In 2020, as scientists around the world were racing to understand COVID-19, Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science started developing a DNA chip that could not only quickly show how our immune system responds to this coronavirus but open new possibilities for swiftly responding to future viral outbreaks.
In a new study published in Nature, scientists have successfully developed genetically modified mosquitoes in Tanzania that block the transmission of malaria. The team includes researchers from the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) and the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) in Tanzania, in partnership with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and the Imperial College London as part of the Transmission Zero program.
Wood warblers, also called New World warblers, are some of the most colorful birds in North America, with more than a hundred species in the family ranging in color from yellow, orange and red to blue, green and pink. A new study led by researchers at Penn State has uncovered several instances of the birds passing color-related genes to other species of wood warblers, including those that are not closely related.
Harvard researchers have discovered that cycads—one of the oldest living lineages of seed plants—heat up their reproductive organs to attract beetle pollinators and the insects possess infrared sensors to detect these signals.
Proximity to green space provides a wide range of physical, mental, social and environmental benefits. By that measure, the Twin Cities—where 99% of all residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park—should be a model of equitable access to parks and the benefits they confer.
There is a dire need for selective catalysts that allow us to consistently achieve a desired outcome in a chemical reaction. It is this consistency that allows for more efficient, energy-saving ways of producing fuel. A team of researchers from Tohoku University, the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, and Dalhousie University have revealed that a Cu14 nanocluster (NC) with just a single exposed Cu site exhibits remarkably high ammonia (NH3) selectivity (~80%) and production rate for the electrochemical nitrate ion reduction reaction.
Carbon capture is becoming essential for industries that still depend on fossil fuels, including the cement and steel industries. Natural-gas power plants, coal plants, and cement factories all release large amounts of CO₂, and reducing those emissions is difficult without dedicated capture systems. Today, most plants rely on solvent-based systems that absorb CO₂, but these setups use a lot of heat, require major infrastructure, and can be costly to run.
From small ions to large molecules, cellular gates control what can pass in and out of cells. But how one such gate, called pannexin-1 (PANX1), can handle vastly different cargo sizes has remained a long-standing mystery.
Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are some of the most abundant microorganisms in the ocean and play a key role in nitrogen cycling. Yet, despite their ubiquity, scientists have long puzzled over how these microbes can flourish in the nutrient-poor waters of the open ocean, where their main nitrogen and energy source, ammonium, is often vanishingly scarce.
Most smaller galaxies may not have supermassive black holes in their centers, according to a recent study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This contrasts with the common idea that nearly every galaxy has one of these giant black holes within their cores, as NASA leads the world in exploring the secrets of how the universe works.
