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105 articles from PhysOrg

Explainable AI for decoding genome biology

Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University and Technical University of Munich have developed advanced explainable artificial intelligence (AI) in a technical tour de force to decipher regulatory instructions encoded in DNA. In a report published online February 18, 2021, in Nature Genetics, the team found that a neural network...

Is odor the secret to bats' sex appeal?

When falling in love, humans often pay attention to looks. Many non-human animals also choose a sexual partner based on appearance. Male birds may sport flashy feathers to attract females, lionesses prefer lions with thicker manes and colorful male guppies with large spots attract the most females. But bats are active in the dark. How do they attract mates? Mariana Muñoz-Romo, a senior Latin...

Poor swelter as urban areas of U.S. Southwest get hotter

Acres of asphalt parking lots, unshaded roads, dense apartment complexes and neighborhoods with few parks have taken their toll on the poor. As climate change accelerates, low-income districts in the Southwestern United States are 4 to 7 degrees hotter in Fahrenheit—on average—than wealthy neighborhoods in the same metro regions, University of California, Davis, researchers have found in a new...

Migratory birds track climate across the year

As climate change takes hold across the Americas, some areas will get wetter, and others will get hotter and drier. A new study of the yellow warbler, a widespread migratory songbird, shows that individuals have the same climatic preferences across their migratory range. The work is published Feb. 17 in Ecology Letters.

South American lizard's blood pressure mechanism is more efficient at cool temperatures

The mechanism that keeps arterial blood pressure stable in black and white tegu lizards (Salvator merianae) even as their body temperature varies substantially is more efficient at lower than higher external temperatures, contrary to what has always been believed, and vascular regulation plays a key role in pressure adjustments, according to an article published in PLOS ONE by researchers at the...

Report: Pandemic put U.S. on track to meet Paris climate goals

The pandemic knocked the U.S. back on track to meet its targets in the Paris climate accord, and renewable energy saw a record-setting level of deployment in 2020 as coal consumption dwindled, figures from an independent report released Thursday show, while transportation emissions are expected to jump as the country gets the virus under control.

Investigating the wave properties of matter with vibrating molecules

The working group led by Prof. Stephan Schiller, Ph.D. from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has used a novel, high-precision laser spectroscopic experiment to measure the internal vibration of the simplest molecule. This allowed the researchers to investigate the wave character of the motion of atomic nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. They present their findings in the current...

Pore-like proteins designed from scratch

In a milestone for biomolecular design, a team of scientists has succeeded in creating new proteins that adopt one of the most complex folds known to molecular biology. These designer proteins were shown in the lab to spontaneously fold into their intended structures and embed into lipid membranes. Reported in the journal Science, this research opens the door to the construction of custom...

Temperature affects susceptibility of newts to skin-eating fungus

Eastern newt populations in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada are at greatest risk of infection with a new skin-eating fungus, Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), according to a study published February 18 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Matthew Gray of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, and colleagues.

Metabolic mutations help bacteria resist drug treatment

Bacteria have many ways to evade the antibiotics that we use against them. Each year, at least 2.8 million people in the United States develop an antibiotic-resistant infection, and more than 35,000 people die from such infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Ultrafast electron dynamics in space and time

Often depicted as colorful balloons or clouds, electron orbitals provide information on the whereabouts of electrons in molecules, a bit like fuzzy snapshots. In order to understand the exchange of electrons in chemical reactions, it is not only important to know their spatial distribution but also their motion in time. Scientists from Julich, Marburg, and Graz have now made huge progress in this...

Scientists: Chemical pollution is a global threat that needs global action

An international group of scientists is calling for a global intergovernmental science-policy body for informing policymakers, business, and the public about reducing harm from chemical pollution. In a paper published today in Science, the group explains how limited and fragmented science-policy interactions on chemicals and waste have contributed to widespread health and environmental problems.

The distribution of vertebrate animals redefines temperate and cold climate regions

The distribution of vegetation is routinely used to classify climate regions worldwide, yet whether these regions are relevant to other organisms is unknown. Umeå researchers have established climate regions based on vertebrate species' distributions in a new study published in eLife. They found that while high-energy climate regions are similar across vertebrate and plant groups, there are large...

STEM skills gap modest among IT help desk workers

Workers with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds are typically in high demand—but the demand isn't so overwhelming that a 'skills gap' exists in the labor market for information technology help desk workers, one of the largest computer occupations in the U.S., says new research from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies labor economics and work issues.