The fungus Zymoseptoria tritici causes Septoria tritici blotch, the most destructive fungal disease of wheat grown in temperate climates worldwide. This disease reduces wheat yields by 5-10% per year, causing harvest losses worth between three quarters and one and a half billion Euros in France, Germany and the UK alone, and with another billion euros being spent on chemical control of the fungus. Researchers from the University of Exeter achieved a major breakthrough in the understanding of molecular mechanisms underpinning…

… for treating inflammatory bowel diseases. Like elite firefighters headed into the wilderness to combat an uncontrolled blaze, probiotic bacteria do a better job quelling gut inflammation when they’re equipped with the best gear. A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison demonstrates just how much promise some well-equipped gut-friendly bacteria hold for improving treatments of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Led by Quanyin Hu, a biomedical engineer and professor in the UW–Madison…

Data collection uses a rare, ground-based instrument to pinpoint where and how quickly the landscape is changing. A team from the University of South Florida is on the ground in Hawaii studying Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, to improve efforts that can help protect residents from lava flow. While slow-moving, lava averages 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and destroys everything in its path. The team is collecting data that will be used to create models that can help…

The project, which aims to increase the safety and economy of nuclear reactors, brings together Virginia Tech faculty members from the College of Engineering and the College of Science. Three Virginia Tech professors from nuclear engineering, physics, and industrial engineering are bringing together their expertise and inventions to create a highly innovative technology for high-fidelity, real-time monitoring of nuclear power plant cores. The project would increase the safety and economy of nuclear reactors and has received funds from the National…

Distant star’s dimming was likely a ‘dusty’ companion getting in the way, astronomers say. By their own admission, Anastasios “Andy” Tzanidakis and James Davenport are interested in unusual stars. The University of Washington astronomers were on the lookout for “stars behaving strangely” when an automated alert from the Gaia survey pointed them to Gaia17bpp. Survey data indicated that this star had gradually brightened over a 2 1/2-year period. As Tzanidakis will report on Jan. 10 at the 241st meeting of…

Probing galaxies at much greater distances from Earth may now be within reach. How do stars form in distant galaxies? Astronomers have long been trying to answer this question by detecting radio signals emitted by nearby galaxies. However, these signals become weaker the further away a galaxy is from Earth, making it difficult for current radio telescopes to pick up. Now researchers from Montreal and India have captured a radio signal from the most distant galaxy so far at a…

A special issue of the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment lays the foundation for pursuing structural diversity as a new research direction in ecology. The issue, funded by the National Science Foundation, also describes the digital data collection methods that enable the new research direction, and the applications of the work in various ecosystems. “Structural diversity is thinking about what elements occupy a space and how they have been arranged in the space,” said the special issue’s lead editor, Songlin…

… to promote a circular bioeconomy. Funding awarded for developing tools to harness marine microbiome data for biotechnological applications and ecosystem services. The European Commission has funded the BlueRemediomics project, which will develop novel tools and approaches to catalogue marine microbiome data and marine culture collections. These tools will help facilitate the development of industrial processes that reduce waste, increase the reuse of natural products and by-products, and improve aquaculture – the farming of seafood. The project simultaneously aims to…

Researchers repurpose 3D printing to discover high-performance material. As the world looks for ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions, researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have shown that a new 3D-printed superalloy could help power plants generate more electricity while producing less carbon. Sandia scientists, collaborating with researchers at Ames National Laboratory, Iowa State University and Bruker Corp., used a 3D printer to create a high-performance metal alloy, or superalloy, with an unusual composition that makes it stronger and lighter than…

Numerous visual illusions are caused by limits in the way our eyes and visual neurones work – rather than more complex psychological processes, new research shows. Researchers examined illusions in which an object’s surroundings affect the way we see its colour or pattern. Scientists and philosophers have long debated whether these illusions are caused by neural processing in the eye and low-level visual centres in the brain, or involve higher-level mental processes such as context and prior knowledge. In the…

