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Diagnosing a rare medical condition is difficult. Identifying a treatment for it can take years of trial and error. In a serendipitous intersection of research expertise, an ill patient in this case a child and innovative technology, Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome has gone from a list of symptoms to a successful treatment in just 16 months.

Forensics specialists can use a commercial assay targeting mitochondrial DNA to accurately discriminate between wolf, coyote and dog species. The genetic information could aid authorities in prosecuting hunting jurisdiction violations and preserving protected species.

Every spring, the Daylight Saving Time shift robs people of an hour of sleep - and a new study shows that DNA plays a role in how much the time change affects individuals. People whose genetic profile makes them more likely to be "early birds" can adjust to the time change in a few days. But those who tend to be "night owls" could take more than a week to get back on track.

EPFL researchers have found that a form of neuron-to-neuron communication that has long been dismissed as 'background noise' is required to keep nerve junctions intact as animals age. The finding suggests that defects in this type of neural communication could contribute to neurodegenerative disorders and other brain conditions.

Researchers in the BOTTLE Consortium, including from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Portsmouth, have identified using enzymes as a more sustainable approach for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic in single-use beverage bottles, clothing, and food packaging that are becoming increasingly relevant in addressing the environmental challenge of plastic pollution. An analysis shows enzyme-recycled PET has potential improvement over conventional, fossil-based methods of PET production across a broad spectrum of energy, carbon, and socioeconomic impacts.

Although photovoltaic systems constitute a promising way of harnessing solar energy, power grid managers need to accurately predict their power output to schedule generation and maintenance operations efficiently. Scientists from Incheon National University, Korea, have developed a machine learning-based approach that can more accurately estimate the output of photovoltaic systems than similar algorithms, paving the way to a more sustainable society.

The high monetary cost and environmental toll of disposable N95 masks could be dramatically cut by adopting reusable masks, according to an MIT study that calculated the financial and environmental cost of several different mask usage scenarios.

Certain regions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome might be a suitable target for future drugs. This is what researchers at Goethe University, together with their collaborators in the international COVID-19-NMR consortium, have now discovered. With the help of dedicated substance libraries, they have identified several small molecules that bind to certain areas of the SARS-CoV-2 genome that are almost never altered by mutations.

To better understand how familiarity impacts social fishes, a group of research scientists studied this idea using schooling coral reef fish.

Up to now passenger cars are classified by experts in each country into categories such as micro, small, middle, upper middle, large and luxury class. But this old fashioned method has limitations in terms of compatibility. Moreover, some crossover vehicles are difficult to categorize. Empa scientists found a method to do this sorting fairly and in an efficient way by browsing databases with machine learning methods.

Scientists who study glacier ice have found viruses nearly 15,000 years old in two ice samples taken from the Tibetan Plateau in China. Most of those viruses, which survived because they had remained frozen, are unlike any viruses that have been cataloged to date.

New research sows that the same framework that can detect Alzheimer's disease in the cerebrospinal fluid of living patients can also detect other forms of neurodegeneration, like frontotemporal degeneration.

The Indian Ocean has been warming much more than other ocean basins over the last 50-60 years. While temperature changes basin-wide can be unequivocally attributed to human-induced climate change, it is difficult to assess whether contemporary heat and freshwater changes in the Indian Ocean since 1980 represent an anthropogenically-forced transformation of the hydrological cycle. What complicates the assessment is factoring in natural variations, regional-scale trends, a short observational record, climate model uncertainties, and the ocean basin's complex circulation.

When it was discovered in the 1980s in Argentina, this hadrosaur was diagnosed with a fractured foot. However, a new analysis now shows that this ornithopod commonly known as the duck-billed dinosaur actually had a tumour some 70 million years ago, as well as two painful fractures in the vertebrae of its tail, despite which, it managed to survive for some time.

In a new study, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists discovered that the alphaCT1 molecule may help repair the skin's collagen matrix by altering how scar-forming cells behave. The findings were published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine have developed a computerized decision analytic model to compare projected outcomes of three vaccine strategies: a patient opts for a messenger RNA vaccine, a patient decides to get an adenovirus vector vaccine or the patient simply forgoes a vaccine altogether.

New findings from researchers at the University of Connecticut and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, published in Forest Ecology and Management, finds that a number of bat species native to the Northeast are highly active in newly created forest spaces, foraging for food at higher rates than is typical of mature forests.

Despite the best efforts of industry to work towards sustainability, most plastics (or polymers) are still made using non-renewable fossil fuels. However, researchers have now found an economical method for producing biobased acrylate resins. The study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, shows how all the synthesis steps, from initial building blocks right up to polymerization, can be carried out in a single reactor (one pot), minimizing environmental impact.

National data analyzed by University of Minnesota Medical School researchers show that nearly 40 percent of all funds used to pay for medical school are expected to come from family or personal sources and scholarships. The prevalence of these sources, however, varies widely by race and socioeconomic status.

Well over six million people globally have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD), which has an enormous impact on the lives of patients, their families, and caregivers and is incurring mounting costs for society.