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New Opportunities For Stem Cell Research: Increasingly Efficient Production Of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have developed a new, faster and more reliable technique for reverting human cells to the stem cell state. Pluripotent stem cells are a key tool in biomedicine for modelling various diseases and developing novel therapies.

A Brain Circuit In The Thalamus Helps Us Hold Information In Mind

This circuit, which weakens with age, could offer a target to help prevent age-related decline in spatial memory.

This Discovery Offers a New Way of Defence Against RNA Viruses in Humans

Richard Stefl from CEITEC Masaryk University (MU) and Petr Svoboda from the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IMG CAS) and their colleagues have revealed the unique mechanism of action of mammalian Dicer.

Circuit That Focuses Attention Brings In Wide Array Of Inputs

With a comprehensive map of the wiring, researchers can now discern what information flows into the circuit to enable a key brain function.

Tracing A Cancer’s Family Tree To Its Roots Reveals How Tumors Grow

Family trees of lung cancer cells reveal how cancer evolves from its earliest stages to an aggressive form capable of spreading throughout the body.

Hundred-Year-Old Riddle in Botany Reveals Key Plant Adaptation to Dry Land

The green world that we live in would not have been possible without hidden changes to the plant body over the last 400 million years. To grow beyond just centimetres tall outside of the wettest places on land, plants had to re-arrange their water-conducting tissues to keep them safe from drought. A new study by Martin Bouda of the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Science and co-authors, published in the journal Science, shows how the solution to a hundred-year-old debate in botany reveals a key adaptation that allowed plants to colonise dry land.

Astronomers Discover A Rare “Black Widow” Binary, With The Shortest Orbit Yet

The system is orbited by third stellar companion and may have originated near the center of the Milky Way.

Articulation Rate Indicates How Fluent You Are In A Foreign Language

In her doctoral dissertation, Heini Kallio looks for connections between the acoustic features of speech and the language proficiency assessments carried out by humans. The results can be applied to the development of teaching in oral language skills and their automated assessment.

A Single Memory Is Stored Across Many Connected Brain Regions

Innovative brain-wide mapping study shows that an “engram,” the ensemble of neurons encoding a memory, is widely distributed and includes regions not previously realized.

A 21st-Century Remedy for Missed Meds

Rice lab’s tech could deliver time-released drugs, vaccines for months

Search Reveals Eight New Sources Of Black Hole Echoes

The findings will help scientists trace a black hole’s evolution as it feeds on stellar material.

A One-Up On Motion Capture

A new neural network approach captures the characteristics of a physical system’s dynamic motion from video, regardless of rendering configuration or image differences.

How to Survive Global Warming: Bank Voles Borrow a Gene from Their Neighbors

Different characteristics between northern and southern bank vole populations in Britain, due to differences in haemoglobin types, could affect their ability to adapt to a changing climate. Research by scientists at the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has shown that northern populations of these small rodents will “borrow” a more favourable haemoglobin variant, critical for adaptation, from populations adapted to living in the warmer conditions of southern England to survive climate warming. The ability to take advantage of the diversity of traits already present in populations and adapt to climate change through them will be critical to the survival of many plant and animal species, including humans.

Machine Learning, Harnessed To Extreme Computing, Aids Fusion Energy Development

Linking techniques from machine learning with advanced numerical simulations, MIT researchers take an important step in state-of-the-art predictions for fusion plasmas.

Diem: a Breakthrough Method Will Change Genome Research

Thanks to scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, what used to take days to weeks and computers with huge computing capacity will be faster and more reliable. They developed "diem", a method of genomes polarization, thanks to which experts around the world across disciplines can more easily analyze genomes. It will be appreciated, for example, by archaeologists when searching for Neanderthal genes in the genome of modern humans or biologists who can track advantageous chunks of genomes and further use them as biomarkers.

Estimating The Informativeness Of Data

MIT researchers can now estimate how much information data are likely to contain, in a more accurate and scalable way than previous methods.

The First Panchromatic Study of a Tidal Disruption in a Star with a Jet

A female scientist from the Astronomical Institute of the CAS was part of the team that for the first time achieved a long-term observation of an extremely rare event: a stellar tidal rip. Astronomer Christina Thönea was involved through her observing programmes on telescopes located at the Calar Alto Observatory and in the Canary Islands. The Nature journal has now published a paper on the research, called “A very luminous jet from disruption of a star by a massive black hole”.

“Spring-Loaded” System Pops Phosphorus Into Molecular Rings

An alternative to methods requiring harsh chemical conditions, the reaction offers a new route to making useful phosphorous-containing compounds.