Targeting mitochondria shows promise in treating obesity: Molecule that changes the shape of mitochondria corrects obesity
A team of University of California, Irvine, scientists have discovered a novel pharmacological approach to attenuate the mitochondrial dysfunction that drives diet-induced obesity. The results of their study were published recently in the journal, EMBO Molecular Medicine. Consuming a high-fat diet can lead to obesity and metabolic disorders such as diabetes and fatty liver. Palmitate, […]
How landscapes of fear affect the songbirds in our backyards: New research suggests that fear is responsible for underweight nestlings
A team of researchers headquartered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently discovered that fear plays an important, unrecognized role in the underdevelopment, and increased vulnerability, of backyard songbirds. Scientists have long known that urban songbirds face a host of increased challenges, from habitat loss to altered food sources and a larger population of […]
New DNA study provides critical information on conserving rainforest lizards
A study published June 16 in Biotropicaby a team of researchers at the University of Washington, the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, WWF Hong Kong and the University of Colombo has provided an important road map to conserving rough-nosed horned lizards in Sri Lanka. Rough-nosed horned lizards, or Ceratophora aspera, are small […]
Simone Biles Refused To Be A Work Martyr. You Should, Too.
On Tuesday, Simone Biles, the record-breaking American gymnast, withdrew from the Olympic team finals after an uncharacteristic falter on the vault, saying that she was not in a good mental place to compete. “I can’t risk a medal for the team, so I need to call it,” Biles explained after the event. “And you usually […]
Meet the Martian meteorite hunters
A team at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London is paving the way for future rovers to search for meteorites on Mars. The scientists are using the NHM’s extensive meteorite collection to test the spectral instruments destined for the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin, and develop tools to identify meteorites on the surface of the red […]
Impairments found in neurons derived from people with schizophrenia and genetic mutation
A scientific team has shown that the release of neurotransmitters in the brain is impaired in patients with schizophrenia who have a rare, single-gene mutation known to predispose people to a range of neurodevelopmental disorders. Significantly, the results from the research with human-derived neurons validated previous and new experiments that found the same major decrease […]
‘Hydrogel-based flexible brain-machine interface’: The interface is easy to insert into the body when dry, but behaves ‘stealthily’ inside the brain when wet
A KAIST research team and collaborators revealed a newly developed hydrogel-based flexible brain-machine interface. To study the structure of the brain or to identify and treat neurological diseases, it is crucial to develop an interface that can stimulate the brain and detect its signals in real time. However, existing neural interfaces are mechanically and chemically […]
Scientists solve 40-year mystery over Jupiter’s X-ray aurora
A research team co-led by UCL (University College London) has solved a decades-old mystery as to how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes. The X-rays are part of Jupiter’s aurora — bursts of visible and invisible light that occur when charged particles interact with the planet’s atmosphere. A similar phenomenon occurs […]
Machine learning tool sorts the nuances of quantum data
An interdisciplinary team of Cornell and Harvard University researchers developed a machine learning tool to parse quantum matter and make crucial distinctions in the data, an approach that will help scientists unravel the most confounding phenomena in the subatomic realm. The Cornell-led project’s paper, “Correlator Convolutional Neural Networks as an Interpretable Architecture for Image-like Quantum […]
COVID-19 test offers solution for population-wide testing, scientists say: More than 80,000 tests done in under two months
In an article appearing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team of scientists from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA School of Engineering report real-world results on SwabSeq, a high-throughput testing platform that uses sequencing to test thousands of samples at a time to detect COVID-19. They were able to perform more than […]