For The Better

Oral health is a public health issue that significantly affects people’s overall health. A ground-breaking study of root canal longevity using electronic dental record data from 46,000 root canal patients treated in community dental practices found geo…

Australia has suffered a significant drop in teenage maths proficiency in the past 20 years — sliding from 11th in the OECD rankings to 29th place out of 38 countries, prompting widespread debate over potential curriculum changes. One researcher says …

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a malignant disease associated with a particularly high mortality rate. According to a new multicenter study, SCLC can be divided into several subgroups in terms of clinical behavior. These subtypes respond differently …

Human beings, like most organisms, are constantly exposed to alternating colder or warmer temperatures. These environmental variations cause striking metabolic effects and require constant adaptations. While some of these adaptations confer certain ben…

The capabilities of complex microbial communities are used for numerous biotechnological processes. This requires special compositions of the microbial communities. However, these are often unstable and susceptible to disruption. Researchers have now d…

Scientists have demonstrated that a new geochemical archive — 182Tungsten in banded iron formations — can be used to simultaneously trace both the evolution of the Earth’s mantle and continents throughout Earth’s history. This offers new opportunitie…

Compared to the complex use of human language, the way animals communicate with each other appears quite simple. How our language evolved from such a simple system, remains unclear. A group of researchers has now recorded thousands of vocalizations fro…

Magnetic nanostructures are promising tools for medical applications. Incorporated into biological structures, they can be steered via external magnetic fields inside the body to release drugs or to destroy cancer cells. However, until now, only averag…

Researchers have developed an advanced NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) method to monitor fast and complicated biomolecular events such as protein folding.

Agriculture, loss of habitat or wastewater effluents — human stressors negatively impact biodiversity in streams and rivers. Very little is known yet about the extent to which their capacity for self-purification and other essential ecosystem services…

Efficient and environmentally friendly solar cells are required for a transition to a fossil-free energy supply. Researchers at have now mapped how energy flows in organic solar cells, something that previously had been unknown.

Several in-hospital treatments and post-discharge therapies for people who have had an intracerebral hemorrhage, or a bleeding stroke, are not as effective as health care professionals once thought. Compression socks or stockings, anti-seizure medicine…

Much of the ‘excess heat’ stored in the subtropical North Atlantic is in the deep ocean (below 700m), new research suggests.

A new study presents intriguing evidence that large bone injuries might trigger a repair strategy in adults that recapitulates elements of skeletal formation in utero. Key to this repair strategy is a gene called Sonic hedgehog. In this study, research…

New research modeling smoke from two recent megafires sets the stage for better forecasting of how emissions from these global-scale events will behave and impact temperatures. As huge wildfires become more common under climate change, increased attent…

Engineers are using a cell’s surroundings to help biologists make more sense of gene expression information. Their new system could open the door to identifying rare cell types and choosing cancer treatment options with new precision.

Seasonal imbalance between the solar energy absorbed and released by the planet Mars could be a cause of the Red Planet’s dust storms, according to new research. Understanding how the system works on Mars could help scientists predict how climate chang…

Researchers have identified characteristics of people with long COVID and those likely to have it. Scientists used machine learning techniques to analyze an unprecedented collection of electronic health records (EHRs) available for COVID-19 research to…

The vaccinia virus uses its own machinery and not that of the cell it infects to repair ultraviolet radiation-caused damage to its DNA, according to new research. The virus repurposes an enzyme it uses for copying its DNA to repair the damage. Blocking…

Ultra-powerful 7T MRI scanners could be used to help identify those patients with Parkinson’s disease and similar conditions most likely to benefit from new treatments for previously-untreatable symptoms, say scientists.