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 Why baby leatherback marine turtles can't 'see the sea'
For most sea turtles, the journey to find the ocean from their nests is pretty straightforward. However, leatherback hatchlings more often crawl around in circles trying to find the ocean. Circling delays their entry into the ocean, wastes energy, and places them at greater danger from natural predators. Under different moon phases: bright light during full moon and only starlight under new moon, researchers have a better understanding of why this circling behavior happens and why it is most com
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New strategies to save rice, the world's most indispensable grain
Plants — they're just like us, with unique techniques for handling stress. To save one of the most important crops on Earth from extreme climate swings, scientists are mapping out plants' own stress-busting strategies. Biologists have learned what happens to the roots of rice plants when they're confronted with two types of stressful scenarios: too much water, or too little. These observations form the basis of new protective strategies.
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Synthesis of two-dimensional holey graphyne
A new type of carbon allotrope, holey graphyne, has semiconductor properties and is applicable in various fields such as photoelectronics, sensors, and water purification.
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Are people swapping their cats and goldfish for praying mantises?
Praying mantises have gained recent popularity as pets, sold at animal fairs and pet markets, but also collected in the wild by a fast-growing community of hobbyists and professional marketers. An overview of this market's dynamics reports on both problems and opportunities of the pet mantis market, like the absence of regulations, but also the potential of a stronger collaboration between hobbyists and scientists for biodiversity conservation.
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Everyone eats three extra cheeseburgers a day than they admit, study shows
Everyone eats the equivalent of three extra cheeseburgers a day than they admit -- regardless of their waistline, researchers have revealed. The study shows obese and thin people all fib about food to the same amount regardless of the number on the bathroom scale and this could be undermining national health advice.
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Using light and sound to reveal rapid brain activity in unprecedented detail
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a method to scan and image the blood flow and oxygen levels inside a mouse brain in real-time with enough resolution to view the activity of both individual vessels and the entire brain at once. This new imaging approach breaks long-standing speed and resolution barriers in brain imaging technologies and could uncover new insights into neurovascular diseases like stroke, dementia and even acute brain injury.
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Satellite monitoring of biodiversity moves within reach
Global biodiversity assessments require the collection of data on changes in plant biodiversity on an ongoing basis. Researchers have now shown that plant communities can be reliably monitored using imaging spectroscopy, which in the future will be possible via satellite. This paves the way for near real-time global biodiversity monitoring.
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Cooperation rewards water utilities
Inter-utility water agreements can help mitigate risks, in research that used supercomputer simulations of water supply in the North Carolina Research Triangle. Findings are generalizable to any place where water providers face financial and supply challenges in allocating regional water.
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How cranberries could improve memory and ward off dementia
Researchers have found that eating cranberries could improve memory, ward off dementia, and reduce 'bad' cholesterol. The research team studied the benefits of consuming the equivalent of a cup of cranberries a day among 50 to 80-year-olds. They hope that their findings could have implications for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia.
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New ALS 'drug' is more effective than existing ones
New preclinical research on the experimental drug, NU-9, to treat ALS shows it is more effective than existing FDA-approved drugs for the disease. More importantly, NU-9 has an enhanced effect when given in combination with those drugs.
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Accelerating the pace of machine learning
Machine learning happens a lot like erosion. Data is hurled at a mathematical model like grains of sand skittering across a rocky landscape. Some of those grains simply sail along with little or no impact. But some of them make their mark: testing, hardening, and ultimately reshaping the landscape according to inherent patterns and fluctuations that emerge over time. Effective? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. Researchers are now seeking to bring efficiency to distributed learning techniques emergin
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Component for brain-inspired computing
Researchers have developed a new material for an electronic component that can be used in a wider range of applications than its predecessors. Such components will help create electronic circuits that emulate the human brain and that are more efficient at performing machine-learning tasks.
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Surveillance pathway tells cells when they run low on lipids
Researchers have discovered a molecular pathway that allows cells to sense when their lipid supplies become depleted, prompting a flurry of activity that prevents starvation. The findings might someday lead to new ways to combat metabolic disorders and a variety of other health conditions.
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For wetland plants, sea-level rise stamps out benefits of higher CO2
Wetlands across the globe are in danger of drowning from rising seas. But for decades, scientists held out hope that another aspect of climate change -- rising carbon dioxide (CO2) -- could trigger extra plant growth, enabling coastal wetlands to grow fast enough to outpace sea-level rise. That helpful side effect is disappearing, scientists have discovered.
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Scientist uncovers clues to aging in mitochondria
Many age-related diseases share a common feature: the mitochondria of cells begin to malfunction. While the cause is not known, scientists have discovered a new mechanism of how mitochondria start to go wrong, which opens new doors for researchers to explore how to begin to fix the problem.
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Keeping buildings cooler with a wood-based foam
Summertime is almost here, a time when many people try to beat the heat. But running air conditioners constantly can be expensive and wasteful. Now, researchers have designed a lightweight foam made from wood-based cellulose nanocrystals that reflects sunlight, emits absorbed heat and is thermally insulating. They suggest that the material could reduce buildings' cooling energy needs by more than a third.
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Researchers magnify hidden biological structures with MAGNIFIERS
A research team has combined two emerging imaging technologies to better view a wide range of biomolecules, including proteins, lipids and DNA, at the nanoscale. Their technique brings together expansion microscopy and stimulated Raman scattering microscopy.
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Teaching physics to AI makes the student a master
Researchers have demonstrated that incorporating known physics into machine learning algorithms can help the inscrutable black boxes attain new levels of transparency and insight into material properties.
