The first discovery of viruses infecting a group of microbes that may include the ancestors of all complex life has been found, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin report in Nature Microbiology. The discovery offers tantalizing clues about the origins of complex life and suggests new directions for exploring the hypothesis that viruses were essential to the evolution of humans and other complex life forms.
Since 2009, earthquakes have been rapidly rising in the Delaware Basin – a prolific oil-producing region in West Texas and New Mexico. According to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the majority of them can be linked to oil and gas production.
For more affordable, sustainable drug options than we have today, the medication we take to treat high blood pressure, pain or memory loss may one day come from engineered bacteria, cultured in a vat like yogurt. And thanks to a new bacterial tool developed by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin, the process of improving drug manufacturing in bacterial cells may be coming sooner than we thought.
Many young people today suffer from stress-related anxiety and depressive symptoms. A new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin finds that a 30-minute online training on how to think about stress and adversity can reduce both short- and long-term mental health symptoms, offering a potential low-cost treatment to combat a growing adolescent mental health crisis.
Motors are everywhere in our day-to-day lives — from cars to washing machines. A futuristic scientific field is working on tiny motors that could power a network of nanomachines and replace some of the power sources we use in devices today.
More of the world’s coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever, but exactly what’s triggering the large-scale retreat has been difficult to pin down because of natural fluctuations in the glaciers’ surroundings.
When it comes to keeping time, an unassuming species of songbird is on a par with professional musicians, according to new research led by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.
The protection offered by COVID-19 vaccination declines more rapidly in people with severe obesity than in those with normal weight, scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh have found. The study suggests that people with obesity are likely to need more frequent booster doses to maintain their immunity.
A study of the DNA of more than 55,000 people worldwide has shed light on how we maintain healthy blood sugar levels after we have eaten, with implications for our understanding of how the process goes wrong in type 2 diabetes.
Failure to implement active bystander training could thwart NHS attempts to tackle sexual harassment, say researchers at the University of Cambridge.
Problems with the brain’s ability to ‘prune’ itself of unnecessary connections may underlie a wide range of mental health disorders that begin during adolescence, according to research published today.
Even mild concussion can cause long-lasting effects to the brain, according to researchers at the University of Cambridge. Using data from a Europe-wide study, the team has shown that for almost a half of all people who receive a knock to the head, there are changes in how regions of the brain communicate with each other, potentially causing long term symptoms such as fatigue and cognitive impairment.
Cambridge scientists have shown how the brain’s ability to clear out toxic proteins is impaired in Huntington’s disease and other forms of dementia – and how, in a study in mice, a repurposed HIV drug was able to restore this function, helping prevent this dangerous build-up and slowing progression of the disease.
If you have been stung by a jellyfish at the beach, you’ll know how painful and unpleasant it can be. But how best to treat jellyfish stings has been debated over the years.
Lessons learned when Canadian health-care workers respond to natural disasters worldwide can be used at home, say researchers in McMaster University’s Department of Family Medicine.
More than one-quarter of infections in Canada fail to clear up when people are treated with standard antibiotics.
Increasing the proportion of non-alcoholic drinks on sale in online supermarkets could reduce the amount of alcohol people purchase, suggests a study published today led by researchers at the University of Cambridge.
Scientists in Cambridge and Berlin have used a form of gene therapy to increase levels of the so-called ‘cold shock protein’ in the brains of mice, protecting them against the potentially devastating impact of prion disease.
Researchers have mapped the complete trajectory of placental development, helping shed new light on why pregnancy disorders happen.
People who experienced an immediate allergic reaction to their first COVID-19 vaccine are unlikely to experience a severe immediate allergic reaction to a second dose, says a study involving McMaster scientists.