Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages...

The enormous potential of Big Data has already been demonstrated in areas such as financial services and telecommunications. An international team of researchers led by the IPK Leibniz Institute has now tapped the potential of big data for the first time on a large scale for plant research. To this end, data from three projects were used to increase the predictive accuracy for yield in hybrid...

For decades, the ice shelf helping to hold back one of the fastest-moving glaciers in Antarctica has gradually thinned. Analysis of satellite images reveals a more dramatic process in recent years: From 2017 to 2020, large icebergs at the ice shelf's edge broke off, and the glacier sped up.

Georgetown University ecologist Emily Williams first became fascinated with birds not because of their beauty, or their sweet songs. She was riveted by their extraordinary travels.

Transportation infrastructure, such as roads and railway systems, is one of the sectors most threatened by climate change. Extreme weather events—such as flooding, sea level rises and storm surges—repeatedly wreak havoc on transport networks.

Plant functional traits are morphological, physiological or phenological properties that affect plant growth, survival, and reproduction. They hold the promise to explain plant species distribution patterns. However, few studies have linked multiple traits to multiple niche dimensions (i.e., light, water, and nutrients).

Most researchers can draw a line from their current field of study to something in their past that first lit the spark—an engineer who had a knack for fixing things, an economics professor who was always good with numbers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made more people vulnerable to modern slavery and caused an increase in worker exploitation and child labor around the world, Keele researchers have found.

Researchers at Tohoku University have demonstrated the designability of novel magnets with magic mirror-like characteristics in organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite (OIHP)-type compounds.

Shifts in weather patterns induced by climate change will increase extreme heat and reduce rainfall across major crop growing regions, with impacts on agricultural production. Will this trigger a decline in the supply of calories needed to sustain the world's growing population?

ESA's large-class science missions for the timeframe 2035-2050 will focus on moons of the giant Solar System planets, temperate exoplanets or the galactic ecosystem, and new physical probes of the early universe.

An important element for the protection of biodiversity is the willingness of the public to support restoration efforts. Using a longitudinal survey design with 1,000 respondents each in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, scientists led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) investigated which values, beliefs and norms promote conservation-oriented behavior...

The light physical appearance of people with albinism is caused by an inherited condition which results in a lack of melanin. This means people with albinism will have very pale skin, hair, and eyes.

Although scientists often assume that random variations in scientific data fit symmetrical, bell-shaped normal distributions, nature isn't always so tidy. In some cases, a skewed distribution, like the log-normal probability distribution, provides a better fit. Researchers previously found that primary production by ocean phytoplankton and carbon export via particles sinking from the surface are...

Using an ultrafast transmission electron microscope, researchers from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology have, for the first time, recorded the propagation of combined sound and light waves in atomically thin materials.

At night, seven-year-old Miguel likes talking to his father Cesar Rubio about planets and stars. "I try to nurture that," says Rubio, a machinist in Pomona, California, who makes parts for mining and power generation equipment.

A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, the ARC-Plant Protection Research Institute and York University, has found that workers in a species of honeybee found in South Africa reproduce by making near-perfect clones of themselves. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their study of the bees and what they learned about them.

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest example yet observed of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the universe.

Climate change is causing mountain snow to melt more rapidly and glaciers to shrink, but this is making a widely varied impact on water supplies in Asia, a new paper by PSI Senior Scientist Jeffrey Kargel says.

About five years ago, Areg Danagoulian, associate professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), became intrigued by a technique developed by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory that uses a neutron beam to identify unknown materials.

The old double standard lives on.

With Oskar Aszmann and his team at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, MedUni Vienna has long been regarded as a world leader in bionic limb reconstruction. It was only last year that the world's first fully integrated bionic arm prosthesis was developed at MedUni Vienna. This is ready-to-use and is described as "Plug and Play." Although all bionic aids have so far...

A team of scientists at the University of Sussex have for the first time built a modular quantum brain scanner, and used it to record a brain signal. This is the first time a brain signal has been detected using a modular quantum brain sensor anywhere in the world. It's a major milestone for all researchers working on quantum brain imaging technology because modular sensors can be scaled up, like...

Scientists at the University of Oxford have discovered that classical nova explosions are accompanied by the ejection of jets of oppositely directed hot gas and plasma, and that this persists for years following the nova eruption. Previously, such jets had only been encountered emanating from very different systems such as black holes or newly collapsing stars.