Culture
CLEMSON, South Carolina - Unless it happens to be allergy season, most people don't give a lot of thought to pollen. But new research might change the way we look at a field of flowers.
A collaborative study by Clemson scientist Matthew Koski suggests that pollen color can evolve independently from flower traits, and that plant species maintain both light and dark pollen because each offers distinct survival advantages.
Scientists across the globe are rushing to find inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are using computer simulations to identify promising compounds before conducting actual experiments in the lab. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have used computer modeling to assess four peptides that mimic the virus-binding domain of the human protein that allows SARS-CoV-2 to enter cells.
Philadelphia, April 16, 2020 - A team of researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has characterized how the gut microbiome develops in the first hours of infancy, providing a critical baseline for how changes in this environment can impact health and disease later in life. The findings were published online by the journal Nature Microbiology.
Orange, Calif. - In research published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, scientists explore whether people trust robots as they do fellow humans. These interactions are important to understand because trust-based interactions with robots are increasingly common in the marketplace, workplace, on the road and in the home. Results show people extend trust similarly to humans and robots but people's emotional reactions in trust-based interactions vary depending on partner type.
Scientists at the University of South Florida have reached a new milestone in the development of two-dimensional supramolecules - the building blocks that make areas of nanotechnology and nanomaterial advancement possible.
After eluding researchers for more than 30 years, the VP3 protein of rotavirus has finally revealed its unique structure and function to a team led by scientists at Baylor College of Medicine. The researchers discovered that VP3 consists of four molecular modules that uniquely integrate five enzymatic activities that are necessary for capping messenger-RNA (mRNA), a process essential for the synthesis of viral proteins and for evading the host's immune response.
CHAPEL HILL, NC - April 16, 2020 - Most research about the genetics of schizophrenia has sought to understand the role that genes play in the development and heritability of schizophrenia. Many discoveries have been made, but there have been many missing pieces. Now, UNC School of Medicine scientists have conducted the largest-ever whole genome sequencing study of schizophrenia to provide a more complete picture of the role the human genome plays in this disease.
Leesburg, VA, April 16, 2020--To date, the radiology literature on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pneumonia has consisted of limited retrospective studies that do not substantiate the use of CT as a diagnostic test for COVID-19, according to an open-access Clinical Perspective article in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR).
Dr. Ayse Sena Mutlu, a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor's Huffington Center On Aging, had an intriguing question. Is it possible to change the body's fat storage without changing eating habits?
Working with the laboratory worm C. elegans, Mutlu and her colleagues conducted a broad screen to investigate whether neurons can actively send signals that, without affecting feeding habits, could alter lipid metabolism.
As human activity shapes Earth's climate, animals must increasingly adapt to new environmental conditions. The thermoneutral zone -- the ambient temperature range in which mammals can maintain their body temperature without expending extra energy -- is a key factor in estimating a species' ability to survive in a warming world.
Emotional, social and psychiatric problems in children and adolescents have been linked to higher levels of genetic vulnerability for adult depression.
University of Queensland scientists made the finding while analysing the genetic data of more than 42,000 children and adolescents from seven cohorts across Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and UK.
Professor Christel Middeldorp said researchers have also found a link with a higher genetic vulnerability for insomnia, neuroticism and body mass index.
New research published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology finds that ash dieback is far less severe in the isolated conditions ash is often found in, such as forests with low ash density or in open canopies like hedges, suggesting the long term impact of the disease on Europe's ash trees will be more limited than previously thought.
Observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way moves just as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Its orbit is shaped like a rosette and not like an ellipse as predicted by Newton's theory of gravity. This long-sought-after result was made possible by increasingly precise measurements over nearly 30 years, which have enabled scientists to unlock the mysteries of the behemoth lurking at the heart of our galaxy.
The expansion of farmlands to meet the growing food demand of the world's ever expanding population places a heavy burden on natural ecosystems. A new IIASA study however shows that about half the land currently needed to grow food crops could be spared if attainable crop yields were achieved globally and crops were grown where they are most productive.