ScienceDaily: Featured - November 12, 2023
Featured research news
Designing cities for 21st-century weather
Researchers have investigated how changes in urban land and population will affect future populations' exposures to weather extremes under climate conditions at the end of the 21st century. They used a data-driven model to predict how urban areas across the country will grow by 2100, and found that how a city is laid out or organized spatially has the potential to reduce population exposures to future weather extremes.
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Yucatán's underwater caves host diverse microbial communities
With help from an experienced underwater cave-diving team, researchers have constructed the most complete map to date of the microbial communities living in the submerged labyrinths beneath Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Researchers found the cave system's microbiome is distinct from the nearby sea, and microbial communities vary between cave systems forming distinct 'neighborhoods.'
Low-intensity fires reduce wildfire risk by 60%
High-intensity, often catastrophic, wildfires have become increasingly frequent across the Western U.S. Researchers quantified the value of managed low-intensity burning to dramatically reduce the risk of such fires for years at a time.
Scientists found hundreds of toxic chemicals in recycled plastics
When scientists examined pellets from recycled plastic collected in 13 countries they found hundreds of toxic chemicals, including pesticides and pharmaceuticals. Because of this, the scientists judge recycled plastics unfit for most purposes and a hinder in the attempts to create a circular economy.
Hummingbirds' unique sideways flutter gets them through small apertures
Hummingbirds are highly maneuverable fliers, flitting forward and backward as they home in on flowers. But in the dense foliage many inhabit, they often encounter gaps that are too narrow for their wingspan. Since they can't bend their wings in flight, how do they get through? Researchers used high-speed cameras to capture their movements, discovering two unique strategies: they sidle through while fluttering, or fold their wings in a tuck and glide.
Any activity is better for your heart than sitting -- even sleeping
Replacing sitting with as little as a few minutes of moderate exercise a day tangibly improves heart health, according to new research.
Found at last: Bizarre, egg-laying mammal finally rediscovered after 60 years
A long-beaked echidna named after Sir David Attenborough and last seen by scientists in 1961 has been photographed for the first time in an Indonesian tropical forest. An international team of researchers worked with local communities to deploy over 80 camera traps to film the elusive animal. Besides rediscovering the echidna, the team uncovered a wealth of species completely new to science, including beetles, spiders, and a remarkable tree-dwelling shrimp.
How to use AI for discovery -- without leading science astray
In the same way that chatbots sometimes 'hallucinate,' or make things up, machine learning models designed for scientific applications can sometimes present misleading or downright false results. Researchers now present a new statistical technique for safely using AI predictions to test scientific hypotheses.
Atomic dance gives rise to a magnet
Researchers turned a paramagnetic material into a magnet by manipulating electrons' spin via atomic motion.
Milky Way-like galaxy found in the early universe
Astronomers have discovered the most distant barred spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, that has been observed to date.
Photonics team develops high-performance ultrafast lasers that fit on a fingertip
Scientists demonstrate a novel approach for creating high-performance ultrafast lasers on nanophotonic chips. The new advance will enable pocket-sized devices that can perform detailed GPS-free precision navigation, medical imaging, food safety inspection and more.
Bacteria-virus arms race provides rare window into rapid and complex evolution
Rather than a slow, gradual process as Darwin envisioned, biologists can now see how evolutionary changes unfold on much more accelerated timescales. Using an accelerated arms race between bacteria and viruses, researchers are documenting rapid evolutionary processes in simple laboratory flasks in only three weeks.
Glow in the visible range detected for the first time in the Martian night
Scientists have observed, for the first time in the visible range, a glow on the night side of the planet Mars. These new observations provide a better understanding of the dynamics of the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet and its variations throughout the year.
Barnacle bends shape to fend off warm-water sea snails on the move
Some barnacles are 'morphing' to protect themselves from predatory warm-water sea snails, which are expanding into their territory due to climate change.
Allergic responses to common foods such as dairy and peanuts can increase the risk for heart disease and cardiovascular death as much or more than smoking, new research suggests. And these dangerous allergic responses can strike both people with food allergies and those with no obvious allergy symptoms.
Palaeo-CSI: Mosasaurs were picky eaters
Mosasaurs, those large marine reptiles from the long-gone Cretaceous world, were quite picky in their choice of diet. Researchers came to this conclusion after studying the wear marks on mosasaur teeth.
