For The Better

Researchers find the behavior of complex ecosystems can be predicted based on just two pieces of information: the number of species in the community and how strongly they interact with each other.

Three babies have been born after receiving the world’s first spina bifida treatment combining surgery with stem cells.

Scientists have long looked to the brain as an inspiration for designing computing systems. Some researchers have recently gone even further by making computer hardware with a brainlike structure. These ‘neuromorphic chips’ have already shown great pro…

A new scientific review article captures the unique and dynamic characteristics of coastal lagoon ecosystems in the Arctic Beringia Region, and discusses how climate change effects and human development could alter these habitats.

The key to a new cardiomyocyte-making technique is a gene activity-controlling protein called Ascl1, which is known to be a crucial protein involved in turning fibroblasts into neurons. Researchers had thought Ascl1 was neuron-specific.

Growing nutritious, protein-dense microalgae in onshore, seawater-fed aquaculture systems — particularly along the coasts of the Global South — could help increase food production by more than 50% and feed a projected 10 billion people by 2050.

Researchers have developed a screening method to discover new drug targets for cancer treatment in the so-called ‘Dark Matter’ of the genome. They applied their method to non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the greatest cancer killer for which effectiv…

In a new review article, biology researchers make the case for reevaluating maligned non-native species to consider benefits as well as costs.

An opinion piece urgently calls for more research into the specific pathways by which civilization could potentially collapse due to climate change. Scientists have warned that climate change threatens the habitability of large regions of the Earth and…

The drug tofacitinib was well tolerated among patients with early scleroderma, primarily affecting the protein interferon both in fibroblasts and keratinocytes. Researchers say the drug is safe and can possibly be repurposed for systemic sclerosis trea…

Engineers utilize signaling chemicals that replicate ‘cell communication’ to form capsule clusters.

Synthetic fuels produced from renewable sources, so-called refuels, are deemed potential game changers in fighting climate change. Refuels promise to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared to conventional fuels and they allow for the continued use …

66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collisio…

A new study sheds new light on what is happening in pinyon-juniper woodlands across the West. The research is unique, in that it looks at both tree mortality, as well as recruitment, or new seedlings and saplings, to calculate a ‘net effect.’ And, the …

Researchers have developed an imaging agent for demyelination and evaluated its use in healthy human volunteers.

Scientists have made a significant genetic discovery that sheds light on the use of the drug caspofungin to treat a deadly fungal infection, Aspergillus fumigatus, which kills some 100,000 severely immunocompromised people each year.

In a rare disease called mucolipidosis type II, people’s hearts and abdomens swell, and their bones grow malformed.

This year, about 200,000 people will be diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer, the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease. Researchers are working to improve the odds for these patients in two recently published studies that com…

Using chemical design and synthesis, scientists brought together the Nobel-prize winning technology with therapeutic technology to overcome a critical limitation of CRISPR. Specifically, the groundbreaking work provides a system to deliver the cargo re…