Fly Researchers at Duke University Find Another Layer to the Code of Life
Rare pieces of genetic code may serve as another way to control cellular machinery. A new investigation into the way different tissues read information from…
Duke University
Earth’s Most Efficient Natural Storage System: Land-Building Marsh Plants Are Champions of Carbon Capture
Wetlands are Earth’s most efficient natural storage system for climate-warming carbon dioxide. Human activities such as marsh draining for agriculture and logging are increasingly eating…
Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrunk IQ Scores of Half of Americans – 824 Million IQ Points Stolen
Leaded gasoline calculated to have stolen more than 800 million cumulative IQ points since the 1940s. In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline…
Disgusting Biodiversity: The Surprising Structural Reason Your Kitchen Sponge Is a Bacterial Incubator
Environmental structure affects interactions between microbial species, making the common kitchen sponge a better incubator for bacterial diversity than a laboratory Petri dish. Researchers at…
New Super-Conducting Technology Takes Data Beyond Ones and Zeroes
Leveraging electron spin adds a new dimension to data encoding. Remember flip-phones? Our smartphones may one day look just as obsolete thanks to spintronics, an…
Preventing Pandemics Costs Far Less Than Controlling Them – “Prevention Really Is the Best Medicine”
Tens of billions spent on habitat and surveillance would avoid trillions of annual costs. We can pay now or pay far more later. That’s the…
Tweaked Genes Borrowed From Bacteria Electrically Excite Heart Cells in Live Mice
First approach to promote electrical excitation of heart cells in live mammals could lead to new gene therapy treatments for a wide range of heart…
Illegal Gold Mining in Peruvian Amazon Turns Pristine Rainforests Into Heavily Polluted Mercury Sinks
Scientists record the highest levels of atmospheric mercury pollution in the world in a pristine patch of the Peruvian Amazon. If you had to guess…
The Surprising Mystery of the Small Dimensionless Number With a Big Effect
Theory and simulations reveal why seemingly weak effects sometimes play a strong role in how particles move through the air close to the Earth’s surface….
High Levels of Potentially Harmful PFAS Chemicals Found in Anti-Fogging Sprays and Cloths
Products popular among glasses-wearers during masked pandemic. The anti-fogging sprays and cloths many people use to prevent condensation on their eyeglasses when wearing a mask…
Testosterone Drives the Dark Side of Success: Meerkat Societies Fall Apart When Aggression Is Taken Away
Cooperation and aggression. Meerkats are showing us that one may not be possible without the other. In a study appearing this week in the journal…
Newly Proven Physics: Smuggling Light Through Opaque Materials
Newly proven physics opens chalcogenide glasses to applications at visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. Electrical engineers at Duke University have discovered that changing the physical shape…
Taking New Aim at COVID-19: Treatments Against the Coronavirus’s Tangled Strands of RNA
Researchers are working on new ways to cure COVID-19 infections, using molecules that bind to three-dimensional folds in the virus’s genetic material. Credit: Martina Zafferani,…
A “New Nobel” – Computer Scientist Wins $1 Million Artificial Intelligence Prize
Duke professor becomes second recipient of AAAI Squirrel AI Award for pioneering socially responsible AI. Whether preventing explosions on electrical grids, spotting patterns among past…
Oxytocin Hormone – Widely Used as an Autism Treatment – Shows No Benefit
Multicenter study finds that oxytocin was safe, but ineffective at boosting social skills among children with autism. Oxytocin, a naturally occurring hormone that acts as…
The Climate-Driven Mass Extinction No One Had Seen – Until Now
Fossils from Duke collection uncover a previously unknown mass extinction event in Africa. Sixty-three percent. That’s the proportion of mammal species that vanished from Africa…
Antimicrobial Coating for Orthopedic Implants Prevents Dangerous Bacterial Infections
Customizable to individual patients and requiring less than 10 minutes to prepare and use, new surgical implant coating prevented 100% of infections in mice. Biomedical…
Looming Extinction Crisis: If Endangered Primates Disappear, So Will Their Parasites. That’s Actually a Problem
The extinction crisis looming for monkeys, apes and their kin could have even greater ripple effects on the tiny underappreciated species that set up camp…
