110 articles from FRIDAY 10.3.2023

Enzyme ATE1 plays role in cellular stress response, opening door to new therapeutic targets

A new paper in Nature Communications illuminates how a previously poorly understood enzyme works in the cell. Many diseases are tied to chronic cellular stress, and UMBC's Aaron T. Smith and colleagues discovered that this enzyme plays an important role in the cellular stress response. Better understanding how this enzyme functions and is controlled could lead to the discovery of new therapeutic...

Monkey rock bashing resembles tools made by early human ancestors

Hefting a potato-size rock, wild long-tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) in Thailand smash oil palm nuts on stone anvils. As they pound away, sharp flakes sometimes fly off from their hammer stones— flakes that are “almost indistinguishable” from stone tools made by early human relatives more than 3 million years ago , according...

Surprising similarities in stone tools of early humans and monkeys

Researchers have discovered artefacts produced by old world monkeys in Thailand that resemble stone tools, which historically have been identified as intentionally made by early hominins. Until now, sharp-edged stone tools were thought to represent the onset of intentional stone tool production, one of the defining and unique characteristics of hominin evolution. This new study challenges long...

Scientists identify substance that may have sparked life on Earth

A team of Rutgers scientists dedicated to pinpointing the primordial origins of metabolism—a set of core chemical reactions that first powered life on Earth—has identified part of a protein that could provide scientists clues to detecting planets on the verge of producing life.

Topological charges of periodically kicked molecules

The peculiar topological properties of some forms of matter have been researched for decades. Now, researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) have discovered topological properties of simple diatomic molecules driven to rotation by laser pulses.