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Researchers from the University of Tsukuba showed that cardiac scar tissue (fibroblasts) can be directly reprogrammed to heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) in mice. By treating mice post-heart attack with a virus carrying cardiac transcription factors, they found that new cardiomyocytes were formed by fibroblasts converting into cardiomyocytes as opposed to fibroblasts fusing with existing cardiomyocytes. This study demonstrates the potential of direct reprograming as a strategy for cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction.

Scientists have uncovered a summertime climate pattern in and around the Arctic that could drive co-occurrences of European heatwaves and large-scale wildfires with air pollution over Siberia and subpolar North America.

New research from Georgia Tech finds that elephants dilate their nostrils in order to create more space in their trunks, allowing them to store up to nine liters of water. They can also suck up three liters per second -- a speed 50 times faster than a human sneeze. The findings could inspire different ways to building robots that manipulate air to move or hold things.

Article topics include Zealandia, Earth's newly recognized continent; the topography of Scandinavia; an interfacial energy penalty; major disruptions in North Atlantic circulation; the Great Bahama Bank; Pityusa Patera, Mars; the end-Permian extinction; and Tongariro and Ruapehu volcanoes, New Zealand.

Global land-use changes -- including forest fragmentation, agricultural expansion and concentrated livestock production -- are creating "hot spots" favorable for bats that carry coronaviruses and where conditions are ripe for the diseases to jump from bats to humans, finds an analysis published this week by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the Politecnico di Milano (Polytechnic University of Milan) and Massey University of New Zealand.

A new study carried out in pig cells suggests previous infection with swine influenza virus (SIV) can protect against the development of porcine respiratory coronavirus (PRCoV) if there is a zero- or three-day interval between infections.

In 1916 and 1917, a musician and book dealer named Giovanni Concina sold three ornately decorated seventeenth-century songbooks to a library in Venice, Italy. Now, more than 100 years later, a musicologist at Penn State has discovered that the manuscripts are fakes, meticulously crafted to appear old but actually fabricated just prior to their sale to the library. The manuscripts are rare among music forgeries in that the songs are authentic, but the books are counterfeit.

Researchers at the University of South Florida have developed a novel approach to mitigating electromigration in nanoscale electronic interconnects that are ubiquitous in state-of-the-art integrated circuits. This was achieved by coating copper metal interconnects with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), an atomically-thin insulating two-dimensional (2D) material that shares a similar structure as the "wonder material" graphene.

The Advanced Modular Manikin, an innovative simulation platform that allows integration of other simulation devices, was developed with support from the Department of Defense.

An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago - nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought.

Army scientists working as part of an international consortium have developed and tested an antibody-based therapy to treat Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV), which is carried by ticks and kills up to 60 percent of those infected. Their results are published online today in the journal Cell.

Sloan Kettering Institute scientists are understanding more about natural killer (NK) cells, which are your allies when it comes to fighting infections and cancer. "There's a lot of interest right now in NK cells as a potential target of immunotherapy."

Recent failed clinical trials of a drug designed to clear the mutant Huntingtin protein that causes Huntington's disease (HD) heightens the need for new approaches for the devastating, incurable, progressive neurodegenerative genetic disorder. Scientists at the Buck Institute have found that the targeting the protein called FK506-binding protein 51 or FKBP51 promotes the clearing of those toxic proteins via autophagy, a natural process whereby cells recycle damaged proteins and mitochondria and use them for nutrition.

In a study of mice, researchers showed how the act of seeing light may trigger the formation of vision-harming tumors in young children who are born with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) cancer predisposition syndrome. The research team, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focused on tumors that grow within the optic nerve, which relays visual signals from the eyes to brain. They discovered that the neural activity which underlies these signals can both ignite and feed the tumors.

Older adults with cognitive impairment are two to three times more likely to fall compared with those without cognitive impairment.

Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences have developed a robotic mechanism for mushroom picking and trimming and demonstrated its effectiveness for the automated harvesting of button mushrooms.

Brown University researchers have developed a technique that could allow deep brain stimulation devices to sense activity in the brain and adjust stimulation accordingly.

Research published by JAMA Network Open shows how non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like mask wearing and physical distancing can help prevent spikes in COVID-19 cases as populations continue to get vaccinated.

A new study analyzing the association between an individual's genetics (genotype) and their observable characteristics resulting from the interaction of genetics and the environment (phenotype), contributes new knowledge to the understanding of human complex traits and diseases.

In a paper published on June 1 in the journal Physical Review X, University of Arizona researchers experimentally show that quantum resources have an advantage over classical -- even in the NISQ era.