tested on humans yet, but the method has shown promising signs in research on animals. None A new 'microneedle patch' could someday help people regain healthy heart muscle tissue

Shape-shifting cell breakthrough

A new computational model gives a clearer picture of the structure and mechanics of soft, shape-changing cells that could provide a better understanding of cancerous tumor growth, wound healing, and embryonic development.

Parents, kids spend more time discussing how to use mobile technology than talking about content

Most parents would agree that one of the of the biggest modern parenting challenges is monitoring a child's online activity.

New tool for understanding enzymes — Google

Chemistry professors used the Google algorithm PageRank to identify key amino acids in the regulation of a bacterial enzyme essential for most microorganisms.

Hong Kong's waters benefit health and wellbeing

A ground-breaking study has revealed how spending time in and around Hong Kong's 'blue spaces' (harbors, coastlines and beaches) is linked to better health and wellbeing, especially for older adults.

A new AI method can train on medical records without revealing patient data

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Hazelnuts 365: Why Oregon's state nut may be the key to disease prevention

The new study, administered by the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and published in the December 2018 issue of The Journal of Nutrition, found that older adults who added hazelnuts to their diet for 16 weeks significantly improved their levels of two key micronutrients. Results showed increased blood concentrations of magnesium and elevated urinary levels of a breakdown product

Employee incentives can lead to unethical behavior in the workplace

Findings suggest that setting compensation goals can increase dishonesty when managers are also paid a bonus for hitting certain targets.

Alaska earthquakes offer new insight into improving hazard assessment

Earthquake hazard assessment often overlooks intra-slab earthquakes. EarthScope Transportable Array data for the 2016 Iniskin and Nov. 30, 2018 Anchorage earthquakes in Alaska offer new insight into potential causes of heavy shaking from these intra-slab events.

Transformed: The plant whose sex life fascinated Charles Darwin

Researchers have genetically transformed the Common Primrose (Primula vulgaris) for the first time in a development that could shed light on one of the plant world's most renowned reproductive systems.

Custom-made artificial mother-of-pearl

Researchers developed an imitation comparable to mother-of-pearl, the physical properties of which can be specifically adjusted.

cognitive science

Your brain on imagination: It's a lot like the real thing, study shows

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11 newfound epilepsy genes may lead to better treatments

New research pinpoints 11 genes associated with epilepsy and may lead to drugs for the millions of patients who do not respond to existing treatments. Researchers compared the DNA of more than 15,000 people with epilepsy to the DNA of 30,000 control people without the disorder. The results tripled the number of known genetic associations for epilepsy and—importantly—implicated 11 new genes which