Princeton researchers used data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to deduce that a catastrophic event likely created the prolific Geminids meteoroid stream. The Geminids meteoroids light up the sky as they race past Earth each winter, producing one of the most intense meteor showers in our night sky. Mysteries surrounding the origin of this meteoroid stream have long fascinated scientists because, while most meteor showers are created when a comet emits a tail of ice and dust, the Geminids stem…

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe accomplished a milestone on June 27, 2023 – its 16th orbit of the Sun. This included a close approach to the Sun (known as perihelion) on June 22, 2023, where the spacecraft came within 5.3 million miles of the solar surface while moving at 364,610 miles per hour. The spacecraft emerged from the solar flyby healthy and operating normally. On Aug. 21, 2023, Parker Solar Probe will swing past Venus for its sixth flyby of the planet….

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe executed a short maneuver on Aug. 3, 2023, that kept the spacecraft on track to hit the aim point for the mission’s sixth Venus flyby on Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. ​ Operating on preprogrammed commands from mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, Parker fired its small thrusters for 4.5 seconds, enough to adjust its trajectory by 77 miles and speed up – by 1.4 seconds – its closest approach…

A vital component of the batteries at the heart of electric vehicles and grid energy storage, lithium is key to a clean energy future. But producing the silvery-white metal comes with significant environmental costs. Among them is the vast amount of land and time needed to extract lithium from briny water, with large operations running into the dozens of square miles and often requiring over a year to begin production. Now, researchers at Princeton have developed an extraction technique that…

…could reduce daily diabetes shots to just three a year. Dietary management drugs have transformed Type 2 diabetes care, but daily injection routines are challenging for some patients. A new hydrogel could mean shots just three times a year. Materials engineers at Stanford University have developed a novel hydrogel drug delivery system that transforms daily or weekly injections of diabetes and weight control drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, Trulicity, Victoza, and others to just once every four months. In a new…

In a study that could enhance weather forecasting, Utah researchers discover that how snowflakes move is astonishingly predictable. Tim Garrett has devoted his scientific career to characterizing snowflakes, the protean particles of ice that form in clouds and dramatically change as they fall to Earth. Now the University of Utah atmospheric scientist is unlocking the mystery of how snowflakes move in response to air turbulence that accompanies snowfall using novel instrumentation developed on campus. And after analyzing more than half…

The Lehigh University Plasma Control Group, supported by a new $1.6 million DOE grant, continues work on advancing plasma dynamics simulation capabilities and algorithms to control superheated gasses that hold promise for limitless, clean energy. As researchers around the world work to develop viable alternatives to fossil fuels, the prospect of nuclear fusion—harnessing the same energy-generating reactions that power the sun—has grown increasingly attractive to private equity firms. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Energy launched a partnership with investors in the…

Planting new coral in degraded reefs can lead to rapid recovery – with restored reefs growing as fast as healthy reefs after just four years, new research shows. Reefs worldwide are severely threatened by local and global pressures. In Indonesia, where the study was carried out, destructive blast fishing destroyed large reef areas 30-40 years ago – with no signs of recovery until now. The Mars Coral Reef Restoration Programme attempts to restore degraded reefs by transplanting coral fragments onto…

North Carolina State University researchers have demonstrated a technique that allows people who manufacture metal machine parts with 3D printing technologies to conduct automated quality control of manufactured parts during the finishing process. The technique allows users to identify potential flaws without having to remove the parts from the manufacturing equipment, making production time more efficient. “One of the reasons people are attracted to 3D printing and other additive manufacturing technologies is that these technologies allow users to quickly replace…

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center’s Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center have developed a 3D genomic profiling technique to identify small precancerous lesions in the pancreas — called pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias (PanINs) — that lead to one of the most aggressive, deadly pancreatic cancers. Published May1 in Nature, the results provide the most detailed 3D map of precancerous lesions in the human pancreas to date, laying a foundation for future early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and other types of…