Plastics treaty must tackle problem at source
The new Global Plastics Treaty must tackle the problem at source, researchers say. They say the treaty must prioritize 'upstream' issues: cutting total production and consumption of plastics, phasing out hazardous chemicals and tackling fossil fuel subsidies.
Left-handers aren't better spatially, gaming research shows
By asking participants to download and play a video game that captured user information and tracked navigational challenges, researchers were able to measure demographic data -- including hand preference -- and activity from more than 420,000 international participants, across 41 different countries. They found that left-handers were neither better nor worse than right-handers at the tasks, clarifying a long-running debate about the links between handedness and spatial skills.
Poison dart frogs: Personality determines reproductive strategies
Unlike their relatives, individuals of the poison frog Allobates femoralis are not poisonous but are captivating due to their different behavioral profiles: They successfully reproduce with different strategies depending on whether they are bold, aggressive or explorative. In addition, certain character traits are already present in this species at the tadpole stage.
First live birth of a chimeric monkey using embryonic stem cell lines
A team of researchers has reported for the first time the live birth of a monkey that contains a high proportion of cells derived from a monkey stem cell line. This 'chimeric' monkey is composed of cells that originate from two genetically distinct embryos of the same species of monkey. This has previously been demonstrated in rats and mice but, until now, has not been possible in other species, including non-human primates.
Greenland's glacier retreat rate has doubled over past two decades
A new study documents how Greenland's peripheral glaciers have changed from 1890 to 2022. Using satellite images and a unique archive of historical aerial photos, researchers documented changes in the lengths of more than 1,000 of the country's glaciers over the past 130 years. Although glaciers in Greenland have experienced retreat throughout the last century, the rate of their retreat has rapidly accelerated over the last two decades.
A collaborative research team has recently revealed that rotifers, a kind of microscopic zooplankton common in both fresh and ocean water around the world, are able to chew apart microplastics, breaking them down into even smaller, and potentially more dangerous, nanoplastics -- or particles smaller than one micron. Each rotifer can create between 348,000 -- 366,000 per day, leading to uncountable swarms of nanoparticles in our environment.
187 new genetic variants linked to prostate cancer found in largest, most diverse study of its kind
A globe-spanning scientific team has compiled the most comprehensive list of genetic variants associated with prostate cancer risk -- 451 in all -- through a whole-genome analysis that ranks as the largest and most diverse investigation into prostate cancer genetics yet. The research explored the genomes of nearly 950,000 men, including major increases in representation among men from racial and ethnic groups that have often been left out of such research.
Scientists tame biological trigger of deadly Huntington's disease
Huntington's disease causes involuntary movements and dementia, has no cure, and is fatal. Scientists have now shown they can slow its progression in flies and worms, opening the door to human treatments.
New findings support long-proposed process of planet formation
Scientists just made a breakthrough discovery in revealing how planets are made. By observing water vapor in protoplanetary disks, they confirmed a physical process involving the drifting of ice-coated solids from the outer regions of the disk into the rocky-planet zone.
How animals get their stripes and spots
New research helps explain how sharp patterns form on zebras, leopards, tropical fish and other creatures. Their findings could inform the development of new high-tech materials and drugs.
Autism brain states hold the key to unlocking childhood memories, findings show
Neuroscientists have discovered a fascinating connection between the retention of early life memories and brain developmental trajectories associated with autism.
Animals like crickets use the ground to amplify calls
When animals 'sing' sitting on the ground -- such as when crickets chirp -- their volume and reach increase dramatically, by as much as ten-fold. This result contradicts long-held beliefs in the field of animal communication, which presume the ground is a hindrance to sound transmission.
Anesthesia blocks sensation by cutting off communication within the cortex
Yeast with an over half synthetic genome is created in the lab
Researchers have combined over seven synthetic chromosomes that were made in the lab into a single yeast cell, resulting in a strain with more than 50% synthetic DNA that survives and replicates similarly to wild yeast strains. A global consortium is working to develop the first synthetic eukaryote genome from scratch. The team has now synthesized and debugged all sixteen yeast chromosomes.
New antifungal molecule kills fungi without toxicity in human cells, mice
A new antifungal molecule, devised by tweaking the structure of prominent antifungal drug Amphotericin B, has the potential to harness the drug's power against fungal infections while doing away with its toxicity, researchers report.
Physicists trap electrons in a 3D crystal
Physicists have trapped electrons in a pure crystal, marking the first achievement of an electronic flat band in a three-dimensional material. The results provide a new way for scientists to explore rare electronic states in 3D materials.
