Science & Technology

Understanding how climate change will affect the flooding of rivers may become easier with a new framework for assessing flood risk that’s been developed by an interdisciplinary team.

Demonstrating that a material thought to be always chemically inert, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), can be turned chemically active holds potential for a new class of catalysts with a wide range of applications, according to an international team of re…

About 7.5 million Americans suffer from psoriasis, an autoimmune disease that shows up as patches of red, inflamed skin and painful, scaly rashes. Although there are effective treatments for psoriasis, not everyone responds to these therapies — and fo…

Scientists are a step closer to breeding plants with genes from only one parent. New research led by plant biologists at UC Davis shows the underlying mechanism behind eliminating half the genome and could make for easier and more rapid breeding of cro…

Despite advances in patient screenings and breakthrough therapies that allow CF patients now to live into their mid- to late 30s or 40s, sometimes even longer, all patients are plagued by bacteria settling in their mucus, which causes inflammation in t…

Information about worker commutes from smartphones and fitness trackers can predict individual job performance, according to a new study.

Researchers are investigating the use of whole-cell vaccines to fight urinary tract infection (UTI), part of an effort to tackle the increasingly serious issue of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Exotic laser-produced high-energy-density (HED) plasmas akin to those found in stars and nuclear explosions could provide insight into events throughout the universe. Physicists have discovered a new way to measure and understand these plasmas, among t…

‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th to 8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on ancient texts and recent genetic discoveries. The same study suggests that bubonic plague may have r…

New research reveals that specialized cells within neural circuitry that triggers complex learning in songbirds bears a striking resemblance to a type of neural cell associated with the development of fine motor skills in the cortex of the human brain.

Nickel-cobalt metal dimer on nitrogen-doped carbon can catalyze electrolysis under both acidic and basic conditions.

New research shows how genetic variations linked to severe cases of COVID-19 affect our immune cells. The study is one of the first in-depth look at the connections between COVID-19 severity and gene expression in many types of immune cells. This work …

A new study has implicated several genes involved in a variety of bodily functions associated with the hypothalamus, a notoriously difficult-to-study region of the brain. The findings could help clinicians identify potential causes of dysfunction for m…

Identifying specific facial features that can be used to distinguish a child’s face from an adult’s may offer a useful tool for determining whether children are depicted in indecent images of children, according to new research.

Young children’s ability to laugh and make jokes has been mapped by age for the first time using data from a new study involving nearly 700 children from birth to 4 years of age, from around the world. The findings identify the earliest age humor emerg…

A team of researchers has demonstrated for the first time one way that a small molecule turns a single cell into something as large as a tree. For half a century, scientists have known that all plants depend on this molecule, auxin, to grow. Until now,…

In the human brain, the hormone insulin also acts on the most important neurotransmitter for the reward system, dopamine. Insulin lowers the dopamine level in a specific region of the brain (striatum) that regulates reward processes and cognitive funct…

Global change is eroding life on earth at an unprecedented rate and scale. Species extinctions have accelerated over the last decades, with the concomitant loss of the functions and services they provide to human societies.

After the natural warming that followed the last Ice Age, there were repeated periods when masses of icebergs broke off from Antarctica into the Southern Ocean. A new data-model study now shows that it took only a decade to initiate this tipping point …

Rising oceans get more attention in climate change discussions, but rivers are rising, too, according to new research by a University of South Carolina postdoctoral fellow. The research shows that rivers need more attention in policy management and dis…