A team led by University of Pittsburgh’s Graham Hatfull has developed a method to construct bacteriophages with entirely synthetic genetic material, allowing researchers to add and subtract genes at will. The findings open the field to new pathways for understanding how these bacteria-killing viruses work, and for potential therapy of bacterial infections.
Your conversations with AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini may not be as private as you think they are. Microsoft has revealed a serious flaw in the large language models (LLMs) that power these AI services, potentially exposing the topic of your conversations with them. Researchers dubbed the vulnerability “Whisper Leak” and found it affects nearly all the models they tested.
When you chat with AI assistants built into major search engines or apps, the information is protected by TLS (Transport Layer Security), the same encryption used for online banking. These secure connections stop would-be eavesdroppers from reading the words you type. However, Microsoft discovered that the metadata (how your messages are traveling across the internet) remains visible. Whisper Leak doesn’t break encryption, but it takes advantage of what encryption cannot hide.
As global electric vehicle adoption accelerates, end-of-life battery packs are quickly becoming a major waste stream. Lithium is costly to mine and refine, and most current recycling methods are energy- and chemical-intensive, often producing lithium carbonate that must be further processed into lithium hydroxide for reuse.
People with anxiety disorders have lower levels of choline in their brains, according to research from UC Davis Health.
The study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed data from 25 studies. The researchers compared the levels of neurometabolites—chemicals produced during brain metabolism —in 370 people with anxiety disorders to 342 people without anxiety.
They found the level of choline—an essential nutrient—was about 8% lower in those with anxiety disorders. The evidence for low choline was especially consistent in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps control thinking, emotions and behavior.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia, affects nearly 40 million individuals globally, resulting in a gradual loss of memory and independence. Despite extensive research over the past decades, no treatments have been found that can halt or reverse the progression of this devastating disease.
In AD, a major contributor to neuronal dysfunction is the protein tau. Tau typically plays a crucial role in keeping the internal structure of neurons stable, much like train tracks help trains stay on course. However, in some diseases, tau undergoes abnormal modifications and starts to aggregate, disrupting this transport system, thus leading to neuronal damage and subsequent memory loss.
An international team of researchers has reported a new mechanism by which boosting the natural metabolite NAD⁺ can protect the brain from the degeneration associated with AD. Their paper, titled “NAD⁺ reverses Alzheimer’s neurological deficits via regulating differential alternative RNA splicing of EVA1C,” is published in Science Advances.
Adolescence, the life stage that marks the transition between childhood and adulthood, is known to be a vital period for the brain’s development. During this critical phase, people’s mental abilities, including their problem-solving and memory skills, rapidly improve.
Past neuroscience studies have tried to link these observed cognitive improvements during adolescence to changes in the structure of the brain and the connections between different brain regions. Nonetheless, the relationship between changes in the brain and specific aspects of cognitive performance has not been fully elucidated.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University, CNRS Université de Lyon, and Wake Forest School of Medicine recently carried out a study involving monkeys that was aimed at shedding new light into the underpinnings of mental maturation during adolescence. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that the cognitive development of adolescent monkeys is associated with a refined connectivity between brain regions, while changes in gray matter structure play a lesser role.
A treatment that could protect premature babies from brain damage showed promise in a recent study in Sweden. Using a first-of-its-kind prenatal brain model created with human cells, researchers observed new details about the effects of cerebral hemorrhages on stem cells during preterm birth. They also successfully tested an antidote that reduced the damage.
Publishing in Advanced Science, the researchers identified how neural stem cells in preterm infants are damaged as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage. Researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Karolinska Institutet, and Lund and Malmö Universities collaborated on the study.
The study shows that as red blood cells seep into the brain’s subventricular zone (SVZ) and break down, levels of the immune response messenger protein interleukin-1 (IL-1) become elevated. These proteins send strong signals that direct neural stem cells to stop acting like stem cells, says Professor Anna Herland, senior lecturer at the AIMES research center at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Karolinska Institutet.
Researchers from the Department of Molecular Physics at the Fritz Haber Institute have demonstrated the first magneto-optical trap of a stable “closed-shell” molecule: aluminum monofluoride (AlF). They were able to cool AlF with lasers and selectively trap it in three different rotational quantum levels—breaking new ground in ultracold physics.
Their experiments open the door to advanced precision spectroscopy and quantum simulation with AlF. The work has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server.
Cooling matter to temperatures near absolute zero (0 K, −273.15°C) acts like a microscope for quantum mechanical behavior, bringing physics that is normally blurred out into sharp focus. Classic historical examples include the 1911 discovery of superconductivity in mercury metal cooled near 4 K, and anomalous thermal behavior in molecular hydrogen due to its “ortho” and “para” spin states. These phenomena confounded classical physics theories of the time, driving both the evolution of quantum mechanics, as well as efforts to reach ever lower temperatures.
Increasing the surface area when plasma and water interact could help scale up a technology that destroys contaminants such as PFAS, detergents and microbial contaminants in drinking water, new research from the University of Michigan shows.
Under certain conditions, when plasma comes in contact with water, it can self-organize, forming intricate patterns resembling stars, wagon wheels or gears that expand the contact area. While the physics of plasma self organization remains elusive, a better understanding can help harness it for more efficient water decontamination.
The U-M research team captured the first images of the water surface below the self-organizing plasma, revealing that the plasma exerts an electrical force on the water that distorts the surface and also generates surface waves.
The geometry of space, where physical laws unfold, may also hold answers to some of the deepest questions in fundamental physics. The very structure of spacetime might underlie every interaction in nature.
A paper published in Nuclear Physics B, led by Richard Pincak, explores the idea that all fundamental forces and particle properties could emerge from the geometry of hidden extra dimensions.
According to the study, the universe may contain invisible dimensions folded into intricate seven-dimensional shapes known as G₂-manifolds. Traditionally, these structures have been studied as static. But Pincak and colleagues consider them as dynamic: evolving under a process called the G₂–Ricci flow, where the internal geometry changes with time.