Culture

Five years ago, researchers from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) led by the CSIC Research Professor Paloma Mas made the breakthrough discovery that the circadian clocks in the growing tip of the plant shoot function in a similar way to the clocks in the mammalian brain, which in both cases are able to synchronize the daily rhythms of the cells in distal organs. From that seminal finding, plant researchers have been eager to discover the messenger molecule that could travel from the shoot to the root to orchestrate the rhythms.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - A nova, or stella nova, the Latin word for "new star," is an explosion on the surface of a star that can produce enough energy to increase the star's brightness by millions of times. Sometimes a nova, which occur in stars called white dwarfs, is so bright it appears as a new star to the naked eye.

Porphyromonas gingivalis is a major bacterial pathogen which leads to periodontitis also known as gum disease. In Japan, 80% of adults aged 35 and over suffer from this disease. What's more, P. gingivalis has also been linked to rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, pancreatic cancer, and even Alzheimer's disease.

In the largest study to date of proteins related to Alzheimer's disease, a team of researchers has identified disease-specific proteins and biological processes that could be developed into both new treatment targets and fluid biomarkers.

After four Louisville, Kentucky, coal-fired power plants either retired coal as their energy source or installed stricter emissions controls, local residents' asthma symptoms and asthma-related hospitalizations and emergency department (ED) visits dropped dramatically, according to research published in Nature Energy this week by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Propeller Health, University of California Berkeley, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, University of Texas Austin, Colorado State University, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Welln

People with a gene variant that puts them at high risk for Alzheimer's disease are protected from its debilitating effects if they also carry a variant of a completely different gene, Stanford University School of Medicine investigators report in a large new study.

What is the origin of the famous interstellar object 'Oumuamua? How was it formed and where did it come from? An article published on April 13 in Nature Astronomy by ZHANG Yun from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Douglas N. C. Lin from University of California, Santa Cruz, offers a first comprehensive answer to this mystery, which involves tidal forces like those felt by Earth's oceans and explains all of the unusual characteristics of this interstellar object.

A group of animal biologists and chemists at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM), Nagoya University, has used a chemical genomics approach to explore the underlying mechanism of winter depression-like behavior and identified a drug that rescues winter depression-like behavior in medaka fish.

Irvine, Calif., April 13, 2020 - Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have architecturally designed plate-nanolattices - nanometer-sized carbon structures - that are stronger than diamonds as a ratio of strength to density.

In a recent study in Nature Communications, the scientists report success in conceptualizing and fabricating the material, which consists of closely connected, closed-cell plates instead of the cylindrical trusses common in such structures over the past few decades.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Foxglove plants, found in many gardens, are known for the showers of bell-shaped flowers they produce.

But plants belonging to this genus, Digitalis, also harbor a less visible asset: Chemicals called cardiac glycosides, which have been recorded to treat heart failure since the 1780s, says University at Buffalo biologist Zhen Wang.

Wang's research investigates how foxgloves create these medicinal compounds, with an eye toward improving the process. Farming foxgloves is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and Wang hopes to change that.

Unprecedented observations of a nova outburst in 2018 by a trio of satellites, including two NASA missions, have captured the first direct evidence that most of the explosion's visible light arose from shock waves -- abrupt changes of pressure and temperature formed in the explosion debris.

Loss of smell and taste has been anecdotally linked to COVID-19 infections. In a study published April 12, 2020 in the journal International Forum of Allergy & Rhinology, researchers at UC San Diego Health report the first empirical findings that strongly associate sensory loss with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

LOS ANGELES (April 11, 2020) -- In a small group of patients hospitalized with severe complications of COVID-19 and treated with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 68% of patients treated, according to an analysis co-authored by Jonathan Grein, MD, director of Hospital Epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai.

DALLAS, April 13, 2020 -- Type 2 diabetes (T2D) affects treatment options for patients who have both coronary artery disease (CAD) and T2D, according to a new American Heart Association Scientific Statement, published today in the Association's flagship journal Circulation. The scientific statement provides an overview of the latest advances for treating people who have both CAD and T2D and details the complexities of care for these conditions together.

Mathematical modeling can take what information is reported about the coronavirus, including the clearly underreported numbers of cases, factor in knowns like the density and age distribution of the population in an area, and compute a more realistic picture of the virus' infection rate, numbers that will enable better prevention and preparation, modelers say.