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It's not just us humans who suffer from heatwaves. Researchers at the University of Würzburg discovered that hot temperatures rob bumblebees of their sense of smell - and makes them struggle when searching for food. Climate change is affecting ecosystems in many different ways. One of its consequences are increasingly longer and more intense periods of heat, which affect essential natural processes - such as pollination.

A high-pitched buzzing sound in your ear is an unmistakable sign that a female mosquito is out on the hunt - for they, not males, drink blood. Hearing that tone might make you turn to try to swat the pest. But for a male mosquito, that tone means it's time to mate. An international team led by researchers at the University of Washington has uncovered surprising details about mosquito mating, which could lead to improved malaria control techniques and even help develop precision drone flight.

Scientists have uncovered how space travel profoundly alters the gut microbiome, yielding insights that could shape future space missions. The groundbreaking study, led by a McGill University researcher in collaboration with University College Dublin (UCD), NASA's GeneLab and an international consortium, offers the most detailed profile to date of how space travel affects gut microbes.

Remarkable fossil evidence of an ancient sea cow being preyed upon by not one, but two different predators - a crocodile and a shark - offers fresh insights into the predation tactics and food chain dynamics of millions of years ago.

Using newly generated "optogenetic" tobacco plants, research teams from the University of Würzburg's Departments of Plant Physiology and Neurophysiology have investigated how plants process external signals. When it comes to survival, plants have a huge disadvantage compared to many other living organisms: they cannot simply change their location if predators or pathogens attack them or the environmental conditions change to their disadvantage.

Medical imaging technology - such as MRI, ultrasound and X-ray - is gaining in power and precision, especially in the wake of recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Several EPFL research groups are contributing to this progress and actively shaping the future in this area. Thanks to advances in medical imaging, doctors can localize a bone fracture, detect a tumor and observe a baby inside the uterus, all'in a completely noninvasive manner.

Letting go of learned fears is difficult. New research findings reveal that the environment in which we learn the fear could also play a crucial role in unlearning it. When we learn something, we can usually recall it in any new context: If someone passes their driving test in France, they can also drive a car in Germany.

All higher organisms such as fungi, plants, animals and humans consist of eukaryotic cells. These are cells that have a nucleus and organelles such as mitochondria. Mitochondria supply eukaryotic cells with energy. In contrast to eukaryotes, prokaryotes are unicellular organisms. They have a simpler structure and are mostly significantly smaller than eukaryotes.

Study on fruit flies' ability to reliably perceive threats during courtship carried out by researchers from Birmingham and Berlin published in "Nature" The results of an international study carried out by researchers from the University of Birmingham and Freie Universität Berlin show that male fruit flies are more likely to ignore dangers such as predators during courtship.

Male fruit flies will become oblivious to physical danger as they become more engaged in courtship and sex. Male fruit flies will become oblivious to physical danger as they become more engaged in courtship and sex, new research shows. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown that pursuit of a coveted reward - in this case a female fly - will cause a male fruit fly to ignore threats such as predation.

A new study by the Milner Centre for Evolution in the Department of Life Sciences has shed light on the mystery as to why are there so many different types. Cacti are amongst the most diverse plants, from the giant saguaro cactus that can grow up to 18 metres in height, all the way down to the tiny button cactus which is a few centimetres tall.

Neuroscientists at UCL have shown how an animal's brain implements responses to unexpected events. The researchers discovered how two brain areas, the neocortex and the thalamus, work together to detect discrepancies between what animals expect from their environment and actual events. The brain areas selectively boost, or prioritise, any unexpected sensory information.

More people in the UK are at risk of a hereditary form of cardiac amyloidosis, a potentially fatal heart condition, than previously thought, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Queen Mary University of London. The study, published in JAMA Cardiology , used data from the UK Biobank to analyse the genes of 469,789 people in the UK and found that one in 1,000 possessed genetic variants with a likely link to cardiac transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis.

Proteins are among the most important molecular building blocks of life. They themselves are built from amino acids linked together based on the information in our genetic material. In this process, the genetic code is translated into a sequence of amino acids. However, this translation is only the first step.

A Yale-led study reveals a mechanism that triggers loss of immune regulation associated with multiple sclerosis and other diseases - and a target for treatment. More than two decades ago, a research team in the lab of David Hafler , a Yale researcher who at the time was at Harvard, discovered a type of T cell in humans that suppresses the immune system; they later found that these so-called regulatory T cells, when defective, are an underlying cause of autoimmune disease, specifically multiple sclerosis (MS).

Nearly one in three cancers develops following chronic inflammation, whose origin remains unclear. In a new study, researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1 and the Léon Bérard Centre at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon identified lymphocytes involved in the inflammatory processes and that are thought to be implicated in the generation of these cancers.

A finding by a McGill-led team of neuroscientists could open doors to new treatments for a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders attributed to dysfunctions in specific dopamine pathways. For those struggling with a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia, addiction or ADHD, or with neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's, there might be good news ahead.

Scientists have deciphered the activation pathway of bemnifosbuvir 1 , a drug candidate initially in development to treat hepatitis C virus (HCV). The findings of the research team, led by CNRS scientists 2 , unlock new opportunities to boost the efficacy of this type of drug against other RNA viruses, such as the ones that cause Covid-19 and dengue fever.

Key takeaways Lyme disease, spread to humans through tick bites, is a hard-to-diagnose condition with symptoms that start as headaches, pain and fatigue but can turn into long-term inflammatory illness affecting the joints, nerves, brain and heart. The current gold standard for confirming Lyme disease is a two-part lab test that takes up to two weeks for results and often misses early-stage cases.

In language-processing areas of the brain, some cell populations respond to one word, while others respond to strings of words. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists have identified several regions of the brain that are responsible for processing language. However, discovering the specific functions of neurons in those regions has proven difficult because fMRI, which measures changes in blood flow, doesn't have high enough resolution to reveal what small populations of neurons are doing.