The “chicken or egg” paradox was first proposed by philosophers in Ancient Greece to describe the problem of determining cause-and-effect. Now, a team of physicists from The University of Queensland and the NÉEL Institute has shown that, as far as quantum physics is concerned, the chicken and the egg can both come first. Dr Jacqui … Read more
At the end of its life, a red supergiant star explodes in a hydrogen-rich supernova. By comparing observation results to simulation models, an international research team found that in many cases this explosion takes place inside a thick cloud of circumstellar matter shrouding the star. This result completely changes our understanding of the last stage … Read more
The effect has been predicted theoretically decades ago — but it is very hard to provide experimental evidence for it: “Superradiance” is the phenomenon of one atom giving off energy in the form of light and causing a large number of other atoms in its immediate vicinity to emit energy as well at the same … Read more
The quest to find new ways to harness solar power has taken a step forward after researchers successfully split water into hydrogen and oxygen by altering the photosynthetic machinery in plants. Photosynthesis is the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy. Oxygen is produced as by-product of photosynthesis when the water absorbed by plants … Read more
Analyzing traces of leaf waxes from land plants that over millennia accumulated in deep sea sediments, a team of researchers led by the University of Arizona reconstructed the history of monsoon activity in northern Mexico. Their results, published online on Sept. 3 in the journal Nature Geoscience, help settle a long-standing debate over whether monsoon … Read more
The leatherback sea turtle is the largest living turtle and a critically endangered species. Saving leatherback turtles from extinction in the Pacific Ocean will require a lot of international cooperation, however, because the massive turtles may visit more than 30 different countries during their migrations. A new study uses tracking data for 14 species of … Read more
Early in 2017, Assistant Professor Yoko Oya gave graduate student Yuki Okoda some recent complex data on a nearby star with which she could begin her Ph.D. Little did she realize that what she would find could unlock not only the secrets of how planets form but possibly her career as a professional astronomer. The … Read more
Scientists have traditionally believed that combining more than two drugs to fight harmful bacteria would yield diminishing returns. The prevailing theory is that that the incremental benefits of combining three or more drugs would be too small to matter, or that the interactions among the drugs would cause their benefits to cancel one another out. … Read more
From airplane wings to overhead powerlines to the giant blades of wind turbines, a buildup of ice can cause problems ranging from impaired performance all the way to catastrophic failure. But preventing that buildup usually requires energy-intensive heating systems or chemical sprays that are environmentally harmful. Now, MIT researchers have developed a completely passive, solar-powered … Read more
Harvard University researchers have developed a new printing method that uses sound waves to generate droplets from liquids with an unprecedented range of composition and viscosity. This technique could finally enable the manufacturing of many new biopharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food and expand the possibilities of optical and conductive materials. “By harnessing acoustic forces, we have … Read more
Tiny protein structures called amyloids are key to understanding certain devastating age-related diseases. Aggregates, or sticky clumped-up amyloids, form plaques in the brain, and are the main culprits in the progression of Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases. Amyloids are so tiny that they can’t be visualized using conventional microscopic techniques. A team of engineers at Washington … Read more
A team of researchers have discovered that terahertz (THz) wave irradiation activates the filamentation of actin protein. Drs. Shota Yamazaki and Masahiko Harata (Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University); Dr. Yuichi Ogawa (Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University); Dr. Hiromichi Hoshina (THz imaging and the sensing team at RIKEN); and Dr. Toshitaka Idehara (FIR-UF … Read more
The overall mortality in patients suffering non-neonatal tetanus is high. Efforts to reduce mortality in one sub-Saharan African intensive care unit (ICU) by implementing a standard tetanus protocol did little to change mortality rates, although they shifted causes of deaths, researchers have now reported in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Tetanus is a vaccine-preventable neglected disease … Read more
Insights into how harmful white blood cells form during tuberculosis infection point to novel targets for pharmacological interventions, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Valentina Guerrini and Maria Laura Gennaro of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and colleagues. Foam cells are a type of white blood cell, known as … Read more
A new diagnostic tool has been developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin that can easily, quickly and cheaply identify whether a mosquito belongs to the species that carries dangerous diseases such as Zika virus, dengue, chikungunya or yellow fever. It can also determine whether the bug has come into contact with … Read more
No one knows how many times in a day, or even an hour, the trillions of cells in our body need to make proteins. But we do know that it’s going on all the time, on a massive scale. We also know that every time this happens, an editing process takes place in the cell … Read more
Neisseria gonorrhoea continues to show high levels of resistance to azithromycin across the European Union and European Economic Area, according to the 2016 results of the European Gonococcal Antimicrobial Surveillance Programme (Euro-GASP). This threatens the effectiveness of the currently recommended dual therapy regimen for gonorrhoea. Overall, the rates of resistance to cefixime, ceftriaxone and azithromycin … Read more
Scientists have determined the DNA code of the opium poppy genome, uncovering key steps in how the plant evolved to produce the pharmaceutical compounds used to make vital medicines. The discovery may pave the way for scientists to improve yields and the disease resistance of the medicinal plant, securing a reliable and cheap supply of … Read more
A study of earthquakes induced by injecting fluids deep underground has revealed surprising patterns, suggesting that current recommendations for hydraulic fracturing, wastewater disposal, and geothermal wells may need to be revised. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz compiled and analyzed data from around the world for earthquakes clearly associated with injection wells. They found that a … Read more
Chewing: We don’t think about it, we just do it. But biologists don’t know a lot about how chewing behavior leaves telltale signs on the underlying bones. To find out, researchers at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo have been studying the jaw joints of carnivorans, the large … Read more