The ‘Not Face’ is a universal part of language
Researchers have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across many cultures as the embodiment of negative emotion. The look proved identical for native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL). It...
A view of the colorful microcosm within a proton
The proton sounds like a simple object, but it’s not. Inside, there’s a teeming microcosm of quarks and gluons with properties such as spin and “color” charge that contribute to the particle’s seemingly simplistic role as a building block...
Conspicuous consumption may drive fertility down
Competition for social status may be an important driver of lower fertility in the modern world, suggests a new study published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. “The areas were we see the greatest declines in fertility are areas with modern...
Biological mechanism passes on long-term epigenetic ‘memories’
According to epigenetics — the study of inheritable changes in gene expression not directly coded in our DNA — our life experiences may be passed on to our children and our children’s children. Studies on survivors of traumatic events have suggested...
Physicists ‘undiscovered’ technetium carbide
An international team of scientists led by Artem Oganov, Head of Computational Materials Discovery Lab at MIPT, has proven that technetium carbide does not exist — it was pure technetium that was mistakenly considered as such. This is important from the view...
GI tract bacteria help decrease stroke
Certain types of bacteria in the gut can leverage the immune system to decrease the severity of stroke, according to new research from Weill Cornell Medicine. This finding can help mitigate stroke — which is the second leading cause of death worldwide. In the...
Ocean temps predict U.S. heat waves 50 days out, study finds
The formation of a distinct pattern of sea surface temperatures in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean can predict an increased chance of summertime heat waves in the eastern half of the United States up to 50 days in advance, according to a new study led by a...
Researchers Learn How The Bat Got Its Wings
An international team of scientists, including groups from UC San Francisco, Gladstone Institutes, and the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, have for the first time identified genes and gene regulatory elements that are essential in wing development in the...
Scientists pinpoint brain circuit for risk preference in rats
Investigators at Stanford University have identified a small group of nerve cells in a specific brain region of rats whose signaling activity, or lack of it, explains the vast bulk of differences in risk-taking preferences among the animals. That activity not only...
Prenatal steroids reduce risk of brain bleeding in preemies
Prenatal steroid treatment reduces by half a premature baby’s risk for a severe form of brain hemorrhage after birth, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found. The research, on nearly 26,000 premature infants, demonstrated that the benefit...
Resurrected drug effective against two human viruses in a lab dish
Viruses have proven to be wily foes. Attempts to fend off viruses causing even the common cold or flu have failed, and new viral outbreaks such as dengue, Ebola or Zika continue to elude drugs. Given these challenges, a group at Stanford is tackling the problem from a...Apple vs Samsung like patent war in the genomics industry
Remember the year 2012, when all we could hear from the smartphone industry was the on-going litigation between Apple and Samsung. Well, after a recent move from Illumina, the world’s largest next generation sequencing instrument provider, we can expect 2016 to be a...
President has constitutional power to appoint, not just nominate, successor to Scalia
After the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Republican senators, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, announced that they would neither consider nor vote on any nominee to the court picked by President Barack Obama. According to a new paper...
Saving sunshine for a rainy day
We can’t control when the wind blows and when the sun shines, so finding efficient ways to store energy from alternative sources remains an urgent research problem. Now, a group of researchers led by Professor Ted Sargent at the University of Toronto’s...
Ground-nesting bees on farms lack food, grow smaller
According to a recent study, the size of a common ground-nesting bee – an important crop pollinator – has grown smaller in heavily farmed landscapes. The link between intensive agriculture and the size of Andrena nasonii bees has important implications for...
Leading global health commission calls for reform of drug policies worldwide
A leading global public health commission is calling for new policies that would transform our approach to drug use, addiction and control worldwide, including the decriminalization of minor and non-violent drug offenses. According to a report released this morning by...
What’s in a name? In some cases, longer life
Black men with historically distinctive black names such as Elijah and Moses lived a year longer, on average, than other black men, according to new research examining 3 million death certificates from 1802 to 1970. The study, co-authored by Michigan State University...
