Cats always land on their feet, but what makes them so agile? Their unique sense of balance has more in common with humans than it may appear. Researchers are studying cat locomotion to better understand how the spinal cord works to help humans with partial spinal cord damage walk and...
Researchers Propose A More Effective Method to Predict Floods
More of us are vulnerable to the effects of flooding than ever before due to changes in climate, land use, infrastructure and population growth in recent decades.
Another step toward an insulin tablet
For the millions of people living with diabetes, insulin is a life-saving drug. Unlike many other medicines, though, insulin cannot be easily delivered by swallowing a pill -- it needs to be injected under the skin with a syringe or pump. Researchers have been making steps toward an insulin pill,...
Smallpox has plagued humans since ancient Egyptian times, new evidence confirms
Smallpox was once one of humanity's most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have...
Air quality improvements lead to more sulfur fertilizer use
As the atmospheric deposition of sulfur has decreased, the use of sulfur fertilizer in Midwestern U.S. agriculture has increased between 1985 and 2015.
Chemical researchers discover catalyst to make renewable paints, coatings, and diapers
Researchers have invented a groundbreaking new catalyst technology that converts renewable materials like trees and corn to the key chemicals, acrylic acid, and acrylates used in paints, coatings, and superabsorbent polymers.
Turning plastic waste into a valuable soil additive
Chemical and environmental engineers detailed a method to convert plastic waste into a highly porous form of charcoal that has a whopping surface area of about 400 square meters per gram of mass. It could potentially be added to soil to improve water retention and aeration of farmlands.
Solar-powered system converts plastic and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels
Researchers have developed a system that can transform plastic waste and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels and other valuable products -- using just the energy from the Sun.
AI developed to monitor changes to the globally important Thwaites Glacier
Scientists have developed artificial intelligence techniques to track the development of crevasses -- or fractures -- on the Thwaites Glacier Ice Tongue in west Antarctica. A team of scientists has adapted an AI algorithm originally developed to identify cells in microscope images to spot crevasses forming in the ice from...
Organelles grow in random bursts
New experiments that show that eukaryotic cells can robustly control average fluctuations in organelle size. By demonstrating that organelle sizes obey a universal scaling relationship that scientists can predict theoretically, a new framework suggests that organelles grow in random bursts from a limiting pool of building blocks.