Top Sciences Discovery

Researchers have come up with a new way to identify more infectious variants of viruses or bacteria that start spreading in humans -- including those causing flu, COVID, whooping cough and tuberculosis.

Scientists have identified the molecular changes that occur in the brains of aging mice and located a hot spot where much of that damage is centralized. The cells in the area are also connected with metabolism, suggesting a connection between diet and brain health.

Researchers report that they have invented new nanoscale sensors of force. They are luminescent nanocrystals that can change intensity and/or color when you push or pull on them. These 'all-optical' nanosensors are probed with light only and therefore allow for fully remote read-outs -- no wires or connections are needed.

Waves of human migration across Europe during the first millennium AD have been revealed using a more precise method of analysing ancestry with ancient DNA, in research led by the Francis Crick Institute.

Astronomers pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brief and brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team's novel technique might also reveal the sources of other FRBs.

In a breakthrough set to revolutionize the semiconductor industry, engineers have developed the world's first-of-its-kind deep-ultraviolet (UVC) microLED display array for lithography machines. This enhanced efficiency UVC microLED has showcased the viability of a lowered cost maskless photolithography through the provision of adequate light output power density, enabling exposure of photoresist films in a shorter time.

The hormone estrogen regulates binge drinking in females, causing them to 'pregame' -- consume large quantities of alcohol in the first 30 minutes after it's offered, according to a preclinical study. The study establishes -- for what is thought to be the first time -- that circulating estrogen increases binge alcohol consumption in females and contributes to known sex differences in this behavior.

A study of nearly 10,000 adolescents has identified distinct differences in the brain structures of those who used substances before age 15 compared to those who did not. Many of these structural brain differences appeared to exist in childhood before any substance use, suggesting they may play a role in the risk of substance use initiation later in life, in tandem with genetic, environmental, and other neurological factors.

The creation of more fox-free safe havens and greater collaboration between government and landowners is needed to ensure the survival of a species of wallaby, an expert argues. The Parma wallaby, also known as the white-throated wallaby, is listed as a vulnerable species in Australia, while the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies it as Near Threatened. The marsupial is found along the Great Dividing Range in northern New South Wales.

Scientists have developed an innovative therapeutic platform by mimicking the intricate structures of viruses using artificial intelligence (AI).

Even highly realistic androids can cause unease when their facial expressions lack emotional consistency. Traditionally, a 'patchwork method' has been used for facial movements, but it comes with practical limitations. A team developed a new technology using 'waveform movements' to create real-time, complex expressions without unnatural transitions. This system reflects internal states, enhancing emotional communication between robots and humans, potentially making androids feel more humanlike.

Bright, twisted light can be produced with technology similar to an Edison light bulb, researchers have shown. The finding adds nuance to fundamental physics while offering a new avenue for robotic vision systems and other applications for light that traces out a helix in space.

A study introduces a novel thermodynamic concept called the 'centotectic' and investigates the stability of liquids in extreme conditions -- critical information for determining the habitability of icy moons like Europa.

Physician-scientists found that a subset of artificial heart patients can regenerate heart muscle, which may open the door to new ways to treat and perhaps someday cure heart failure.

At a Neolithic settlement on the Danish island Funen dating back 5,500 years, archaeologists have discovered both grinding stones and grains from early cereals. However, new research reveals that the inhabitants did not use the stones to grind the cereal grains. Instead of making bread, they likely prepared porridge or gruel from the grains.

One of the biggest mysteries in science -- dark energy -- doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the Universe is expanding. For the past 100 years, physicists have generally assumed that the cosmos is growing equally in all directions. They employed the concept of dark energy as a placeholder to explain unknown physics they couldn't understand, but the contentious theory has always had its problems. Now a team of physicists and astronomers are challenging the status quo, using improved analysis of supernovae light curves to show that the Universe is expanding in a more varied, 'lumpier' way.

Scientists have discovered a way to remove toxic compounds from potatoes and tomatoes, making them safer to eat and easier to store. The breakthrough could cut food waste and enhance crop farming in extreme environments, like outer space.

