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MIT researchers have uncovered a mechanism by which dissolved salts can crystallize in a way that makes it easy to remove them from surfaces, potentially helping to prevent fouling of metal surfaces.

Expanding the study of prehistoric permafrost thawing to North America, researchers found evidence in mineral deposits from caves in Canada that permafrost thawing took place as recently as 400,000 years ago, in temperatures not much warmer than today. But they did not find evidence the thawing caused the release of predicted levels of carbon dioxide stored in the frozen terrain.

Earth's permafrost shifted to a more stable state in the last 400,000 years and has been less susceptible to thawing since then, according to a new study by MIT researchers and their colleagues.

In wild soil, bacteria that eat other bacteria consume more resources and grow faster than their prey, a new study from Northern Arizona University finds. The results of the study, published in the journal mBio this week, show predation is an important dynamic in the wild microbial realm, and suggest that these predators play an outsized role in how elements are stored in or released from soil.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have recently published the results of their investigations into adaptive radiation, which is when organisms rapidly evolve from an ancestral species into novel forms. Their genetic analyses of cichlids in Lake Victoria highlight several candidate genes that may drive adaptive radiation and provide evidence for decisive selective events that cause particular genetic variants to quickly gain dominance within populations. These findings broaden scientific understanding of how new species arise.

Socially just policies aimed at limiting the Earth's human population hold tremendous potential for advancing equity while simultaneously helping to mitigate the effects of climate change, Oregon State University researchers say.

As of April 2021, more than 3 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19. Early in the pandemic, researchers developed accurate diagnostic tests and identified health conditions that correlated with worse outcomes. However, a clinical predictor of who faces the highest risk of being hospitalized, put on a ventilator or dying from the disease has remained largely out of reach.

While evolution is normally thought of as occurring over millions of years, researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that bacteria can evolve in response to climate change in 18 months. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists from UCI found that evolution is one way that soil microbes might deal with global warming.

The international consortium today announces a series of publications in a special collection of Nature that resulted from the first phase of the Vertebrate Genome Project (VGP) to release 16 high quality reference genomes. The research group led by Professor Guojie Zhang of the Department of Biology has made substantial contributions to the VGP and this first wave of publications.

A new series of Penn State studies has found that shopper pickiness can go beyond shopping for the "best" option. The researchers define what it means to be "picky" and also developed a scale for measuring shopper pickiness.

More green spaces in an area is associated with a lower racial disparity in COVID-19 infection rates, according to the first study to examine the relationship between the supply of green spaces and reduced disparity in infectious disease rates.

New research published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports shows that ENSO, the weather-shaping cycle of warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean along the Equator, is a strong predictor of cacao harvests up to two years before a harvest.

Chocolate is a beloved treat, but sometimes the cocoa beans that go into bars and other sweets have unpleasant flavors or scents, making the final products taste bad. Surprisingly, only a few compounds associated with these stinky odors are known. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have identified the two compounds that cause musty, moldy scents in cocoa -- work that can help chocolatiers ensure the quality of their products.

People of color, those with a higher income and younger individuals are more likely to participate in clinical trials during their cancer treatment according to a new study from the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

Using naturalistic driving data and machine learning techniques, researchers have developed highly accurate algorithms for detecting mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older drivers. Naturalistic driving data refer to data captured through in-vehicle recording devices or other technologies in the real-world setting. These data could be processed to measure driving exposure, space and performance in great detail.

Uncapped, idle oil wells could be leaking millions of kilograms of methane each year into the atmosphere and surface water, according to a study by the University of Cincinnati.

The highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant that recently emerged in South Africa, known as B.1.351, has scientists wondering how existing COVID-19 vaccines and therapies can be improved to ensure strong protection. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry used computer modeling to reveal that one of the three mutations that make variant B.1.351 different from the original SARS-CoV-2 reduces the virus' binding to human cells -- but potentially allows it to escape some antibodies.

To be more energy efficient, many people have replaced their incandescent lights with light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. However, those currently on the market emit a lot of blue light, which has been linked to eye troubles and sleep disturbances. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed a prototype LED that reduces -- instead of masks -- the blue component, while also making colors appear just as they do in natural sunlight.

Difficult-to-treat, chronic wounds in preclinical models healed with normal scar-free skin after treatment with an acellular product discovered at Mayo Clinic. Derived from platelets, the purified exosomal product, known as PEP, was used to deliver healing messages into cells of preclinical animal models of ischemic wounds. The Mayo Clinic research team documented restoration of skin integrity, hair follicles, sweat glands, skin oils and normal hydration.

Scientists have launched an ambitious effort to produce high-quality reference genomes for all vertebrate species, from mammals to birds and reptiles. The result could be discoveries with implications for animal conservation as well as human health and disease.