Some unexpected shark strandings and subsequent surprises following autopsies have, ironically, taken marine biologists millions of years back in time as they look to the future with concern. Adding chapters to an evolutionary tale involving the infamous megalodon shark (the 'Meg'), they think their work suggests there are more warm-blooded sharks out there than previously believed, and -- based on the Meg's demise -- these species may be at great risk from warming seas.
Window to the past: New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life
Microfossils may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists.
French love letters confiscated by Britain finally read after 265 years
Over 100 letters sent to French sailors by their fiancées, wives, parents and siblings -- but never delivered -- have been opened and studied for the first time since they were written in 1757-8.
450-million-year-old organism finds new life in Softbotics
Researchers have used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitids, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem.
Studies of geologic faulting on icy moons aid exploration of extraterrestrial watery worlds
Earth and space scientists document and reveal the mechanisms behind strike-slip faulting on the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, and Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede.
Want the secret to less painful belly flops? These researchers have the answer
Researchers investigated belly flop mechanics and found surprising insights about air-to-water impacts that could be useful for marine engineering applications. They set up a belly flop-like water experiment using a blunt cylinder but added an important vibrating twist to it.
Researchers have discovered several factors that affect field mouse behavior using seeds from dwarf bamboo plants, a plant that flowers once in a century. Their findings not only suggest the previously underappreciated role of mice in the forest ecosystem, but also show that they store small sasa seeds for later use. These challenge a previously held model of mouse behavior.
Two fins are better than one: Fish synchronize tail fins to save energy
They say two heads are better than one. But in the world of fish, it appears two fins are better than one. Researchers have produced a theoretical model that demonstrates the underlying mechanisms behind how fish will synchronize their fin movements to ride each other's vortices, thereby saving energy.
Mystery resolved: Black hole feeding and feedback at the center of an active galaxy
Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. An international research team has recently observed the Circinus galaxy, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, with high enough resolution to gain further insights into the gas flows to and from the black hole at its galactic nucleus.
Long-distance weaponry identified at the 31,000-year-old archaeological site of Maisières-Canal
The hunter-gatherers who settled on the banks of the Haine, a river in southern Belgium, 31,000 years ago were already using spearthrowers to hunt their game. The material found at the archaeological site of Maisières-Canal permits establishing the use of this hunting technique 10,000 years earlier than the oldest currently known preserved spearthrowers. This discovery is prompting archaeologists to reconsider the age of this important technological innovation.
Brain implant may enable communication from thoughts alone
A speech prosthetic developed by a collaborative team of neuroscientists, neurosurgeons and engineers can translate a person's brain signals into what they're trying to say. The new technology might one day help people unable to talk due to neurological disorders regain the ability to communicate through a brain-computer interface.
Fossils tell tale of last primate to inhabit North America before humans
Paleontologists have shed light on the long-standing saga of Ekgmowechashala, based on fossil teeth and jaws found in both Nebraska and China. Ekgmowechashala is the last primate found in the fossil record before humans.
Crust-forming algae are displacing corals in tropical waters worldwide
Over the past few decades, algae have been slowly edging corals out of their native reefs across the globe by blocking sunlight, wearing the corals down physically, and producing harmful chemicals. But in recent years, a new type of algal threat has surfaced in tropical regions like the Caribbean -- one that spreads quickly and forms a crust on top of coral and sponges, suffocating the organisms underneath and preventing them from regrowing. Marine biologists report that peyssonnelioid alga crusts, or PACs, are expanding quickly across reefs worldwide, killing off corals and transforming entire ecosystems.
How to eat our way out of the climate crisis
Researchers conducted a study to determine if replacing dietary fats from palm oil, soy and other agricultural crops with fats created synthetically in chemical or biological processes could help reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gases. The researchers' analysis finds a reduction in carbon emissions and other benefits, such the opening of agricultural lands to reforestation which benefits biodiversity and creates a carbon sink.
Epigenetic changes are paramount in cancer progression
The path a cell takes from healthy to metastatic cancer is mostly driven by epigenetic changes, according to a new computational study.
A step closer to injection-free diabetes care: Innovation in insulin-producing cells
A team has developed a new step to improve the process for creating insulin-producing pancreatic cells from a patient's own stem cells, bringing the prospect of injection-free treatment closer for people with diabetes.
Milestone moment toward development of nuclear clock
Physicists have started the countdown on developing a new generation of timepieces capable of shattering records by providing accuracy of up to one second in 300 billion years, or about 22 times the age of the universe.