When UC Santa Barbara materials scientist Omar Saleh and graduate student Ian Morgan sought to understand the mechanical behaviors of disordered proteins in the lab, they expected that after being stretched, one particular model protein would snap back instantaneously, like a rubber band.

All plants and animals respire, releasing energy from food. At the cellular level, this process occurs in the mitochondria. But there are differences at the molecular level between how plants and animals extract energy from food sources. Discovering those differences could help revolutionize agriculture.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have produced synthetic gene fragments from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This material, which is non-infectious and safe to handle, can help manufacturers produce more accurate and reliable diagnostic tests for the disease.

Audiences shown a video about coral reefs had less willingness to pay (WTP) for conservation than when shown a slideshow of texts and photographs. The findings suggest the importance of the type and amount of information used in science communication.

A new scientific study has revealed unique life strategies of two major groups of microbes that live below Earth's surface. A publication in Frontiers in Microbiology reports that these groups, originally thought to rely on symbiotic relationships with other organisms, may also live independently and use an ancient mode of energy production.

A new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documents dietary shifts in herbivores that lived between 1-3 million years ago in Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley. The research team, led by Enquye Negash, a postdoctoral researcher in the George Washington University Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, examined stable isotopes in the...

Tropical Storm Laura strengthened to a hurricane in the morning hours of Aug. 25, and NASA provided infrared imagery that showed the structure, temperature and rainmaking capabilities of the storm. When NASA's Terra satellite and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead, both provided different images of Laura as it was about to exit the Caribbean Sea and move into the Gulf of Mexico.

The first few weeks of a tree seedling's life can be the most precarious.

For the first time, researchers have designed a fully connected 32-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer register operating at cryogenic temperatures. The new system represents an important step toward developing practical quantum computers.

Three days of monsoon rains have killed at least 90 people and damaged at least a thousand homes across Pakistan, the country's national disaster management agency said Tuesday, as another spell of heavy rain lashed the port city of Karachi.

Storm Laura was upgraded to a destructive hurricane on Tuesday and is forecast to make landfall along the Texas or Louisiana coasts on Wednesday night, after earlier causing 20 deaths in Haiti.

The world is experiencing a sixth global mass extinction event, and a new paper advocates that botanical gardens are uniquely positioned to preserve the world's plant diversity.

Coral conservation efforts could get a boost from a newly developed genotyping "chip"—the first of its kind for corals. The chip allows researchers to genetically identify corals and the symbiotic algae that live within the coral's cells, a vital step for establishing and maintaining genetic diversity in reef restoration efforts. The chip and its accompanying online analysis pipeline help to...

A comparison of the results for conventional point source pollution and bottleneck carbon emissions sources shows that oil and natural gas pipelines are far more important than simple point-source emissions calculations would indicate. It also shifts the emissions liability towards the East Coast from the Midwest. Most surprisingly, the study found that seven out of eight oil pipelines in the U.S....

An international team led by Professor Tian Hui from Peking University has recently measured the global magnetic field of the solar corona for the first time. The team used observations from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter, an instrument designed by Dr. Steve Tomczyk at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA. Their results have been recently published in Science and Science China...

During the process of cellular protein synthesis mistakes can happen. Sometimes, proteins end up being misfolded. They do not shape up into the specific 3-D structure that is required for proper function. Misshaped secreted and transmembrane proteins usually trigger safety mechanisms that dispose of them by shuttling them from their place of synthesis, the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), to the...

A UBC Okanagan researcher has developed a way to predict the future health of the planet's coral reefs.

Not so long ago, astronomers mapped a galaxy far, far away using radio waves and found it has a strikingly familiar shape. In the process, they discovered the object, called TXS 0128+554, experienced two powerful bouts of activity in the last century.

In this image, made with the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), young, radio-emitting jets of material emerge from the core of an elliptical galaxy some 500 million light-years from Earth. After NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected high-energy gamma rays coming from the object, scientists used the VLBA to make high-resolution images of the galaxy, dubbed TXS...

Information can successfully be transmitted through noisy channels using quantum mechanics, according to new research from The University of Queensland and Griffith University.

Many elasmobranch species, which include sharks, skates, and rays, use estuaries as nurseries, for birthing, and as foraging grounds. Florida's Indian River Lagoon is one of 28 estuaries designated as an "estuary of national significance" by the Environmental Protection Agency's National Estuary Program. In recent decades, this estuary has experienced many environmental impacts, such as habitat...

Canadians spend big money dealing with the consequences of homelessness, but the money spent could be far more effective. According to a new McGill-led analysis, housing homeless people with severe mental illness is even more cost-effective than housing homeless people with moderate needs. A Housing-First strategy aimed at helping these individuals regain and keep permanent housing generates...

Record drought and heat have some farmers worried about where and when crops can be grown in the future, even in California where unprecedented microclimate diversity creates ideal growing conditions for many of the most popular items in America's grocery stores. A third of the vegetables and two-thirds of fruits and nuts consumed by Americans are now grown on more than 76,000 farms across the...

Microwave ovens are the mainstay of cooking appliances in our homes. Five years ago, when Reeja Jayan was a new professor at Carnegie Mellon University, she was intrigued by the idea of using microwaves to grow materials. She and other researchers had shown that microwave radiation enabled temperature crystallization and growth of ceramic oxides. Exactly how microwaves did this was not well...