When Hennig Brandt discovered the element phosphorus in 1669, it was a mistake. He was really looking for gold. But his mistake was a very important scientific discovery. What Brandt couldn’t have realized was the importance of phosphorus to the future of farming. Phosphorus is one of the necessary ingredients for healthy crop growth and yields. When farms were smaller and self-sufficient, farmers harvested their crops, and nutrients rarely left the farm....

Tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of premature death and disease in the United States. Recent proposals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the New Zealand government seek to limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to minimally addictive levels. Although previous research suggests that reducing nicotine content could help smokers quit, there is little evidence to demonstrate if these policies could adversely affect smokers with current or prior affective disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders....

This mental improvement from seeing or hearing birds was also evident in people with a diagnosis of depression, which is the most common mental illness worldwide. This suggests the potential role of birdlife in helping those with mental health conditions. Published today (October 27) in the journal Scientific Reports, the study used the smartphone application Urban Mind to collect people’s real-time reports of mental well-being alongside their reports of seeing or hearing birdsong....

“People think of bees as just honey bees, bumble bees, and maybe a few others, but there are more species of bees than of birds and mammals combined,” says senior author John Ascher, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the National University of Singapore. “The United States has by far the most species of bees, but there are also vast areas of the African continent and the Middle East which have high levels of undiscovered diversity, more than in tropical areas....

Stress harms the brain and body in profound ways. One way is by altering astrocytes, the brain’s housekeepers tasked with mopping up neurotransmitters after they’ve been released into the synapse. On the cellular level, stress causes the branches of astrocytes to retract from the synapses they wrap around. Bender et al. investigated what controlled astrocyte changes after mice experienced exposure to the urine of a fox, their natural predator. This single stressful event caused quick but long-lasting retraction of the astrocyte’s branches....

The animals, which look similar to small moose or deer in a paleoartist’s rendering, are being dubbed Theosodon arozquetai and Llullataruca shockeyi, ungulates native only to Bolivia. They lived in the latter part of the middle Miocene epoch, a time interval from which relatively few fossils have been collected in South America. The discoveries, announced in the June edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, are important not only because they document two species previously unknown to science, but also because they come from the tropical latitudes of South America....

The discovery was made possible by making exquisite observations of the motion of the black hole’s companion, a Sun-like star that orbits the black hole at about the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun. “Take the Solar System, put a black hole where the Sun is, and the Sun where the Earth is, and you get this system,” explains Kareem El-Badry, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and the lead author of the paper describing this discovery....

The southern Great Plains have been ravaged, and a cool October broke a 16-month streak of higher-than-average temperatures across the Lower 48. However, temperatures are projected to remain above normal across most of the western half of the country in the following months and future temperature gains could be on the high side, according to various climate models. As of November, 59.5% of the contiguous US was experiencing persistent drought conditions that are even more severe in the Great Plains in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado....

By sequencing cancer-cell genomes, scientists have discovered vast numbers of genes that are mutated, deleted or copied in cancer cells. This treasure trove is a boon for researchers seeking new drug targets, but it is nearly impossible to test them all in a timely fashion. To help speed up the process, MIT researchers have developed RNA-delivering nanoparticles that allow for rapid screening of new drug targets in mice. In their first mouse study, done with researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute, they showed that nanoparticles that target a protein known as ID4 can shrink ovarian tumors....

A new image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft shortly before its controlled impact into the comet’s surface on September 30th, 2016. Confirmation of the end of the mission arrived at ESA’s European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, at 4:19 a.m. PDT (7:19 a.m. EDT / 1:19 p.m. CEST) with the loss of signal upon impact. The final descent gave Rosetta the opportunity to study the comet’s gas, dust and plasma environment very close to its surface, as well as take very high-resolution images....

Rosetta flew past Lutetia at a distance of 3168 km in July 2010, en route to its 2014 rendezvous with its target comet. The spacecraft took images of the 100 km-wide asteroid for about two hours during the flyby, revealing numerous impact craters and hundreds of grooves all over the surface. Impact craters are commonly seen on all Solar System worlds with solid surfaces, recording an intense history of collisions between bodies....

Now scientists working at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have revealed the molecular details of how a key protein (the papain-like protease, or “PLpro”) from the virus links up to form a paired-structure, or “complex,” with a human protein named interferon-stimulated gene 15 (ISG15). PLpro strips ISG15 from other human cellular proteins to aid SARS-CoV-2 in evading the immune response. Understanding how the two proteins interact could aid in developing therapeutic drug treatments that prevent its formation and allow a person’s immune system to better fight the invading virus....

Europa’s water-ice surface is crisscrossed by long, linear fractures. Like our planet, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle, and an ocean of salty water. Unlike Earth, however, Europa’s ocean lies below a shell of ice probably 10 to 15 miles thick and has an estimated depth of 40 to 100 miles. The latest analysis of Europa makes this Jovian moon one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for life....

Yale pediatrician and geneticist Patrick Gallagher, M.D., studies hereditary spherocytosis (HS), an inherited disease associated with hemolytic anemia, when red blood cells are destroyed faster than they are produced due to abnormal membranes. A novel mutation in the gene that encodes alpha-spectrin, a protein essential for normal red blood cell membranes, is responsible for many cases of recessive hereditary spherocytosis (rHS), the most severe form of the disease, reports Gallagher’s team in a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI)....

This pop-up laboratory, the effort of a unique volunteer team of academic and corporate partners, will provide desperately needed testing capacity in the Bay Area for those with COVID-19 symptoms and also help public health officials assess how widespread the epidemic is. “The UC Berkeley team is racing to address this critical public health situation by establishing a testing lab that will be immediately impactful in our community, while also generating data that contributes to understanding the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” said Jennifer Doudna, professor of molecular and cell biology and of chemistry and IGI executive director....

A popular theory for the earliest stages of life on Earth is that it was founded on strands of RNA, a chemical cousin of DNA. Like DNA, RNA strands can carry genetic information using a code of four molecular letters (bases), but RNA can be more than a simple ‘string’ of information. Some RNA strands can also fold up into three-dimensional shapes that can form enzymes, called ribozymes, and carry out chemical reactions....

Silicon nanocrystals have a size of a few nanometers and possess a high luminous potential. Scientists of KIT and the University of Toronto/Canada have now succeeded in manufacturing silicon-based light-emitting diodes (SiLEDs). They are free of heavy metals and can emit light in various colors. The team of chemists, materials researchers, nanoscientists, and opto-electronic experts presents its development in the Nano Letters journal. Silicon dominates in the microelectronics and photovoltaics industries, but has been considered unsuitable for light-emitting diodes for a long time....

This mechanism involves the dynamic localization of essential regulatory components into intracellular condensates that resemble liquid droplets. This process is directly tied to seed production and may offer up new avenues for generating more sustainable crops that can withstand harsher environmental conditions. The findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Science. Cells are not static things; they change from one type to another. The activation of a certain collection of genes influences how cells specialize in completing specific tasks and when they divide or differentiate....

A recent study conducted by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and The City University of New York has revealed that there has been a rise in the prevalence of asthma among teenagers in states where recreational use of cannabis has been legalized, as well as among children from certain racial and ethnic minority groups in states with recreational legalization, in comparison to states where it remains fully illegal....

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry examines the role of the brain-gut microbiome (BGM) system in discrimination-related health issues. Past research on discrimination and illness has pointed to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which regulates stress, however, the authors of this study wanted to expand the scope of their research. Recent studies have revealed that the BGM is also highly responsive to stressful experiences. Dysregulation of the BGM is associated with inflammation and long-term health issues resulting from immune cell, neuronal, and hormone signaling that link our experiences to our health....