ScienceDaily

To encourage scientists to speak up when people misuse science to serve political agendas, biology professor Mark Peifer of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues that eugenics should be included in college genetics curriculums.

New research sheds light on the earliest days of the earth’s formation and potentially calls into question some earlier assumptions in planetary science about the early years of rocky planets. Establishing a direct link between the Earth’s interior dynamics occurring within the first 100 million years of its history and its present-day structure, the work is one of the first in the field to combine fluid mechanics with chemistry to better understand the Earth’s early evolution.

Every year, millions of tires end up in landfills, creating an environmental crisis with far-reaching consequences. In the United States alone, over 274 million tires were scrapped in 2021, with nearly a fifth of them being discarded into landfills. A study has now pioneered a technique for breaking down this rubber waste and transforming it into valuable precursors for epoxy resins. This technique offers an innovative and sustainable alternative to traditional recycling methods while significantly reducing rubber waste in landfills.

A study finds that factors beyond a person’s control, like socioeconomic status and whether their mom smoked or was obese, can influence whether they are overweight or obese as teenagers or adults.

Researchers have discovered that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines have a persistent effect on the innate immune system. These mechanisms may help the human body to better protect itself against potential future infections.

People with autism are typically diagnosed by clinical observation and assessment. To deconstruct the clinical decision process, which is often subjective and difficult to describe, researchers used a large language model (LLM) to synthesize the behaviors and observations that are most indicative of an autism diagnosis. Their results show that repetitive behaviors, special interests, and perception-based behaviors are most associated with an autism diagnosis. These findings have potential to improve diagnostic guidelines for autism by decreasing the focus on social factors — which the established guidelines in the DSM-5 focus on but the model did not classify among the most relevant in diagnosing autism.

Researchers have solved a cellular mystery that may lead to better therapies for colorectal and other types of cancer. A professor of pediatrics-developmental biology and an assistant professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology have shown the importance of the H3K36 methylation process in regulating plasticity and regeneration in intestinal cells.

Interferometers, devices that can modulate aspects of light, play the important role of modulating and switching light signals in fiber-optic communications networks and are frequently used for gas sensing and optical computing. Now, applied physicists have invented a new type of interferometer that allows precise control of light’s frequency, intensity and mode in one compact package.

Early animal studies show that a single vaccine could protect the recipient from different variants of the coronaviruses that cause COVID-19, the flu and the common cold. In addition to creating antibodies that target a specific region of the spike protein that doesn’t mutate, the vaccine removes the sugar coat from the virus that allows it to hide in the body.

Plastic is everywhere in our daily lives. And much of what we use, such as cutting boards, clothes and cleaning sponges, can expose us to tiny, micrometer-wide plastic particles called microplastics. Now, chewing gum could be added to the list. In a pilot study, researchers found that chewing gum can release hundreds to thousands of microplastics per piece into saliva and potentially be ingested.