Quantum teleportation could provide near-instant communication over long distances. But, inside Internet cables, photons needed for teleportation are lost within the millions of light particles required for classical communications. A new study quantified light scattering to find exact areas to place photons to keep them safe from other particles. The approach successfully worked in experiments carrying regular Internet traffic.

A brotherly research duo has discovered that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produces top quarks -- the heaviest known fundamental particles -- it regularly creates a property known as magic.

Antibodies can improve the rehabilitation of people with acute spinal cord injury. Researchers have investigated this with promising results. For the first time, it was possible to identify patient groups that displayed a clinically relevant treatment effect.

Opening new doors for the development of nanotechnologies in medicine and other fields, scientists recreate and compare two natural mechanisms to better program the timescale of molecular communication and functionality.

New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in the early solar system and how TNOs evolve when they travel inward into the region of the giant planets between Jupiter and Saturn, becoming centaurs. TNOs are small bodies, or 'planetesimals,' orbiting the sun beyond Pluto. They never accreted into planets, and serve as pristine time capsules, preserving crucial evidence of the molecular processes and planetary migrations that shaped the solar system billions of years ago. These solar system objects are like icy asteroids and have orbits comparable to or larger than Neptune's orbit. Prior to the new UCF-led study, TNOs were known to be a diverse population based on their orbital properties and surface colors, but the molecular composition of these objects remained poorly understood. For decades, this lack of detailed knowledge hindered interpretation of their color and dynamical diversity. Now, the new results unlock the long-standing question of the interpretation of color diversity by providing compositional information.

A new study finds nearly 50 hidden relatives of Pterodactylus, the first pterosaur. Joined by its newly discovered relatives, Pterodactylus's 'family' now encompasses tiny flaplings, a host of teenagers, some mums and dads and even a few large old seniors. Fluorescing bones stimulated by powerful LED UV torches, revealed invisible details of the head, hands and feet of Pterodactylus.

Scientists have unveiled groundbreaking research on the origins of lunar water, offering insights that could reshape our understanding of the Earth-Moon system and the broader solar system. The pioneering study explores the isotopic signatures of lunar water, revealing a mix of indigenous and cometary sources.

Researchers developed a laser-based artificial neuron that fully emulates the functions, dynamics and information processing of a biological graded neuron, which could lead to new breakthroughs in advanced computing. With a processing speed a billion times faster than nature, chip-based laser neuron could help advance AI tasks such as pattern recognition and sequence prediction.

A new study about Earth's northernmost seafloor hydrothermal system shows even more variety in vent styles than previously thought. The study has important implications for understanding the origin of these vents and assessing their global-scale impact on the Earth-Ocean system. The study also has implications for understanding and searching for habitable environments, and potentially even life on other ocean worlds in our outer solar system, according to the study's authors. The surprising results found from detailed deep-ocean studies at Polaris call into question how much we really know about the nature of seafloor venting along all ultra-slow spreading ridges on Earth which remain largely unexplored but make up 25% of the global ridge crest.

A new study explores how variations in Mars' crustal thickness during its ancient history may have influenced the planet's magmatic evolution and hydrological systems. The research suggests that the thick crust of Mars' southern highlands formed billions of years ago generated granitic magmas and sustained vast underground aquifers, challenging long-held assumptions about the red planet's geological and hydrological past.

Stitching together four molecules found in the standard flu vaccine ensures an immune response to all of them, scientists have shown.

Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago. The chart shows the relative ups and downs in species counts, telling scientists about the origin, diversification, and extinction of ancient life. With this new study, the chart of life now includes life forms from the Proterozoic Eon, 2,500 million to 539 million years ago. Proterozoic life was generally smaller and squishier -- like sea sponges that didn't develop mineral skeletons -- and left fewer traces to fossilize in the first place.

New research shows that three sites spread along an approximately 620-mile portion of today's Denali Fault were once a smaller united geologic feature indicative of the final joining of two land masses. That feature was then torn apart by millions of years of tectonic activity.

