Eurekalert

A group of researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has uncovered the mechanism of how DNA is being melted to start bacterial gene transcription and how one class of antibiotics inhibits this process - an important way in killing bacteria. This discovery provides useful insight on the development of new antibiotics for bacteria that is antimicrobial resistance.

Pediatric Academic Societies 2021 Virtual Meeting session will bring together policy and physician experts to predict major child health legislative and policy changes.

Researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry have discovered a key molecule that allows cancer stem cells to bypass the body's natural immune defenses, spurring the growth and spread of head and neck squamous cell cancers. Their study, conducted in mice, also demonstrates that inhibiting this molecule derails cancer progression and helps eliminate these stem cells.

When light hits certain molecules, it dislodges electrons that then move from one location to another, creating areas of positive and negative charge. This "charge transfer" is highly important in many areas of chemistry, photosynthesis and semiconductor devices and solar cells. A new study reveals how a molecule's structure changes as charge is redistributed, with some chemical bonds getting longer and some shorter, before finally relaxing back into its original state.

New research from Carnegie Mellon University's Bin He demonstrates that noninvasive neuromodulation via low-intensity ultrasound can have cell-type selectivity in manipulating neurons.

Paid video streaming services on your television, smart phone or other devices are increasingly replacing traditional video entertainment platforms of cable, satellite and broadcast TV. The growth of these services, known in the industry as over-the-top (OTT) media services, may be accompanied by a rise in pirated content, particularly where access to those services may be restricted, a group of researchers has found.

Led by Northwestern University, the international team used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to examine a massive star two-and-a-half years before it exploded into a supernova. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the star's hot, blue interior. But this yellow star, located 35 million lightyears from Earth in the Virgo galaxy cluster, was mysteriously lacking this crucial hydrogen layer at the time of its explosion.

More research is urgently needed into the impact that attending suicide events is having on paramedics and other first responders, a researcher at the University of Otago, New Zealand, says.

Coral can fight back against attacking juvenile crown of thorns starfish - using stinging cells to injure and even kill, showing that coral are not as passive as people may think.

New psychology research suggests adults are more compassionate and donate more to charity when they are in the presence of children.

Scientists at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard discover that "elite controllers" have myeloid dendritic cells that display characteristics of trained innate immune cells.

University of Maryland Professor Howard Milchberg and research group demonstrate the surprising result that photons in vacuum can have orbital angular momentum (OAM) vectors pointing sideways, at 90 degrees to the direction of propagation - a result literally orthogonal to the decades-long expectation that OAM vectors could only point forward or backward.

When millions of Americans began working from home, city traffic halted. Although the air became cleaner, researchers discovered that sound levels increased in nature conservation areas due to cars driving faster.

A universe evolves over billions upon billions of years, but researchers have developed a way to create a complex simulated universe in less than a day. The technique, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, brings together machine learning, high-performance computing and astrophysics and will help to usher in a new era of high-resolution cosmology simulations.

Many miles of streams and rivers are polluted by toxic metals in acidic runoff draining from abandoned mining sites, and major investments have been made to clean up acid mine drainage at some sites. A new study based on long-term monitoring data from four sites in the western United States shows that cleanup efforts can allow affected streams to recover to near natural conditions within 10 to 15 years after the start of abatement work.

Using a bit of machine learning magic, astrophysicists can now simulate vast, complex universes in a thousandth of the time it takes with conventional methods. The new method upscales low-resolution models to generate 'super-resolution' simulations. The process is akin to taking a blurry photograph and adding the missing details back in, making it sharp and clear, the researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The latest evidence for epigenetic mechanisms associated with transgenerational disease and public policy implications

A new USC study suggests that certain neighborhoods - particularly those characterized by poverty and unemployment - may pose an environmental risk to the developing brains of children, impacting neurocognitive performance and even brain size.

Researchers from MSU are developing a mobile app to act as a safeguard for popular but vulnerable "wallet" applications used to manage cryptocurrency.

ChromoUpdate is an MIT-developed "programmable matter" technique to quickly change objects' color. The method uses light to alter the saturation of photochromatic ink on an item's surface and could give product designers a boost in churning out prototypes.