More than a third of FDA-approved drugs work by targeting a G protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR. The human body has more than 800 types of GPCRs that provide cells with information about the external environment to calibrate responses. Drugs that either block or activate GPCRs are used to treat a wide range of diseases including hypertension, pain and inflammation. Most drugs bind to the outside...

As part of a new NASA Quantum Pathways Institute consisting of a multi-university research team, UC Santa Barbara professor of electrical and computer engineering Daniel Blumenthal will help to build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space.

Passion fruit has become an important fruit crop in Taiwan and Southeast Asia due to its special taste and nutrient-rich flesh. However, it is seriously harmed by viruses, blight, and brown spot diseases. As a result of virus disease, producers have to renew passion fruit plantlets every year to ensure yield and fruit quality.

Childhood volunteering encourages those from politically disengaged homes to go on and vote when they are older, a major new study shows.

A prototype telescope designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers has been launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida to the International Space Station (ISS).

A new study from the University of Florida investigates how climate change and the spread of invasive species can combine to create a dual threat to biodiversity.

In organic solar cells, carbon-based polymers convert light into charges that are passed to an acceptor. This type of material has great potential, but to unlock this, a better understanding is needed of the way in which charges are produced and transported along the polymers.

Drama or comedy? Couples who want to spend Sunday evenings together in front of the TV but like different movie genres face this question again every weekend. Do they agree on a movie and watch it together? Or does each one watch "their" favorite movie alone? And when they watch TV together, do they take turns picking?

The rapidly-growing bottled water industry can undermine progress towards a key sustainable development goal: safe water for all, says a new United Nations report.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving exponential growth in data transmission, and cost-effective, ultrafast, and compact optical communication technologies are urgently needed to manage the exploding data transmission volume. Vortex beams, which exhibit a swirling shape around the axis of propagation, have the potential to increase the amount of information that can be stored at the same...

A team of graduate students and researchers from the University of Miami is navigating through the northern Atlantic Ocean on an international research voyage to learn more about how the ocean is changing through time.

Mandatory water restrictions are being lifted for nearly 7 million people across Southern California following winter storms that have boosted reservoirs and eased a severe shortage that emerged during the state's driest three-year period on record.

The scientific nonprofit that tracks the white shark population in Cape Cod waters identified 55 sharks never before documented in the area during its most recent research season, but experts say that's no reason for tourists who flock to the vacation hotpsot every summer to be afraid of going in the water.

As a scruffy gray-and-brown wolf stood in a grassy Idaho clearing, it fixed its gaze straight ahead. Another dark wolf trotted down a muddy dirt road. A third stepped over gravelly terrain, its mouth open as it panted in the sun. Motion-triggered cameras, placed by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, snapped photos of the wild animals along trails. Later, the agency would use those photos to...

The U.S. immigration system is slow and stymied by politics, but the border crisis represents an opportunity to address gaps in the American labor market, according to a new report from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Half of all women scientists worldwide have been the victim of workplace sexual harassment at some point during their career, according to a survey published on Thursday.

As river water gushed through a broken levee, thousands of people in a California farming town were forced to evacuate as their homes were flooded and businesses destroyed.

The elusive striped "cat-fox" familiar mostly to Corsican shepherds and as a source of intrigue to scientists, is indeed its own species specific to the French Mediterranean island, the French office for Biodiversity (OFB) announced Thursday.

Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought's grip on parts of the western U.S. as national forecasters and climate experts warned Thursday that some areas should expect more flooding as the snow begins to melt.

Excavations led by researchers from the University of Gothenburg show that the coveted metal copper and a sheltered location turned the Cypriot village of Hala Sultan Tekke into one of the most important trade hubs of the Late Bronze Age. The researchers' study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports confirms the importance of the Bronze Age city in the first period of...

Germany, India, Mexico, and Spain. As multiparty democracies, these countries present a more complex picture of what brings people together—or divides them. Using social media data, a group of researchers proposes a novel approach to measuring polarization in nations with multiple political parties.

In a study published in the journal Science China Life Sciences, Miichthys miiuy in teleost was taken as the research object to explore whether lncRNA can play a regulatory role in the process of teleost resisting susceptible pathogenic Vibrio infection. And the researchers found that the expression of lncRNA TARL was up-regulated in the spleen tissue of M. miiuy stimulated by LPS.

Common sense suggests that space missions can only happen with multimillion-dollar budgets, materials built to withstand the unforgiving conditions beyond Earth's atmosphere, and as a result of work done by highly trained specialists.

EPFL researchers have studied Vernier, a city in the canton of Geneva, as the pilot site for an interactive map that explores our relationship with the built and natural environments.