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A series of mass extinctions that rocked the Earth’s oceans during the Devonian Period over 300 million years ago may have been triggered by the evolution of tree roots. This is according to a research study led by scientists at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), along with colleagues in the United Kingdom. Evidence for this new view of a remarkably volatile period in Earth’s pre-history was reported on November 9 in the scientific journal Geological Society of America Bulletin....

Researchers at Yale University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard screened hundreds of millions of cells exposed to the COVID-19 and MERS viruses and identified dozens of genes that both enable the viruses to replicate in cells and also those that seem to slam the door on the virus. The pro-viral and anti-viral role of these genes will help guide scientists in development of new therapies to combat COVID-19, the researchers say....

Previous efforts to turn stem cells into neurons have resulted in functionally immature neurons that resemble those from the early stages of development. The limited maturation achieved through current stem cell culture methods restricts their potential for studying neurodegeneration. The study was recently published in the journal Cell Stem Cell. To create the mature neurons, the team used “dancing molecules,” a breakthrough technique introduced last year by Northwestern professor Samuel I....

As aging is associated with deteriorating bodily functions and increasing inflammation, both of which herald the onset of frailty, this diet might act on gut bacteria in such a way as to help curb the advance of physical frailty and cognitive decline in older age, suggesting the researchers. Previous research suggests that a poor/restrictive diet, which is common among older people, particularly those in long-term residential care, reduces the range and types of bacteria (microbiome) found in the gut and helps to speed up the onset of frailty....

The findings by George Poinar Jr. of the Oregon State University College of Science give a rare look at a heretofore unknown clade of invertebrates, along with their fungal food source and other animals that lived in their habitat. Poinar, an international expert in using plant and animal life forms preserved in amber to learn more about the biology and ecology of the distant past, informally calls the new animals “mold pigs” for their resemblance to swine, and their diet....

Melatonin synthesized in the lungs acts as a barrier against SARS-CoV-2, preventing expression of genes that encode proteins in cells such as resident macrophages in the nose and pulmonary alveoli, and epithelial cells lining the alveoli, all of which are entry points for the virus. The hormone, therefore, prevents infection of these cells by the virus and inhibits the immune response so that the virus remains in the respiratory tract for a few days, eventually leaving to find another host....

Melatonin is a hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle and is the most commonly prescribed drug for sleep disturbances in children and adolescents in Sweden. Melatonin use has dramatically increased in recent years, and it is available over the counter in Sweden since 2020. “Given the established link between sleep problems, depression, and self-harm, we wanted to explore whether medical sleep treatment is associated with a lower rate of intentional self-harm in young people,” says Dr....

“We’re analyzing rocks from space, atom by atom,” says Jennika Greer, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student at the Field Museum and University of Chicago. ” It’s the first time a lunar sample has been studied like this. We’re using a technique many geologists haven’t even heard of. “We can apply this technique to samples no one has studied,” Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and co-author of the paper, adds....

And UK failing to recommend or monitor dietary levels of choline, warns nutritionist. The momentum behind a move to plant-based and vegan diets for the good of the planet is commendable, but risks worsening an already low intake of an essential nutrient involved in brain health, warns a nutritionist in the online journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. To make matters worse, the UK government has failed to recommend or monitor dietary levels of this nutrient–choline–found predominantly in animal foods, says Dr Emma Derbyshire, of Nutritional Insight, a consultancy specializing in nutrition and biomedical science....

New research findings underline the crucial role that sea ice throughout the Southern Ocean played for atmospheric CO2 in times of rapid climate change in the past. An international team of scientists with the participation of the University of Bonn has shown that the seasonal growth and destruction of sea ice in a warming world increases the biological productivity of the seas around Antarctica by extracting carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the deep ocean....

Building upon several years of research, Zheng and his team from the Cockrell School of Engineering have developed opto-thermoelectric nanotweezers (OTENT) that will help lead to a greater understanding of matter and biological systems and open a range of possibilities for fundamental and technical innovation in nanophotonics — the study of light-matter interaction on the nanometer scale. They explain their new work in the latest issue of the journal Nature Photonics....

NASA’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team, in collaboration with the Earth Observatory of Singapore, used satellite-derived synthetic aperture radar data to map the likely extent of damage from a massive August 4 explosion in Beirut. Synthetic aperture radar data from space shows ground surface changes from before and after a major event like an earthquake. In this case, it is being used to show the devastating result of an explosion....

Already within my short time on the job, NASA is checking-off key milestones and marching swiftly toward Artemis I. That mission, the first uncrewed flight test of our powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft, is just a little more than a year away from launch. I remain incredibly impressed by our team’s commitment to landing the first woman and next man on the Moon in 2024, and we all know that Artemis I is a critical step toward realizing that goal....

“This study argues the importance of exploring at least one of these planets and its entire environment, which includes surprisingly dynamic icy moons, rings, and bizarre magnetic fields,” said Mark Hofstadter of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, one of the two co-chairs of the science team that produced the report. The European Space Agency (ESA) also participated in the study. To date, Uranus and Neptune have been visited briefly by one spacecraft, Voyager 2....

For destinations with an atmosphere, one of the challenges NASA faces is how to deliver heavy payloads (experiments, equipment, and people) because current rigid aeroshells are constrained by a rocket’s shroud size. One answer is an inflatable aeroshell that can be deployed to a scale much larger than the shroud. This technology enables a variety of proposed NASA missions to destinations such as Mars, Venus, and Titan as well as return to Earth....

When seen by optical telescopes, these individual sources of reflected sunlight can provide some very valuable but also very basic information — for example, the asteroid’s orbit, a ballpark estimate of its size, sometimes an approximation of its shape, and perhaps an idea of its physical makeup. But to learn more about these elusive and important celestial objects requires a different type of instrument. An infrared sensor can, in the right circumstances, not only provide data on an asteroid’s orbit and data that can be used to more accurately measure its size, but also chemical makeup and sometimes even its surface characteristics....

The new findings suggest that in addition to tracking speed, the brain incorporates information about the rhythmic patterns of an object’s movement: for example, how long it takes a ball to complete one bounce. In their new study, the researchers found that people make much more accurate estimates when they have access to information about both the speed of a moving object and the timing of its rhythmic patterns. “People get really good at this when they have both types of information available,” says Mehrdad Jazayeri, the Robert A....

Physicists at the University of Göttingen, together with pathologists and lung specialists at the Medical University of Hannover, have developed a three-dimensional imaging technique that enables high resolution and three-dimensional representation of damaged lung tissue following severe COVID-19. Using a special X-ray microscopy technique, they were able to image changes caused by the coronavirus in the structure of alveoli (the tiny air sacs in the lung) and the vasculature. The results of the study were published in the research journal eLife....

But how did a lifeless environment on the early Earth supply this key ingredient? “For 50 years, what’s called ‘the phosphate problem,’ has plagued studies on the origin of life,” said first author Jonathan Toner, a University of Washington research assistant professor of Earth and space sciences. The problem is that chemical reactions that make the building blocks of living things need a lot of phosphorus, but phosphorus is scarce....

The UNSW researchers found the organic matter in stromatolites – fossilized microbial structures – from the ancient Dresser Formation in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The stromatolites have been thought to be of biogenic origin ever since they were discovered in the 1980s. However, despite strong textural evidence, that theory was unproven for nearly four decades, because scientists hadn’t been able to show the definitive presence of preserved organic matter remains – until today’s publication in the prestigious journal Geology....