While volcanism caused a temporary cold period, the effects had already worn off thousands of years before the meteorite, the ultimate cause of the dinosaur extinction event, impacted.

Light and moderate consumption of wine is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular complications, according to a multicenter study. The study is based on the analysis of a biomarker of wine intake -- specifically, tartaric acid, present in grapes. It was carried out in 1,232 participants in the PREDIMED project, a major scientific epidemiological study in nutrition on the effects of the Mediterranean diet on cardiovascular health.

A fragment of 'lost' music found in the pages of Scotland's first full-length printed book is providing clues to what music sounded like five centuries ago. Scholars have been investigating the origins of the musical score -- which contains only 55 notes -- to cast new light on music from pre-Reformation Scotland in the early sixteenth-century. Researchers say the tantalizing discovery is a rare example of music from Scottish religious institutions 500 years ago, and is the only piece which survives from the northeast of Scotland from this period.

Conventional wisdom assumes the ratio of gases in a planet's atmosphere should match the ratio of gases in the natal disk that birthed it. For the first time, researchers compared gases in a still-forming planet's atmosphere to its natal disk. The team found the planet surprisingly was less carbon-rich than the disk.

California ground squirrels hunt, kill and eat voles, reveals a new study documenting evidence of widespread carnivorous behavior among squirrels.

Galaxy clusters -- the big cities of the universe -- are home to many giant elliptical galaxies that have completed their growth and are not forming stars. However, it is still unclear what has shut down star formation. In a new study, researchers utilized the James Webb Space Telescope to observe an ancestor of galaxy clusters, revealing the role of supermassive black holes in slowing star formation and allowing them to evolve into giant elliptical galaxies.

Tires and degrading garbage shed tiny pieces of plastic into the air, creating a form of air pollution that researchers suspect may be causing respiratory and other illnesses.

Scientists recently led a team that found, for the first time, that Chiron has surface chemistry unlike other centaurs. Its surface it has both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ice along with carbon dioxide and methane gases in its coma, the cloud-like envelope of dust and gas surrounding it.

A study of more than 26,000 white dwarf stars has confirmed a long-predicted but elusive effect in these ultra-dense, dying stars: Hotter white dwarfs are slightly puffier than cooler ones, even when they have the same mass.

Scientists have spotted a massive black hole in the early universe that is 'napping' after stuffing itself with too much food. Like a bear gorging itself on salmon before hibernating for the winter, or a much-needed nap after Christmas dinner, this black hole has overeaten to the point that it is lying dormant in its host galaxy.

Scientists have developed swarms of tiny magnetic robots that work together like ants to achieve Herculean feats, including traversing and picking up objects many times their size. The findings suggest that these microrobot swarms -- operating under a rotating magnetic field -- could be used to take on difficult tasks in challenging environments that individual robots would struggle to handle, such as offering a minimally invasive treatment for clogged arteries and precisely guiding organisms.

A research team has taken a crucial step towards resolving a long-standing controversy -- was syphilis introduced to Europe from the Americas at the end of the 15th century, or had it been there all along? Ancient pathogen genomes from skeletons that pre-date 1492 confirm its introduction from the Americas, but its world-wide spread remains a grim legacy of the colonial period.

Scientists propose a 'remelting' of the Moon's surface 4.35 billion years ago due to the tidal pull of Earth causing widespread geological upheaval and intense heating.

Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite some of the fundamental laws of physics. Thorium-229-doped crystals are both scarce and radioactive. A thin film using a dry precursor of thorium-229 shows the same nuclear excitation as the crystal, but its low cost and radioactivity, and smaller size mean its production could be more easily scaled up to make smaller, less expensive, more portable atomic clocks.

A future where lightweight car parts can be made with a 3D printer is here, thanks to multi-material additive manufacturing research.

A psychologist found that a baby's first sweet sounds and early attempts at forming words are directly linked to the baby's heart rate.

