A University of Houston College of Medicine researcher has found how a protein inside the body reduces the adverse effects of hypertonicity, an imbalance of water and solutes inside cells. Hypertonicity causes cell shrinkage and eventual cell death. The findings could have implications for a wide range of illnesses including edema from brain tumors, autoimmune diseases and kidney damage.

At least four people were killed as Tropical Storm Isaias spawned tornadoes and dumped rain Tuesday along the U.S. East Coast after making landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina, where it caused floods and fires that displaced dozens of people.

Tropical weather stirred up the Gulf of Mexico, reducing this year's dead zone off Louisiana's coast to the third-smallest ever measured, the scientist who has measured it since 1985 said Tuesday.

The size of a fly's eyes and nose reflect both its behavior during mating and its habitat preferences, according to a new study published today in eLife.

Real-time measurements captured by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory provide missing insight into chemical separations to recover cobalt, a critical raw material used to make batteries and magnets for modern technologies.

NASA's Aqua satellite took images of the Apple Fire as it continued to spread north across the head of the Mill Creek Canyon, and east into the San Gorgonio Wilderness near San Bernardino, Calif. on Aug. 03, 2020. The fire is now burning into more wilderness (where vegetation is sparse) than wooded area limiting the intensity of the fire due to a lack of fuel. Continued fire activity is due to the...

Geologists from Florida State University's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science have discovered how carbon-rich molten rock in the Earth's upper mantle might affect the movement of seismic waves.

Scientists have found a novel way to prevent pesky magnetic bubbles in plasma from interfering with fusion reactions—delivering a potential way to improve the performance of fusion energy devices. And it comes from managing radio frequency (RF) waves to stabilize the magnetic bubbles, which can expand and create disruptions that can limit the performance of ITER, the international facility under...

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have shown that different strains of the same bacterial pathogen can be distinguished by a machine learning analysis of their growth dynamics alone, which can then also accurately predict other traits such as resistance to antibiotics. The demonstration could point to methods for identifying diseases and predicting their behaviors that are faster, simpler,...

Climate change has increased the productivity of forests, according to a new study that synthesizes hundreds of thousands of carbon observations collected over the last quarter century at the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research site, one of the most intensively studied forests in the world.

A research vessel that has collected data on the Great Lakes for 30 years will remain docked this summer. Government scientists studying the emissions of heavy-duty diesel trucks do not have access to their labs. And Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is no longer signing critical regulations by hand.

New detailed observations with NSF's NOIRLab facilities reveal a young exoplanet, orbiting a young star in the Hyades cluster, that is unusually dense for its size and age. Weighing in at 25 Earth-masses, and slightly smaller than Neptune, this exoplanet's existence is at odds with the predictions of leading planet formation theories.

Rice is the most widely consumed staple food source for a large part of the world's population. It has now been confirmed that rice can contribute to prolonged low-level arsenic exposure leading to thousands of avoidable premature deaths per year.

A nuclear physics professor from Florida International University was among a team of researchers that proposed something so out of this world, colleagues first hesitated to accept it was possible.

Tropical storm Isaias pounded the US eastern seaboard with driving rain and strong winds on Tuesday, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and prompting flood precautions in New York City.

Sea trout get no peace. They're constantly exposed to new diseases and ailments, many of which are due to climate change and human activity.

Tropical Storm Isaias made landfall late on Aug. 3 and by today, Aug. 4, the huge storm stretched from Virginia to Maine. NASA satellites have been providing forecasters with rainfall rates, cloud top temperatures, storm extent and strength as Isaias batters the U.S. East Coast.

Vitamin B12 is an essential micronutrient that is needed for functions such as maintaining the nervous system and forming blood cells. However, B12 is mainly found in food of animal origin. Those who consume only small amounts of animal products or are vegan must therefore take B12 in the form of pills or eat food to which industrially produced B12 has been added.

Nanoparticles are actively employed in medicine as contrast agents as well as for diagnosis and therapy of various diseases. However, the development of novel multifunctional nanoagents is impeded by the difficulty of monitoring their blood circulation. Researches from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of RAS, Moscow...

From the creation of a single droplet to the flow of a river and the world's hydrological cycle—how water binds together, and to different surfaces, has far-reaching consequences. Examining water through a new lens, a group of scientists has redefined how this binding effect works at the level of the smallest molecule.

Methanol is one of the most important basic chemicals used, for example, to produce plastics or building materials. To render the production process even more efficient, it would be helpful to know more about the copper/zinc oxide/aluminum oxide catalyst deployed in methanol production. To date, however, it hasn't been possible to analyze the structure of its surface under reaction conditions. A...

The journal Nature Communications has published the discovery of a new type of star that is very rich in phosphorus, which could help to explain the origin of phosphorous in our galaxy. This achievement has been made by astronomers of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and researchers in computer science from the Centre for Research in Information and Communication Technology (CITIC)...

Oliver Hofmann and his research group at the Institute of Solid State Physics at TU Graz are working on the optimization of modern electronics. A key role in their research is played by interface properties of hybrid materials consisting of organic and inorganic components, which are used, for example, in OLED displays or organic solar cells. The team simulates these interface properties with...

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an anti-racist movement in the United States, founded as a reaction to many incidents of racism and brutal police violence against black people. The movement got widespread international support in 2020 after the police murder on the Afro-american George Floyd. The murder set off a chain of demonstrations all over the world.