News

Carbon mitigation may be about to get a killer app courtesy of nanoparticles

In findings published this July in Nature Communications, researchers from McGill University say they may have found a climate-economic win-win via a helpful photocatalyst. This technique could transform two greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide and methane, into plastics and fuel suitable for vehicles. Lead author Professor Chao-Jun Li said, “By tapping into the abundant energy of the sun, we can essentially recycle two greenhouse gases into useful products. The process works at room temperature and doesn’t Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

LSD1 inhibitor ameliorates autism-associated traits in new mouse model. We need to talk.

In findings published March 26 in Molecular Psychiatry, a team of researchers from Tokyo University, Juntendo University, and RIKEN report that they have successfully created a new mouse model of autism spectrum disorder in what they have named Kmt2c+/fs mice. Then things get weird. They engineered the animals to have only one functioning copy of the lysine methyltransferase 2c (KMT2C) gene, which encodes one of the catalytic units of histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4), instead Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Scientists claim to have rediscovered live silphium in Turkey

The first human-induced extinction documented in the historical record wasn’t the passenger pigeon. It was a little plant with yellow flowers. However, this little herb may have pulled a coelacanth: scientists in Greece claim that it’s been still around after all, growing on a hillside in Turkey. Most people who recognize the name “silphium” know it was a popular contraceptive in Greek and Roman times (it had one name-check in an episode of Rome), which Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Frazzled dads are not so bad: Antianxiety meds do not reduce the success of IVF, says study

A team of researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported this week that men who take antianxiety medication may not experience poorer IVF outcomes than those who tough it out. “Our findings indicate that despite past concerns over antidepressant medication’s impact on fertility, treatment should not be withheld from men experiencing anxiety or depression,” said study co-author, Dr. Zachary Walker. In vitro fertilization is a famously stressful experience. Frustrated dreams, family expectations, and no small Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Basalt powder in cropland may be a financially viable answer to climate change

This Tuesday, scientists from the American Geophysical Union announced in that adding pulverized volcanic rock to farmed fields could increase carbon sequestration to within the IPCC’s recommended levels by 2080 while also improving soil quality. The process is called enhanced rock weathering. Precipitation absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, rendering the raindrops mildly acidic. The acidified interacts with the basalt in the soil to form carbonates, which eventually reach the ocean. Once there, the carbonates Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Fighting bacteria favor speed over service

In findings published today in Current Biology, scientists from the University of California, Riverside report that plants’ relationships with their nitrogen-fixing rhizobacteria are far more complex than previously realized, or rather, the relationships among those bacteria complicate them. The research team infected initially bacteria-free Acmispon strigosus with eight different strains of nitrogen-fixing microbes from the genus Bradyrhizobium and then exposed them to other bacteria to determine which would establish themselves in the plant roots. All Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Hornet genomes add two new pieces to invasive puzzle

An international team of scientists led by University College London announced Friday that they had successfully sequenced the genomes of two species of hornet, the European hornet (Vespa crabro) and yellow-legged or Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) as part of a larger project on invasive wasps and their ability to adapt to new habitats. They compared these genomes to that of the giant northern hornet (Vespa mandarinia), sequenced in 2020, and found that the hornet genes Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Medieval Andean empire may have had signature pigment

If you happened to get your hands on a copy for the recipe to Coca-Cola, you could brew up as much of the fizzy stuff as you wanted and there wouldn’t be anything the Coca-Cola Company could do. This is because United States copyright laws don’t cover recipes or lists of ingredients. You could even sell your soda and compete with Coke directly. What you couldn’t do, at least not without a team of lawyers Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Biomimicking “soft robots” hang upside down, gecko-style

If you’re anything like me, you can’t. Stand. Bugs. Maybe not all bugs. A delicate spider is a fellow fiber artist (and it eats other bugs). A beetle with its elegant elytra is a complement to any garden (and it eats other bugs). But perhaps there’s that one kind of bug that makes you feel like your skin is covered in …bugs. It seems I have to get over it, because the inchworms of my Read more…

By D Flynn, ago

Clarity and creativity: When to use two different words that mean the same thing

Academic writing in the hard sciences values clarity over poetry, even in contexts in which most other forms of English writing do not. This means that not all common writing advice applies. A middle school teacher once told a young me not to use the same verb in three sentences in the same essay, even though all three subjects were doing the same thing. The teacher said it was boring, and—typical for the era—implied that Read more…

By D Flynn, ago