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AI model predicts chemical effects on gene expression, speeding drug discovery

Inside a diseased cell, the genes are in chaos. Some are receiving signals to overproduce a protein. Others are reducing activity to abnormal levels. Up is down and down is up. The right molecule could restore order, reversing dysregulation in specific genes. But finding the ideal compound could require examining millions of chemicals for their influence on hundreds or thousands of genes.

An MSU-led team of researchers has demonstrated a better way. Using machine learning trained on enormous amounts of published data, they were able to predict how chemicals will influence gene expression, based solely on the structure of the chemical.

Their study, recently published in the journal Cell, has discovered compounds that are promising for treatment of two difficult diseases: the most aggressive form of liver cancer and a chronic lung disease with no curative options.

Bell-bottoms today, miniskirts tomorrow: Math reveals fashion’s 20-year cycle

Fashion insiders and beauty magazines have long cited the “20-year-rule”—the idea that clothing trends often resurface every two decades. According to Northwestern University scientists, that observation isn’t just anecdotal. It’s a mathematical reality.

In a new study, the Northwestern team developed a new mathematical model showing that fashion trends tend to cycle roughly every 20 years. By analyzing roughly 37,000 images of women’s clothing spanning from 1869 to today, the team found that styles rise in popularity, fall out of favor and then eventually experience renewal. Along with supporting common perceptions about the life cycles of fads, the researchers say these results could help explain how new ideas spread in society.

The study’s lead author, Emma Zajdela, will present these findings on Tuesday, March 17, at the American Physical Society (APS) Global Physics Summit in Denver. Her talk, “Back in Fashion: Modeling the Cyclical Dynamics of Trends,” is part of the session “Statistical Physics of Networks and Complex Society Systems.”

Experiment challenges hypothesis of cell-like membranes on Titan

New experimental results have cast doubt on earlier proposals suggesting that spherical, cell-like membranes could form in the methane lakes of Saturn’s largest moon. Through results published in Science Advances, Tuan Vu and Robert Hodyss at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggest that exobiologists will likely need to explore alternative routes when considering the possibility of life on Titan.

Despite frigid surface temperatures of around −180 °C during the day, Titan is widely considered to be one of the most Earth-like bodies in the solar system. With a dense atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen, its surface hosts lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane, which flow, evaporate, and fall as rain in much the same way as water does on Earth.

For decades, this striking similarity to our own water cycle has inspired exobiologists to consider whether exotic forms of life could have evolved under these conditions. In 2015, researchers at Cornell University took this idea a step further through molecular-dynamics simulations designed to recreate Titan’s environment.

Discrete time crystal acts as a usable sensor for weak magnetic oscillations

The bizarre properties of discrete time crystals could be harnessed to detect extremely subtle oscillations of magnetic fields, physicists in the US and Germany have revealed. Publishing their results in Nature Physics, a team led by Ashok Ajoy at the University of California, Berkeley, show for the first time that these exotic materials could have practical uses far beyond their current status as an impractical curiosity.

Discrete time crystals (DTCs) are an exotic phase of matter which break entirely from the rules which apply to classical materials. Whereas an ordinary crystal is made up of atomic or molecular patterns that repeat at regular intervals in space, DTCs have structures that constantly oscillate in repeating cycles when driven by an external protocol, without ever reaching thermal equilibrium.

“Since their initial experimental demonstrations in 2017, there has been enormous excitement surrounding these states,” explains co-author Paul Schindler at the Max Planck Institute of Complex Systems. “Yet a persistent question has remained unanswered: can this exotic order be harnessed for practical applications?”

Nano 3D metallic parts turn out to be surprisingly strong despite defects

Scientists at Caltech have figured out how to precisely engineer tiny three-dimensional (3D) metallic pieces with nanoscale dimensions. The process can work with any metal or metal alloy and yields components of surprising strength despite having a porous and defect-ridden microstructure, making it potentially useful in a wide range of applications, including medical devices, computer chips, and equipment needed for space missions.

The scientists describe their method in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications. The work was completed in the lab of Julia R. Greer, the Ruben F. and Donna Mettler Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering at Caltech, and Huajian Gao of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The researchers use a technique called two-photon lithography that allows them to sequentially build an object of a desired size and shape by carefully controlling the geometry at the level of individual voxels, the smallest distinguishable volumes, or features, in a 3D image. Beginning with a light-sensitive liquid, the scientists use a tightly focused femtosecond laser beam—a femtosecond is 1 quadrillionth of a second—to build a desired shape out of a gel-like material called hydrogel. After infusing the miniature hydrogel sculpture with metallic salts, such as copper nitrate or nickel nitrate, they heat the structure twice in a specialized furnace to produce a shrunken metallic replica of the original shape.

A ‘consortium’ of bacteria cooperates to eat phthalate plasticizers that single microbes can’t stomach

Plastic trash has reached the world’s most remote locations, from the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the summit of Everest. Hundreds of plastic-eating microbes that could help us clean up have been discovered over the past quarter of a century, but there is a long way to go before they can be put to work in natural environments: Microbial digestion of plastic is still slow, requires high temperatures, and only proceeds efficiently in bioreactors. Moreover, most plastic-eating microbes discovered so far can only digest a single kind of plastic.

One solution would be to combine different microbes to tackle plastic pollution as a team. This allows them to share tasks, compensate for each other’s weaknesses, and continue working even when environmental conditions change.

Now, scientists in Germany have discovered such a synergistic “consortium” of plastic-eating bacteria, which can eat phthalate esters (PAEs)—plasticizers that are often found in building materials, food packages, and personal care products, but have been implicated in hormonal, metabolic, and developmental disorders and some cancers. The results are published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Scientists create a new state of matter at room temperature using light and nanostructures

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have created a new and unusual state of matter—known as a supersolid—by engineering how light and matter interact inside a nanoscale device. The work, published in Nature Nanotechnology, demonstrates that this exotic quantum phase can exist at room temperature, overcoming a long-standing limitation in the field.

Supersolids are unusual because they combine two seemingly incompatible properties: Like a solid, they form an ordered, crystal-like structure. At the same time, they behave like a fluid, meaning they can flow without resistance. Until now, such states have only been observed under extremely cold conditions, close to absolute zero.

“Our work shows that you can create and control this exotic state using light,” said Wei Bao, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at RPI and senior author of the study. “What’s especially exciting is that it happens at room temperature, in a platform that can be engineered and potentially scaled.”

Exercise Triggers Memory-Related ‘Brain Ripples’, Study Finds

Exercise works wonders throughout the human body, including the brain.

Research suggests an array of neurological benefits, such as reducing the brain’s biological age, enhancing learning and memory, and protecting against dementia.

Now, a new study offers one of the clearest glimpses yet into a suspected mechanism: after a single 20-minute session of light-to-moderate cycling, people showed changes in memory-linked brain activity.

Astronomers May Have Seen Colliding Black Holes Trigger a Blaze of Light

A brief blaze of gamma and X-ray light that lit up Earth telescopes in November 2024 may have come from an unexpected source.

Just a few seconds earlier, from the same tiny corner of the sky, LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA had detected the telltale gravitational wave signal of two black holes colliding. These massive events are some of the most extreme in the Universe; even so, they’re not generally expected to produce detectable light.

A team led by astronomer Shu-Rui Zhang of the University of Science and Technology of China has linked the extraordinary detection to an even more extraordinary set of possible circumstances: the collision, the researchers believe, may have taken place in the enormous, roiling disk of dust and gas surrounding a third, supermassive black hole – the host galaxy’s active galactic nucleus (AGN).

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