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Conversations between seriously ill people, their families and palliative care specialists lead to better quality-of-life. Understanding what happens during these conversations -- and how they vary by cultural, clinical, and situational contexts -- is essential to guide healthcare communication improvement efforts. True understanding requires methods to study conversations in large, inclusive, and multi-site epidemiological studies. A new computer model offers an automated and valid tool for such large-scale scientific analyses.

A collaboration between EPFL and UCSB has developed a long-anticipated breakthrough, and demonstrated CMOS technology -- used for building microprocessors and memory chips -- that allows wafer-scale manufacturing of chip-scale optical frequency combs.

Fifteen years ago, UC Santa Barbara electrical and materials professor John Bowers pioneered a method for integrating a laser onto a silicon wafer. The technology has since been widely deployed in combination with other silicon photonics devices to replace the copper-wire interconnects that formerly linked servers at data centers, dramatically increasing energy efficiency -- an important endeavor at a time when data traffic is growing by roughly 25% per year.

Antibiotic sales soared during India's first surge of COVID-19, suggesting that the drugs were inappropriately used to treat mild and moderate COVID-19 infections, according to research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The excessive usage is especially concerning because antibiotic overuse increases the risk for drug-resistant infections -- not just in India, but worldwide.

Our brains have sensory cells, which process the faces that we see, and memory cells dedicated to storing data from person encounters. But until now, a hybrid neuron capable of linking vision to memory -- and explaining how we recall familiar faces -- remained elusive.

Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2 in Science. According to the authors, plastic pollution is a global threat, and actions to drastically reduce emissions of plastic to the environment are 'the rational policy response.'

Scientists from the Nanoelectronics group at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria were looking for half an electron as a basis for a quantum computer. Together with researchers from University of Copenhagen and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), they investigated a promising experimental setup just to find that the signals they measured were not telling the truth. They now published their findings in the journal Science.

A new technique called sci-Space, combined with data from other technologies, could lead to four-dimensional atlases of gene expression across diverse cells during embryonic development of mammals. Such atlases would map how the gene transcripts in individual cells reflect the passage of time, cell lineages, cell migration, and location on the developing embryo. They would also help illuminate the spatial regulation of gene expression.

Researchers introduce "sci-Space," a new approach to spatial transcriptomics that can retain single-cell resolution and spatial heterogeneity at scales much larger than previous methods.

Researchers could not confirm that a feature that supposedly signals the presence of Majorana bound states - the unusual quasiparticles that may become the cornerstone of topological quantum computing - was in fact due to elusive Majorana particles, in full-shell semiconductor/superconductor nanowires.

Through the sequencing of more than 640,000 human exomes, researchers identify rare gene coding variants strongly associated with body mass index (BMI) - including the variant GPR75, which conferred protection from obesity in mouse models.

Although plastics have become an essential material, permeating almost all aspects of modern living, many of the inherent properties that make them useful in such a wide variety of applications also make them a serious environmental threat.

- A new study has uncovered a mechanism which installs epigenetic information in sperm.- Small RNAs are made in tapetal nurse cells and are drive all newly established DNA methylation in plant sperm.- Tapetal small RNAs deposit methyl marks on genes and jumping elements (transposons) in male germ cells.- This regulates genes important for reproductive success and stops the jumping elements (transposons) from moving around in the DNA, protecting the integrity of the genome passed between generations.

Researchers from Inserm, CNRS and Collège de France at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology have now uncovered their crucial role in closing the period of brain plasticity that follows birth, finding them to be key to the development of sensory and cognitive faculties. Over the longer term, these findings will make it possible to envisage new strategies for reintroducing brain plasticity in adults, thereby promoting rehabilitation following brain lesions or neurodevelopmental disorders.

A new report finds that 509,025 (9.17%) public high school students in 24 states experienced homelessness in spring 2019 -- three times the number recognized by the states' education agencies. This under-recognition creates gaps in funding and services needed by this vulnerable population.

A University of Houston College of Nursing researcher is reporting that use of a plastic drape during catheter insertion in very low birth-weight newborn babies can lower the rates of hypothermia, and she is recommending replacing cloth blanket and towels with them.

The Geological Society of America regularly publishes articles online ahead of print. GSA Bulletin topics include multiple articles about the dynamics of China and Tibet; the end-Permian terrestrial extinction paradigm in South Africa; prehistoric lava flows from the urban district of Catania (Etna volcano, Italy); the debated origins of granite, and "a tale of two Tweefonteins."

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have set out to harness the potential of self-assembling peptides (SAPs) in intracellular spaces. They present a de novo designed peptide, Y15, which displays a strong tendency to assemble in cellular environments. The addition of Y15-tagged bioactive proteins can functionalize these assemblies, enhancing their utility and relevance by leaps and bounds.

In the 'war' that the world has been fighting against COVID-19, scientists have been scanning their arsenals of previously used drugs in hopes of finding any that can be used to treat the disease. One of the contenders under scrutiny, an anti-malarial drug called mefloquine shows great promise, according to a new breakthrough study by a team of Japanese scientists, perhaps giving us a better fighting chance.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) experiments are slow and expensive. Engineers from the University of Illinois are using physics-informed neural networks to predict the outcomes of complex processes involved in AM. The team trained the model on supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center using experimental and simulated data. They recreated the dynamics of two benchmark experiments in metal AM. The method could lead to fast prediction tools for AM in the future.