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Scientists have long sought to invent materials that can respond to the external world in predictable, self-regulating ways. Now, new research conducted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences brings us one step closer to that goal. For their inspiration, the scientists looked to nature.

A team of scientists has found that women's football was common across Japan between the Meiji restoration and the start of the Second World War. In the process, they also uncovered the oldest known photograph of women playing football in Japan, from 1916.

New research from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study finds that children who were breastfed scored higher on neurocognitive tests. Researchers in the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) analyzed thousands of cognitive tests taken by nine and ten-year-olds whose mothers reported they were breastfed, and compared those results to scores of children who were not.

In collaboration with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, a University of Maryland (UMD) researcher co-published a large-scale study examining the genetic diversity of mangroves over more than 1,800 miles of coastline in the Western Indian Ocean, including Eastern Africa and several islands. This work showcases how oceanic currents create both connectivity and barriers between mangrove populations, with important implications for how to protect these ecosystems.

A University of Minnesota team has developed a first-of-its-kind method that cryopreserves fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) embryos so they can be successfully recovered and developed into adult insects.

People up to age 40 living in economically depressed municipalities in the Greater Santiago, Chile, metropolitan area were three times more likely to die as a result of the infection than their counterparts in wealthier areas, researchers report in the journal Science.

Drugs used to treat hepatitis C render remdesivir 10 times better at inhibiting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in cell cultures, according to a new study in Cell Reports.

A new paper on college science classes taught remotely points to teaching methods that enhance student communication and collaboration, offering a framework for enriching online instruction as the coronavirus pandemic continues to limit in-person courses.

In the medium and long-term periods, climate shocks favoured cooperation among diverse groups of people. Indeed, by enlarging access to political and property rights, elites who had decision-making powers could work with other groups who held the skills and tools to overcome those crises

"Job connectivity" (the possibility of finding a similar job) is a key factor for the recovery of local economies in the face of crises, according to a study published recently in Nature Communications by researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Max Planck Society and the University of Pittsburgh.

A research group led by Professor Xiang David LI from the Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, has developed a novel chemical tool for elucidating protein interaction networks in cells. This tool not only facilitates the identification of a protein's interacting partners in the complex cellular context, but also simultaneously allows the 'visualisation' of these protein-protein interactions. The findings were recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Molecular Cell.

An international collaboration of astronomers has detected a new chemical signature in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun). The hydroxyl radical (OH) was found on the dayside of the exoplanet WASP-33b -- a so-called 'ultra-hot Jupiter', a gas-giant planet orbiting its host star much closer than Mercury orbits the Sun and therefore reaching atmospheric temperatures of more than 2,500° C.

A new treatment is among the first known to reduce the severity of acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by the flu in animals, according to a new study.

Researchers from NUS Medicine's Immunology Translational Research Programme and NUS Center for Cancer Research (N2CR) have identified how a molecule called DUSP16 plays an important role in a cancer patient's response to chemotherapeutic drugs. The study also found that chemotherapy drugs are a factor in the increased expression of DUSP16. This means that once chemotherapy begins, the expression of DUSP16 will increase in patients.

lncRNAs are potential regulators of anti-viral response during severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. Researchers constructed a gene co-expression network that measures the relationship of gene expression patterns across a group of samples. They identified four differentially expressed lncRNAs strongly correlated to the protein-coding genes in a novel network enriched for different immune-related processes associated with dysregulated cytokine production. The four were identified as "hubs", signifying their association with cytokine over-production due to fierce immune response.

Exercise appears to reduce the long-term risk of bronchiectasis, a potentially serious disease of the airways, according to a new study.

Researchers from SOAS University of London and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have published a new paper in the renowned international journal for historical linguistics, Diachronica. Their paper describes an experiment that illustrates how the classical method for the reconstruction of unattested languages can also be used to predict hitherto undocumented words in poorly described and endangered languages of India.

A recent study by the University of Eastern Finland shows that loneliness among middle-aged men is associated with an increased risk of cancer.

Tree plantations are supposed to help compensate the loss of pristine forest habitats. However, their contribution to biodiversity conservation is limited: For example, plantations host a significantly lower number of beetle species as well as individuals than old-growth forests. This was found by a global analysis published in Forest Ecology and Management and led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU).

Researchers at the University Zurich have mapped the first complete atlas of single cells that make up the human teeth. Their research shows that the composition of human dental pulp and periodontium vary greatly. Their findings open up new avenues for cell-based dental therapeutic approaches.