Researchers analyzed radioisotopes in layers of fossilized volcanic ash. Decay of uranium to lead within tiny crystals enabled scientists to precisely pinpoint dates for certain events. They determined this event occurred 119.5 million years ago -- coincident with evidence for massive volcanic eruptions -- and lasted for 1.1 million years. Study results help scientists better understand links between atmospheric CO2 levels, climate changes and conditions in the oceans.

String theory remains elusive as a 'provable' phenomenon. But a team of physicists has now taken a significant step forward in validating string theory by using an innovative mathematical method that points to its 'inevitability.'

Step into a world so tiny, it defies imagination -- the nanoscale. Picture a single strand of hair, now shrink it a million times. You've arrived. Here, atoms and molecules are the architects of reality, building properties and phenomena that challenge everything we thought we knew -- until now. Researchers have now unlocked a stunning discovery on this invisible frontier: a brand-new type of quasiparticle in all magnetic materials, no matter their strength or temperature. This groundbreaking find flips the script on magnetism, revealing it to be more dynamic than scientists once believed.

An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The discovery helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A*.

A new study raises the possibility that jobs that require frequent spatial processing -- such as figuring out a taxi route or the best way to navigate to a hospital -- could lead to lower rates of death from Alzheimer's disease. Researchers investigated this possibility by using national data on the occupations of people who had died to evaluate risk of death from Alzheimer's disease across 443 professions. They found that taxi driving and ambulance driving were associated with a lower rate of death from Alzheimer's disease compared to other professions.

When young children's behavior becomes challenging, many parents resort to threats -- from taking away toys to threatening that Santa will skip their house, a national poll suggests.

Recent measurements with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cast doubt on the current understanding of the exoplanet Trappist-1 b's nature. Until now, it was assumed to be a dark rocky planet without an atmosphere, shaped by a billion-year-long cosmic impact of radiation and meteorites. The opposite appears to be true. The surface shows no signs of weathering, which could indicate geological activity such as volcanism and plate tectonics. Alternatively, a planet with a hazy atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide is also viable. The results demonstrate the challenges of determining the properties of exoplanets with thin atmospheres.

Analysis of the remains of at least 37 individuals from Early Bronze Age England finds they were killed, butchered, and probably consumed before being thrown down a 15m-deep shaft. It is the largest-scale example of interpersonal violence from British prehistory. The treatment of the remains was likely a means to dehumanize or 'other' the victims. This massacre was probably revenge for a perceived offense, implying a cycle of violence and questioning the idea that Early Bronze Age Britain was relatively peaceful.

The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. An international research team has now observed a teraelectronvolt gamma-ray flare seven orders of magnitude -- tens of millions of times -- larger than the event horizon, or surface of the black hole itself. A flare of this intensity -- which has not been observed in over a decade -- can offer crucial insights into how particles, such as electrons and positrons, are accelerated in the extreme environments near black holes.

A new prototype device demonstrates an innovative approach to producing ammonia -- a key component of fertilizer -- that could transform an industry responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

A new study points to why, and how, Io became the most volcanic body in the solar system.

New radio astronomy observations of a planetary system in the process of forming show that once the first planets form close to the central star, these planets can help shepherd the material to form new planets farther out. In this way each planet helps to form the next, like a line of falling dominos each triggering the next in turn.

Nearly all living organisms use the same genetic code, a complicated mechanism by which genetic information is translated into proteins, the building blocks of life. A new study suggests conventional wisdom about how the code evolved is likely flawed.

A new analysis reveals that overfishing has caused populations of chondrichthyan fishes -- sharks, rays, and chimaeras -- to decline by more than 50 per cent since 1970. To determine the consequences, a team of researchers developed an aquatic Red List Index (RLI) which shows that the risk of extinction for chondrichthyan has increased by 19 per cent. The study also highlights that the overfishing of the largest species in nearshore and pelagic habitats could eliminate up to 22 per cent of ecological functions. Chondrichthyans are an ancient and ecologically diverse group of over 1,199 fishes that are increasingly threatened by human activities. Overexploitation by target fisheries and incidental capture (bycatch), compounded by habitat degradation, climate change and pollution, has resulted in over one-third of chondrichthyans facing extinction.