Plants lack nerves, yet they can sensitively detect touch from other organisms. In the Venus flytrap, highly sensitive sensory hairs act as tactile sensing organs; when touched twice in quick succession, they initiate the closure cascade that captures prey. However, the molecular identity of the touch sensor has remained unclear.
For over three decades, HIV has played an elaborate game of hide-and-seek with researchers, making treating—and possibly even curing—the disease a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to achieve.
But scientists at Case Western Reserve University have made a breakthrough discovery that could fundamentally change strategies for treating HIV.
The team identified for the first time how HIV enters a dormant state in infected cells that allows the virus to “hide” from the immune system and current treatments.
In tissue biopsies, cancer cells are frequently observed to have nuclei (the cell’s genetic information storage) that are larger than normal. Until now, this was considered a sign that the cancer was worsening, but the exact cause and effect had not been elucidated.
In a new study, a KAIST research team has found that cancer cell nuclear hypertrophy is not a cause of malignancy but a temporary response to replication stress, and that it can, in fact, suppress metastasis. This discovery is expected to lead to the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for cancer and metastasis inhibition.
The research team, led by Professor Joon Kim of the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, in collaboration with the research teams of Professor Ji Hun Kim and Professor You-Me Kim, confirmed that DNA replication stress (the burden and error signal that occurs when a cell copies its DNA), which is common in cancer cells, causes the “actin” protein inside the nucleus to aggregate (polymerize), which is the direct cause of the nuclear enlargement.
Depression and anxiety disorders are among the most widespread mental health disorders, with estimates suggesting that they affect around 264 million and 284 million people worldwide, respectively. Depression is a mood disorder characterized by persistent sadness and a loss of interest in everyday activities, while anxiety disorders are marked by high levels of nervousness, worry and fear, either in specific situations or generalized.
Today, there are several treatment options for both depression and anxiety disorders, including both pharmacological drugs and specific types of psychotherapy. Yet available therapeutic strategies are not effective for all affected individuals; thus, identifying alternative treatments could be highly advantageous.
Researchers at the University of Osaka, Kobe University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine and other institutes have recently developed a new molecule called PA-915, which could hold some promise for the treatment of depression, anxiety and stress-related disorders. In a paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, they showed that the molecule suppressed both anxiety-like and depression-like behaviors in mice who were placed under high levels of stress.
In the near future, you may not need to touch a keypad to select a tip or pay for large purchases. All it may take is a swipe, tap or other quick gesture.
The innovation utilizes near-field communication (NFC), the short-range wireless technology embedded in smartphones, payment cards and terminals, passports and key fobs. UBC computer scientists say it could help prevent the spread of germs through touchpads, speed up transactions, and improve accessibility for users unable to press buttons.
Researchers debuted the technology in a paper at the User Interface Software and Technology conference.
Are you worried that artificial intelligence and humans will go to war? AI experts are. In 2023, a group of elite thinkers signed onto the Center for AI Safety’s statement that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
In a survey published in 2024, 38% to 51% of top-tier AI researchers assigned a probability of at least 10% to the statement “advanced AI leading to outcomes as bad as human extinction.”
The worry is not about the Large Language Models (LLMs) of today, which are essentially huge autocomplete machines, but about Advanced General Intelligence (AGI)—still hypothetical long-term planning agents that can substitute for human labor across a wide range of society’s economic systems.
The terahertz (THz) band of the electromagnetic spectrum holds immense promise for next-generation technologies, including high-speed wireless communication, advanced encryption, and medical imaging. However, manipulating THz waves has long been a technical challenge, since these frequencies interact weakly with most natural materials.
Over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly turned to metasurfaces to tackle this problem. These are ultrathin materials carefully engineered to exhibit specialized properties, providing unprecedented control over THz waves.
Ideally, metasurfaces for THz applications in encryption and holography should be easily configurable, featuring an adjustable response that can be controlled externally. Despite this, tunable metasurface systems often rely on cumbersome or energy-inefficient methods, such as external thermal control.
New research from Indiana University School of Medicine scientists has revealed that a well-known cancer-fighting gene also plays an unexpected role in regulating how certain immune cells can support tumor growth. This insight into pancreatic cancer progression could lead to more effective treatments against one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
The study, recently published in Science Advances, focused on M2-like macrophages, a subtype of immune cells found in the tumor environment that are known to weaken the body’s ability to fight cancer. The researchers examined how a gene called serine/threonine kinase 11 (STK11) influences these cells. They found that when STK11 is missing in macrophages, those cells switch into a tumor-supporting state.
“STK11 was originally identified as a tumor suppressor and extensive studies have examined the gene’s functions and mechanisms in regulating cancer cell growth,” said Kai Yang, PhD, corresponding author of the study, an associate professor of pediatrics and microbiology and immunology at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher with the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Parkinson’s disease causes both movement and cognitive deficits, and for a long time both were thought to be caused by the accumulation of a protein called alpha-synuclein in the brain. But a new Nature Communications study has found that the cognitive deficits arise through a different—and unexpected—mechanism.
The new findings suggest that mutations in a gene called GBA—which are a risk factor for developing Parkinson’s disease—drive cognitive decline by disrupting how neurons communicate with each other in the brain. Patients living with Parkinson’s disease can experience cognitive symptoms such as difficulty with concentrating and forgetfulness. Over time, many go on to develop dementia, in which they experience profound memory loss among other symptoms.
“Dementia is often the scariest thing for many patients with Parkinson’s disease, more so than motor symptoms,” says Sreeganga Chandra, PhD, professor of neurology and of neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and the study’s principal investigator. “We are trying to understand the basis of cognitive dysfunction and whether we can find targets to ameliorate it.”