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Key to reducing defects in multimaterials
Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are high-performance materials with expected applications in aerospace, automobiles, defense, and medicine. These materials are usually employed in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure, therefore making it important for them to be as defect-free as possible. Now, researchers have found a way to minimize defects in FGMs by manipulating the gradient of the elemental composition.
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Scientists see signs of traumatic brain injury in headbutting muskox
Scientists saw for the first time hallmarks of concussions and other head trauma in the brains of deceased headbutting animals -- muskoxen and bighorn sheep. The results may contradict the commonly-held belief that ramming animals do not suffer brain injuries and support the notion that studies on animals with brains evolutionarily similar to those of humans may help researchers understand and reduce traumatic brain injuries.
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Study identifies cellular 'chaperone' for zinc
A team has described and characterized the first zinc metallochaperone: a protein that puts zinc into other 'client' proteins. The findings shed light on the public health issue of zinc deficiency and open an entirely new area of biology for exploration.
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How the brain changes during depression treatment
Researchers have shown what happens to the brain when a person receives a depression treatment known as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). rTMS is a depression treatment typically used when other approaches -- such as medications -- haven't been effective for a patient. By stimulating the dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex, rTMS activates several other regions of the brain involved in multiple functions, from managing emotional responses to memory and motor control.
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Native plant gardening for species conservation
Declining native species could be planted in urban green spaces. Researchers now describe how to use this great potential for species protection. They recommend practical conservation gardening methods in a bid to restructure the horticultural industry and reverse plant species declines.
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Researchers create photonic materials for powerful, efficient light-based computing
Researchers are developing new photonic materials that could one day help enable low power, ultra-fast, light-based computing. The unique materials, known as topological insulators, are like wires that have been turned inside out, where the current runs along the outside and the interior is insulated. In their latest work the researchers demonstrated a new approach to create the materials that uses a novel, chained, honeycomb lattice design.
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Health screening, genetic tests might identify people at risk of premature heart disease
Health screening and genetic tests might identify more than 1 million U.S. adults who have familial hypercholesterolemia, a common genetic disorder that causes elevated bad cholesterol levels, which may lead to premature cardiovascular disease. Identifying familial hypercholesterolemia early in adulthood creates an opportunity for early treatment aimed at preventing heart attack and death, according to a new study.
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Technique protects privacy when making online recommendations
Researchers have developed a novel privacy-preserving protocol that could enable an algorithm that provides recommendations to guarantee a user's personal information remains secure while ensuring recommendation results are accurate. Their technique is so efficient it can run on a smartphone over a very slow network.
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On the road to cleaner, greener, and faster driving
Researchers have developed a technique to control a fleet of autonomous vehicles as they approach and pass through a signalized intersection in a way that reduces fuel consumption and greenhouse emissions from idling and stop-and-go traffic, while improving travel speeds.
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Nuclear physics and extreme environments of cosmic explosions
Researchers have helped peer inside a nova -- a type of astrophysical nuclear explosion -- without leaving Earth. These stellar events help forge the universe's chemical elements, and astronomers have explored their nature with an intense isotope beam and a custom experimental device with record-setting sensitivity.
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Brain capital: A new investment approach for late-life well-being
Within many societies and cultures around the world, older adults are too often undervalued and underappreciated, according to a new article. This exacerbates many key challenges that older adults may face. It also undermines the many positive aspects of late life that are of value at both an individual and societal level. In the article, 'Investing in Late-Life Brain Capital,' a global team of experts propose a new approach to elevate health and well-being by optimizing late-life brain capital.
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Sparking sustainable new chemical catalysts
New research could lead to the creation of new, sustainable catalysts based on tungsten oxide and similar compounds. The project used computational simulations to understand how tungsten oxide interacts with hydrogen at the molecular level and the findings were verified through lab experimentation.
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Dopamine makes you feel happy, but we probably still have to rewrite the textbooks
Researchers have discovered a new piece in the puzzle of the brain's 'feel good' substance, dopamine. According to one of the researchers behind the new study, the discovery may facilitate the development of drugs for i.e. cocaine addiction and ADHD and is most likely to change the general notion of how dopamine is removed from the brain.
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Scallops swim into illuminated fishing pots
Scallops are drawn to illuminated fishing pots like moths to a flame. The study examined the effect of LED lights on crab and lobster pots used by fishing boats off the coast of Cornwall, UK, and the research team was stunned by the results. More than 500 scallops were caught -- 99.6% of them in pots with lights.
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Oat reference genome: Insights into a uniquely healthy cereal crop
Cultivated oat (Avena sativa L.) is an old crop thought to have been domesticated over 3,000 years ago, while growing as a weed in wheat and barley fields. Oat has a low carbon footprint, substantial health benefits and the potential to replace animal-based food products. However, lack of genome resources has prevented the application modern methods of plant breeding. An international research team now presents a high-quality reference genome of A. sativa and its most closely related wild relati
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Study gives animal testing alternatives a confidence boost
As part of a government effort to reduce animal testing, researchers have worked to produce a new protocol for screening skin allergens. The method is potentially cheaper and faster than animal testing, while maintaining a similar performance.
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Energy-efficient AI hardware technology via a brain-inspired stashing system?
Researchers have proposed a novel system inspired by the neuromodulation of the brain, referred to as a 'stashing system,' that requires less energy consumption. Computer scientists have now developed a technology that can efficiently handle mathematical operations for artificial intelligence by imitating the continuous changes in the topology of the neural network according to the situation.
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Statins may provide protection against depression
Statins have been hailed as a wonder drug; the cholesterol-lowering drugs have been prescribed to tens of millions of people since their approval in the late 1980s to prevent heart attack and stroke. But the drugs may yet have additional benefits, some research has hinted, including on mental health. Now, a new study examines the influence of statins on emotional bias, a marker for risk of depression.
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