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The University of Melbourne-led research, which was published in Cell Metabolism, demonstrated how various forms of exercise alter the molecules in our muscles and led to the identification of the new C18ORF25 gene, which is activated by all forms of exercise and is responsible for enhancing muscle strength. Animals lacking C18ORF25 have weaker muscles and worse exercise performance. Dr. Benjamin Parker, project leader, said that by activating the C18ORF25 gene, the research team could observe muscles grow significantly stronger without necessarily becoming larger....

A joint study from the University of Helsinki and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland discovered that ceramides, a class of fat molecules known as sphingolipids, begin to accumulate in muscle during aging and hinder its function. Ceramides play a vital role in skin protection and are commonly found in skin care products. Despite their skin benefits, the impact of ceramides on aging has remained unclear until now. As people age, the quantity of muscle tissue usually decreases and functional capacity is reduced....

Sperm start their sprint to the ovum when they detect changes in the environment through a series of calcium channels arranged like racing stripes on their tails. A team of Yale researchers has identified a key molecule that coordinates the opening and closing of these channels, a process that activates sperm and helps guide them to the egg. When the gene that encodes for the molecule is removed through gene editing, male mice impregnate fewer females, and females who are impregnated produce fewer pups....

Speech is learned. These are critical steps in our intellectual development, yet many of the components of vocal learning remain a mystery. How does the brain encode the memories needed to imitate our parents’ speech? And can scientists intervene when the process goes awry? Researchers at UT Southwestern have begun to answer these questions in a new songbird study that shows memories can be implanted in the brain to teach vocalizations — without any lessons from the parent....

The field of cell therapy, which aims to form new cells in the body in order to cure disease, has taken another important step in the development of new treatments. A new report from researchers at Lund University in Sweden shows that it is possible to reprogram other cells to become nerve cells, directly in the brain. Two years ago, researchers in Lund were the first in the world to reprogram human skin cells, known as fibroblasts, to dopamine-producing nerve cells – without taking a detour via the stem cell stage....

The launch date of the uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 replacement spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) is under review. The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft was slated to launch to the International Space Station on Sunday, February 19, to replace the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft after it suffered its own external coolant loop leak in December. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin arrived at the space station aboard MS-22 in September, and are now scheduled to return to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft later this year....

More than 300 million people in the United States potentially could directly view the August 21st total solar eclipse, and NASA wants everyone who will witness this celestial phenomenon to do so safely. That Monday, a partial eclipse will be visible in every state. A total solar eclipse, which is when the Moon completely covers the Sun, will occur across 14 states in the continental U.S. along a 70-mile-wide (112-kilometer-wide) swath of the country....

This Saharan dust storm is also known as the Saharan Air Layer, which typically forms between late spring and early autumn, peaking in late June to mid-August. Large amounts of dust particles from the African desert are swept up into the dry air by strong winds near the ground, as well as thunderstorms. The dust can then float for days, or weeks, depending on how dry, fast and turbulent the air masses become....

While most of us cannot live without our cell phones, robots may soon become indispensable companions. It certainly seems so based on the recent experiments conducted by researchers in Japan, who developed a hand-held soft robot that can improve the experience of patients while undergoing potentially unpleasant medical procedures, such as injections. Public health officials realized that some individuals just fear needles, which led to lower vaccination rates, during the campaign to promote vaccination against COVID-19....

A year ago, the whole world discussed: is it irresponsible to send children to school during a pandemic, or do measures exist that can prevent corona clusters so efficiently that schools can stay open (or reopen)? A research team at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) wanted to know for sure. Jana Lasser, then working in Peter Klimek’s team at the CSH and MedUni Vienna and now a scientist at Graz University of Technology, developed a school simulation model that shows how and how likely the virus spreads in different school settings....

Researchers created the piece of music by scanning a picture from left to right, pixel by pixel, and looking at brightness and color information and combining them with terrain elevation. They used algorithms to assign each element a specific pitch and melody. The quiet, slow harmonies are a consequence of the dark background, and the brighter, higher-pitched sounds towards the middle of the piece are created by the sonification of the bright sun disk....

Even after decades of observations, and a visit by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, Uranus held on to one critical secret, the composition of its clouds. Now, one of the key components of the planet’s clouds has finally been verified. Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford, UK and global collaborators spectroscopically dissected the infrared light from Uranus captured by the 8-meter Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s Maunakea. They found hydrogen sulfide, the odiferous gas that most people avoid, in Uranus’s cloud tops....

A recent study by an international team of scientists, including Neda Jahanshad, Ph.D., of the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, has shown that young people with mood disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors have subtle alterations in the size of the prefrontal region of the brain. Their findings were recently published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry....

Colon cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths. The APC protein has long been known for its critical role in preventing colorectal cancer. When APC is inactivated, the development of colorectal cancer is triggered. Inactivation of APC is responsible for the vast majority (80%) of all colorectal cancers. Researchers from the laboratory of Yashi Ahmed, MD, Ph.D. at Dartmouth’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, in collaboration with the groups of Ethan Lee, MD, Ph....

To provide its descendants with an exact copy of its genetic material, each cell goes through DNA replication before division. This is a precise and fine-tuned process controlled by the coordinated work of a sophisticated enzymatic machinery. However, eukaryotic cells have a problem with replication the terminal DNA fragments: due to the nature of the copying process, the termini of DNA molecules are left uncopied, and DNA becomes shorter with each replication....

COVID-19 and America’s response to it are likely to profoundly affect our families, work lives, relationships and gender roles for years, say 12 prominent scientists and authors who analyzed 90 research studies and used their expertise to evaluate our reaction to the pandemic and predict its aftermath. The group, which included several UCLA researchers, foresees enduring psychological fallout from the crisis, even among those who haven’t been infected. Their predictions and insights, published on October 22, 2020, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, include:...

The IDIBELL-ICO research team has succeeded in associating the expression of the CXCR4 receptor in ovarian tumor cells to their dissemination potential through the bloodstram. CXCR4 is a receptor involved in blood cell movement, which had previously been related to processes of dissemination in breast cancer. In studies in orthotopic models, the researchers proved that administration of CXCR4 inhibitors in cancers where high expression of this receptor had previously been detected greatly decreased the propagation of the tumor cells at the blood level and within the peritoneum....

Researchers have now discovered five gene variants that are unique to only one of the two diagnoses, as well as seven genetic variants that are shared by both ADHD and autism. “We have succeeded in identifying both shared genetic risk variants and genetic variants that differentiate the two developmental disorders,” says Professor Anders Børglum of the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University and iPSYCH, Denmark’s largest research project within psychiatry, which is behind the study....

An archaeological excavation of ancient human populations in the Arabian Peninsula during the Early Stone Age, found that Homo erectus used ‘least-effort strategies’ for tool making and collecting resources. This ‘laziness’ paired with an inability to adapt to a changing climate likely played a role in the species going extinct, according to lead researcher Dr. Ceri Shipton of the ANU School of Culture, History, and Language. “They really don’t seem to have been pushing themselves,” Dr....

Galaxies with no dark matter are impossible to understand in the framework of the current theory of galaxy formation because the role of dark matter is fundamental in causing the collapse of the gas to form stars. In 2018, a study published in Nature magazine announced the discovery of a galaxy that lacked dark matter, which made a strong impact, and occupied the covers of popular scientific magazines. Now, according to an article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), a group of researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has solved this mystery via a very complete set of observations of KKS2000]04 (NGC1052-DF2), previously nicknamed “the galaxy without dark matter”....