Highly antibiotic-resistant strain of MRSA that arose in pigs can jump to humans

Apple trees respond to a common viral infection by targeting a gene in the same pathway that genetic scientists are aiming at, find scientists from The University of Manchester. The discovery published in Current Biology shows that the fruit trees, which develop rubbery branches when infected, mirror how scientists are trying to genetically modify trees.

A video of a newborn baby with redness and cracks on the skin has gone viral because of its ‘alien-like’ appearance. People are calling it ‘demon child’ and ‘alien baby.’ According to the video, this unusual baby was born to Sajeda, wife of Shafiq, in the Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, a state in India.

More than half of known human pathogenic diseases such as dengue, hepatitis, pneumonia, malaria, Zika and more, can be aggravated by climate change. That eye-opening and startling finding is the topic of a research paper published on August 8 in Nature Climate Change by a team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Cold atmospheric plasma can affect cell adhesion with a significant role in stem cell adhesion. In a new study now published in Scientific Reports, Kobra Hajizadeh and a team of researchers in the departments of physics and plasma research at the Islamic Azhad University and the CNRS, France, studied the effect of plasma treatment on human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (HBMMSC) adhesion to understand cell differentiation and cell fate.

American farmers harvest nearly five times more corn than wheat. But this productive, useful crop requires fertilizer to reach its maximum potential, and is often not able to take up all the fertilizer it's given. Excess nitrogen, in particular, can flow away from farms and damage waterways. That lost nitrogen can't help future crops, either.

Researchers in Japan have developed a new technique for creating polymers. This discovery is expected to lead to the development of plastics that are more environmentally friendly, heat resistant, and transparent. Previous research, such as that performed by Nobel laureate Giulio Natta's group in the 1960s, created polymers using a...

A research team from Shanghai Advanced Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed an external seeding mechanism, termed echo-enabled harmonic cascade (EEHC), for generating coherent and ultrashort soft X-ray pulses. The results were published in Optica. The generation of intense, tunable, and fully coherent pulses in the...

Researchers led by Prof. Zhang Xiaoming and Prof. Chen Jinfeng from the Institute of Zoology (IOZ) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. Qian Weiqiang from Peking University have unraveled a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA)-based regulatory mechanism that modulates the balance between plant immunity and growth. The study...

Most of us have felt the shock from static electricity by touching a metallic object after putting on a sweater or walking across a carpet. This occurs as a result of charge build-up whenever two dissimilar materials (such as our body and the fabric) come in contact with each other.

About 15 years ago, a group of researchers discovered mutant zebrafish. The eyes of these zebrafish did not develop correctly, resulting in significantly smaller eyes than those of wild zebrafish. Now, one of these researchers—Prof. Ichiro Masai—who leads the Developmental Neurobiology Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), alongside his former Ph.D. student Dr. Swathy Babu, has used this mutation to understand the role of a protein in preventing cell death. This could have vast implications for the development of cancer therapy and for understanding how the cell cycle is regulated.

Local species richness, the number of species that coexist in a local community, is a key measure of biodiversity. Scientists have known for more than 200 years that large numbers of local species live near the equator, then decline toward the middle and higher latitudes. However, why local species richness differs from place to place remains largely unknown.

New research describes food systems designed not by the logic of growth such as efficiency and extraction, but by principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons, and care. It argues that food systems can instead be the foundation of healthy communities, ecologies and economies. "For this agenda-setting article, we've reviewed the...

Researchers have developed a transparent protective coating material that can self-heal in 30 minutes when exposed to sunlight. Excellent durability of automotive coatings is the most important issue in protecting a vehicle surface. In addition, protective coating materials should be colorless and transparent so that the original color of the product can be seen. However, it is difficult to provide a self-healing function while satisfying all of these conditions. Materials with free molecular movement have high self-healing efficiency, but have low durability, whereas materials with high hardness and excellent durability have remarkably poor self-healing performance.

Nature strives for chaos. That's a nice, comforting phrase when yet another coffee cup has toppled over the computer keyboard and you imagine you could wish the sugary, milky brew back into the coffee cup—where it had been just seconds before. But wishing won't work. Because, as mentioned, nature strives for chaos.

There's nothing like the fresh eggs from your own hens, the more than 400,000 Australians who keep backyard chooks will tell you. Unfortunately, it's often not just freshness and flavor that set their eggs apart from those in the shops. Our research, newly published in Environmental Pollution, found backyard hens'...

Biotechnologist Pascale Daran-Lapujade and her group at Delft University of Technology managed to build human muscle genes in the DNA of baker's yeast. This is the first time researchers have successfully placed such a vital human feature into a yeast cell. Their research was published in Cell Reports. The feature...

Scientists at Newcastle University have uncovered a source of oxygen that may have influenced the evolution of life before the advent of photosynthesis. The pioneering research project, led by Newcastle University's School of Natural and Environmental Sciences and published today in Nature Communications, uncovered a mechanism that can generate hydrogen peroxide from rocks during the movement of geological faults.

Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) is a hormone that greatly influences growth in fetuses and children, but also body maintenance and metabolism in adults. IGF regulates cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival by activating IGF receptors distributed in cell membranes of various tissues. However, IGF is so unstable that its half-life is less than 10 minutes in its free state.

When racehorses enter training at about 2 years old, they can develop tiny stress fractures and new bone formations in their legs. This condition, called bucked shin, occurs in about 70% of the animals, leading to pain and delays in training schedules. In The Journal of the Acoustical Society of...

A new study from North Carolina State University explores the connection between hearing loss and dementia in geriatric dogs. The work could aid in both treatment of aging dogs and in understanding the relationship between sensory loss and cognitive function in dogs. "In humans, we know that age-related hearing loss...