news 2020

A new image processing programme makes it possible to view and analyse plant cells in detail in 3D. Bioscientists and computer scientists at Heidelberg University helped to develop the open-source software called PlantSeg. It is based on methods of machine learning and can be used to study the process of morphogenesis - how the shape of plants develops - at the cellular level.

Scientists have built tiny droplet-based microbial factories that produce hydrogen, instead of oxygen, when exposed to daylight in air. The findings of the international research team, led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, are published today.

Rods (type of photoreceptor) isolated from the retina of a control mouse (Atxn3 +/+) and a mouse with the silenced gene Atxn3 (Atxn3-/-). We can see the elongation of the external segment or neurosensorial cilium (OS plus CC) when there is no ATXN3 protein. For more than twenty years, the UB team has conducted research on the genetic causes of the retina hereditary diseases.

Phosphorus is a necessary nutrient for plants to grow. But when it's applied to plants as part of a chemical fertilizer, phosphorus can react strongly with minerals in the soil, forming complexes with iron, aluminum and calcium. This locks up the phosphorus, preventing plants from being able to access this crucial nutrient.

A new study reveals that 65 plant species have gone extinct in the continental United States and Canada since European settlement, more extinctions than any previous scientific study has ever documented. Led by Wesley Knapp of the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, a group of 16 experts from across the United States - including Richard Olmstead , a University of Washington professor of biology and curator of the UW's Burke Museum Herbarium - collaborated on this first-of-its-kind project to document the extinct plants of the continental United States and Canada.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has named four University of Washington faculty members as AAAS Fellows, according to a Nov. 24 announcement from the organization.

Increased consumption of flavanols - a group of molecules which occur naturally in fruit and vegetables - can increase your mental agility, according to new research. A team at the University of Birmingham has found that people given a cocoa drink containing high levels of flavanols were able to complete certain cognitive tasks more efficiently than when drinking a non-flavanol enriched-drink.

A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University has developed artificial intelligence models that help them better understand the brain computations that underlie thoughts. This is new, because until now there has been no method to measure thoughts. The researchers first developed a new model that can estimate thoughts by evaluating behavior, and then tested their model on a trained artificial brain where they found neural activity associated with those estimates of thoughts.

Two teams of scientists have resolved a longstanding controversy surrounding the origins of complex life on Earth. The joint studies found molecular fossils extracted from 635-million-year-old rocks aren't the earliest evidence of animals, but instead common algae. The researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), Max Planck Institute and Caltech say the finding has big implications for our understanding of evolution.

In a noisy room with many speakers, hearing aids can suppress background noise, but they have difficulties isolating one voice - that of the person you're talking to at a party, for instance.

Decades of pursuit uncovers receptor, the product of an evolutionary arms race for survival, used by plants to sense herbivores For decades, scientists have known that plants protect themselves from the devastation of hungry caterpillars and other plant-munching animals through sophisticated response systems, the product of millions of years of evolution.

Rice scientists' atomic resolution protein models reveal new details about protein binding Knowing precisely where proteins are frustrated could go a long way toward making better drugs. That's one result of a new study by Rice University scientists looking for the mechanisms that stabilize or destabilize key sections of biomolecules.

A Basel-led international research team has discovered a connection between the intestinal flora and sites of inflammation in the central nervous system in multiple sclerosis. A specific class of immune cell plays a central role in this newly identified gut-brain axis. The discovery could pave the way for new treatments for MS that target the intestinal flora.

An international team of researchers from Bristol and China has prepared biocompatible protocells that generate nitric oxide gas - a known reagent for blood vessel dilation - that when placed inside blood vessels expand the biological tissue. In a new study published today , Professor Stephen Mann and Dr Mei Li from Bristol's School of Chemistry, together with Associate Professor Jianbo Liu and colleagues at Hunan University and Central South University in China, prepared synthetic protocells coated in red blood cell fragments for use as nitric oxide generating bio-bots within blood vessels.

Researchers and colleagues have developed a wound-healing biomaterial for cuts, burns and other injuries that could significantly reduce scar formation and result in healthier, stronger skin. The team, including scientists from Duke University and other institutions, reports that their new hydrogel triggered an immune response in mice that accelerated healing, induced tissue regeneration and resulted in skin that was more resilient to reinjury.

Scientists have discovered that the Firth of Clyde is an important source of juvenile whiting to the wider Scottish west coast waters, in new research likely to be important for fisheries management. In a new joint study, between the University of Glasgow and Marine Scotland Science published today in Communications Biology, researchers found that as juvenile whiting grow to become adults some cross the fish stock boundary between the Irish Sea and waters to the west of Scotland.

Scientists have generated a huge true random number using DNA synthesis. It is the first time that a number of this magnitude has been created by biochemical means. True random numbers are required in fields as diverse as slot machines and data encryption. These numbers need to be truly random, such that they cannot even be predicted by people with detailed knowledge of the method used to generate them.

Study finds that zebra finches possess superior auditory memory. (Photo courtesy of Frederic Theunissen) If songbirds could appear on " The Masked Singer " reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. That's because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 different members of their flock, according to new research from UC Berkeley.

The Zika virus has spread around the world over the last decade, causing millions of infections, some of which have been associated with congenital abnormalities and neurological disorders. Scientists from the CNRS, the Institut Pasteur, and the IRD 1 turned their attention to the main vector of the virus, the mosquito Aedes aegypti .

Lake Tanganyika in Africa is a true hotspot of organismal diversity. Approximately 240 species of cichlid fishes have evolved in this lake in less than 10 million years. A research team from the University of Basel has investigated this phenomenon of -explosive speciation- and provides new insights into the origins of biological diversity, as they report in the journal -Nature-.