New research suggests high levels of dietary cholesterol make mice sicker when infected with influenza. This study links cholesterol in the diet with exacerbation of a viral infection.

Newly developed flexible, porous and highly sensitive nitrogen dioxide sensors that can be applied to skin and clothing have potential applications in health care, environmental health monitoring and military use, according to researchers.

Engineers have developed a low cost, low power technology to help robots accurately map their way indoors, even in poor lighting and without recognizable landmarks or features. The technology uses WiFi signals, instead of light, to help the robot 'see' where it's going.

Some 1.7 million Americans each year acquire hospital infections, resulting in nearly 100,000 deaths from infection-related complications. The biggest culprits: medical devices like catheters, stents and heart valves, whose surfaces often become covered with harmful bacterial films. A novel surface treatment developed by a UCLA-led team of scientists stops microbes from adhering to medical...

An international study provides the first global evaluation of all terrestrial vertebrate species that have not been declared extinct and identifies more than 500 species considered to be 'lost'--those that haven't been seen by anyone in more than 50 years.

People with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) develop tumors on nerves throughout their bodies. Researchers have discovered that nerve cells with the mutation that causes NF1 are hyperexcitable and that suppressing this hyperactivity with the epilepsy drug lamotrigine stops tumor growth in mice.

Scientists have explored the importance of sea travel in prehistory by examining the genomes of ancient Maltese humans and comparing these with the genomes of this period from across Europe. Previous findings from the archaeological team had suggested that towards the end of the third millennium BC the use of the Maltese temples declined. Now, using genetic data from ancient Maltese individuals...

Everyone has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but a new study finds that some individuals weathered the stress of the pandemic better than others, in part, due to their genetics.

Repurposed drugs may have a speedier path to clinical use because they have already been shown to be safe in people. A new study suggests clofoctol may be an effective treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infections in mice.

How will future warming of the planet impact cold-water corals? A new analysis of ancient evidence from the last major global warming event identifies food and oxygen supply as key environmental factors that influence the vitality of cold-water corals in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

A polygenic risk score for type 2 diabetes could be used to help predict disease risk and stratify distinct disease subtypes to better allocate healthcare resources.

The 'ghost' fossils are imprints of single-celled plankton called coccolithophores and their discovery is changing our understanding of how plankton in the oceans are affected by climate change.

A new materials database reveals more than 90,000 known 'topological' materials with persistent electronic properties.

Scientists identified a mutated gene common to many patients with life-threatening infections, and found that people living with 5p- syndrome may be at similar risk.

From extreme weather to another wave of COVID-19, forecasts give decision-makers valuable time to prepare. When it comes to COVID, though, long-term forecasting is a challenge, because it involves human behavior.

Researchers searching for a 'golden spike' to formally define humanity's current geological period -- and acknowledge human impact on our planet -- have announced a major step in their analysis.

A new study takes a data-driven look at influenza viruses circulating among different groups of birds and characterizes which types of birds are involved in spreading the virus. This paper publishes at a time when a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza has been spreading across North America.

A US nationwide study found that increasing green vegetation in large, metropolitan areas could have prevented between 34,000-38,000 deaths, based on data from 2000-2019. The study also showed that overall greenness in metro areas has increased in the past 20 years, by nearly 3 percent between 2000-2010 and 11 percent between 2010-2019.

New research suggests an unseen 'mirror world' of particles that interacts with our world only via gravity that might be the key to solving a major puzzle in cosmology today -- the Hubble constant problem. The Hubble constant is the rate of expansion of the universe today. Predictions for this rate are significantly slower than the rate found by our most precise local measurements. This...

New study on roundworms finds that exposure to male pheromones slows down aging of female eggs. Pheromone exposure decreased offspring death and chromosomal abnormalities by twofold.

Researchers analyzed genomic data from global populations, including thousands of ethnically diverse Africans, to identify genetic variants that may be associated with clinical COVID-19 outcomes.

New research examines the accuracy of information produced by citizen science apps for monitoring bird populations and found that it could actually offer a lot of utility for researchers, with some caveats.

In studies with mouse and human tissue, as well as live mice, researchers report that a snag in the normal process of cleaning up broken DNA in brain cells may hasten the progression of Parkinson's disease. Specifically, the researchers found that a protein dubbed 'STING' responds to clean-up signals in brain cells damaged by Parkinson's disease by creating a cycle of inflammation that may...

A new examination of the way different tissues read information from genes has discovered that the brain and testes appear to be extraordinarily open to the use of rare codons to produce a given protein. Testes of both fruit flies and humans seem to be enriched in protein products of these rarely-used pieces of genetic code, suggesting another layer of control in the genome.