Has the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies ever taken you back to afternoons at your grandmother's house? Has an old song ever brought back memories of a first date? The ability to remember relationships between unrelated items (an odor and a location, a song and an event) is known as associative memory.
To break down toxic proteins more quickly, immune cells in the brain can join together to form networks when needed. However, in certain mutations that can cause Parkinson's disease, this cooperation is impaired.
When the universe was about 3 billion years old, just 20% of its current age, it experienced the most prolific period of star birth in its history. But when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in northern Chile gazed toward cosmic objects in this period, they found something odd: six early, massive, 'dead' galaxies that had run out of the cold hydrogen gas needed to make stars. Without more fuel for star formation, these galaxies were literally running on empty.
A team has discovered a mechanism by which transcription factor KLF4 can help to organize chromatin, thus influencing gene expression.
The renewable proportion of petrol is set to increase to 20 per cent over the coming years, meaning the discovery of a new production pathway for these additives could help in the fight to cut carbon dioxide emissions and tackle climate change. Engineers propose a process to generate one such additive, solketal, using waste from both biochemical and nuclear industries -- termed a nuclear biorefinery.
Researchers have discovered an 'ultra-potent' monoclonal antibody against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, including the delta variant.
Having good room ventilation to dilute and disperse indoor air pollutants has long been recognized, and with the COVID-19 pandemic its importance has become all the more heightened. But new experiments show that certain circumstances will result in poor mixing of room air, meaning airborne contaminants may not be effectively dispersed and removed by building level ventilation.
A new systematic review and meta-analysis shows we can lose around 1.4 per cent of our entire body fat through strength training alone, which is similar to how much we might lose through cardio or aerobics.
Few studies have explored the effect of psychological stressors on behavior, and neurogenesis, in the context of depression. With the elucidation of a vicarious social defeat stress mouse model, scientists have successfully endeavored in connecting the dots between psychological stress and depression.
Studying a species of beetle mite, an international research team has demonstrated for the first time that animals can survive over very long periods of time (possibly millions of years) entirely without sex.
A new and much faster quantum cryptography protocol has been developed: Usually, quantum cryptography is done with photons that can be in two different states. Using eight different states, cryptographic keys can be generated much faster and with much more robustness against interference.
Researchers have gained significant new insight into the genetic regulation of blood cells. They achieved this by analyzing a dataset that included more than 31,000 study participants, to date the largest dataset of its kind.
Right now, U.S. veterinarians rely on three types of drugs to kill the hookworms, but the parasites appear to becoming resistant to all of them. Dog hookworms can also infect humans.
Nuclear thermal propulsion, which uses heat from nuclear reactions as fuel, could be used one day in human spaceflight, possibly even for missions to Mars. Its development, however, poses a challenge. The materials used must be able to withstand high heat and bombardment of high-energy particles on a regular basis. A nuclear engineering doctoral student is contributing to research that could make these advancements more feasible.
Researchers have found that learning -- a universal feature of intelligence in living beings -- can be mimicked in synthetic matter, a discovery that in turn could inspire new algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI).
Researchers have designed a 4D-printed soft robot that self-assembles when heated and can take on challenging tasks like rolling uphill and navigating a bumpy and unpredictable landscape.
By studying the aerodynamics of wind-dispersed seeds, researcher developed a flying microchip (or 'microflier') that catches the wind and passively flies through the air. Packed with ultra-miniaturized technology, including sensors and wireless communication capabilities, these microfliers could be used to monitor air pollution, airborne disease and more.
A species of roundworm that is widely used in biological research can sense and respond to sound, despite having no ear-like organs.
While investigating the data of young, distant galaxies observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers noticed unexpected emissions coming from seemingly empty regions in space that, a global research team confirmed, came actually from two hitherto undiscovered galaxies heavily obscured by cosmic dust. This discovery suggests that numerous such galaxies might still be hidden in the early Universe, many more than researchers were expecting.
A large international research team has identified three key indicators that together summarize the integrative function of terrestrial ecosystems: 1. the capacity to maximize primary productivity, 2. the efficiency of using water, and 3. the efficiency of using carbon. The monitoring of these key indicators will allow a description of ecosystem function that shapes the ability to adapt, survive and thrive in response to climatic and environmental changes.
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