A New Tool for the Genomic Era

Like its human counterparts, a young star is cute but prone to temper flares-only a star's are lethal. A flare from a star can incinerate everything around it, including the atmospheres of any nearby planets starting to form.

Ribosomes are small "factories" in which proteins are assembled according to genetic construction plans. The maturation of ribosomes, of which every human cell contains up to a million, is a complicated, multi-phase process. Now, with the aid of cryo-electron microscopy, scientists from Heidelberg University and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München have been able to clarify an important step in ribosomal formation. These "protein factories" consist of two ribosomal subunits and the scientists have shown that the smaller one "peels out" of a precursor complex and does not break off en bloc, as was so far assumed. The findings were published in the journal "Science".

A group of University of Wisconsin­-Madison physicists has identified conditions under which relatively distant atoms communicate with each other in ways that had previously only been seen in atoms closer together - a development that could have applications to quantum computing.

For much of Earth's four and a half billion years, the planet was barren and inhospitable; it wasn't until the world acquired its blanket of oxygen that multicellular life could really get going. But scientists are still trying to understand exactly how-and why-our planet got this beautifully oxygenated atmosphere.

A team of researchers from Freie Universität Berlin and ETH Zurich studied if antifungal and antibiotic resistance emerge faster than in the past

The proportion of children experiencing a probable mental disorder has increased over the past three years, from one in nine in 2017 to one in six in July this year, according to a report published by NHS Digital and co-authored by Professor Tamsin Ford at the University of Cambridge.