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The extraordinary stature of the giraffe has led to a long list of physiological co-adaptations. The blood pressure of the giraffe, for instance, is twice as high as in humans and most other mammals to allow a steady blood supply to the lofty head. How does the giraffe avoid the usual side effects of high blood pressure, such as severe damage to the cardiovascular system or strokes? Testing giraffe mutations/genes in mice The team discovered a particular gene – known as FGFRL1 – that has undergone many changes in the giraffe compared to all other animals....

1. Where did Mercury form? Only a little larger than the Moon, Mercury zooms around the Sun on an elliptical orbit every 88 days. At its closest, the planet gets to only one third of the Earth-Sun distance. Has it always been in this place? Scientists are not so sure. Data from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015, revealed that there is too much of the volatile chemical element potassium, as compared to the more stable radioactive thorium, in the material on the surface of Mercury....

In his famous experiment, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov rang a bell each time he fed his dogs. Soon, the dogs began drooling in anticipation when they heard the bell, even before food appeared. Now, a UCLA study has traced the Pavlovian response to a small cluster of brain cells — the same neurons that go awry during Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Tourette’s syndrome. Published March 22 in the journal Neuron, the research could eventually help scientists identify new approaches to diagnosing and treating these neurological disorders....

Since the days of NASA’s Apollo program, astronauts have documented (and contended with) how liquids like water behave differently in microgravity (see video below) than they do on Earth – coalescing into floating spheres instead of bottom-heavy droplets. Now, researchers have demonstrated this effect with a much more exotic material: gas cooled to nearly absolute zero (minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 273 degrees Celsius), the lowest temperature matter can reach....

A new study by Paleontologists at the University of Southampton suggests four bones recently found on the Isle of Wight belong to new species of theropod dinosaur, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and modern-day birds. The dinosaur lived in the Cretaceous period 115 million years ago and is estimated to have been up to four meters long. The bones were discovered on the foreshore at Shanklin last year and are from the neck, back, and tail of the new dinosaur, which has been named Vectaerovenator inopinatus....

A device developed by scientists at the CY Cergy Paris University and Paris Observatory promises insight into how the building blocks of life form in outer space. In an article published in Review of Scientific Instruments, by AIP Publishing, the scientists detail how VENUS — an acronym of the French phrase “Vers de Nouvelles Syntheses,” which means “toward new syntheses” — mimics how molecules come together in the freezing darkness of interstellar space....

That’s the result of a new study by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist who developed a new theory of airborne infectious disease spread. This research, which appears in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, demonstrated good agreement with data from Q fever, Legionnaire’s disease, and Valley fever outbreaks. The authors hope to use it to understand and mitigate COVID-19 spread. Some diseases spread when you breathe in infectious airborne particles....

This method exposes fake images created by computer algorithms rather than by humans. They look deceptively real, but they are made by computers: so-called deep-fake images are generated by machine learning algorithms, and humans are pretty much unable to distinguish them from real photos. Researchers at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the Cluster of Excellence “Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries” (Casa) have developed a new method for efficiently identifying deep-fake images....

Iconic tyrannosauroids like T. rex famously dominated the top of the food web at the end of the reign of the dinosaurs. But they didn’t always hold that top spot. In a new study published in Royal Society Open Science, a research team led by the University of Tsukuba has described a new genus and species belonging to the Carcharodontosauria, a group of medium- to large-sized carnivorous dinosaurs that preceded the tyrannosauroids as apex predators....

Once it exits the digestive system, poop is usually a shade of brown, regardless of the appearance of whatever you’ve had to eat and drink, because it contains a chemical your body makes. That chemical, stercobilin, is a product of the breakdown of hemoglobin – an iron-containing protein in red blood cells that allows oxygen to be transported around the body. Without sercobilin, your poop would probably look pale or even white....

A witch appears to be screaming out into space in this new image from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light, which was picked up by WISE’s detectors....

Some complex protein drugs need to be made by culturing mammalian cells. Plant biologists have developed a way to manufacture the necessary enzymes for drugs in maize. The scientists published their findings in the journal Nature Communications. Plant biologist Allison Kermode, at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, whose husband works with people who have lysosomal storage disorders, is working on ways to create enzyme-replacement drugs. When human proteins are expressed in plant cells, they are usually decorated with plant-specific sugar molecules that prompt a dangerous immune reaction in patients....

The research findings are published early online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Eczema (atopic dermatitis) is a chronic condition that causes severe itching and leaves the skin red and thickened. It can adversely affect sleep and quality of life. Standard treatments, such as steroid creams and oral medicines, commonly fail to relieve symptoms in patients with moderate to severe eczema. Based on current scientific models of eczema biology, assistant professor of dermatology Dr....

No more than 540 million years ago there was a huge boom in the diversity of animals on Earth. The first larger animals evolved in what is today known as the Cambrian explosion. In the time that followed, the animals evolved and grew larger, but concurrently with the evolution of the animals, the oxygen level in the atmosphere dropped and this temporarily slowed the radiation. However, subsequent oxygenation and growth of algae added energy to the food chain and got the explosion of life going....

The researchers utilized advanced analytics to assess the relationship between professional failure and success for young scientists. They found, in contrast to their initial expectations, that failure early in one’s career leads to greater success in the long term for those who try again. “The attrition rate does increase for those who fail early in their careers,” lead author Yang Wang said. “But those who stick it out, on average, perform much better in the long term, suggesting that if it doesn’t kill you, it really does make you stronger....

To minimize those risks, the Paris Agreement aims to commit nearly 200 nations to implement greenhouse gas emissions-reduction policies consistent with keeping the increase in the global average temperature since preindustrial times to well below 2 degrees Celsius — and pursue efforts to further limit that increase to 1.5 C. Recognizing that the first set of submitted near-term Paris pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are inadequate by themselves to put the globe on track to meet those long-term targets and thus avoid the worst consequences of climate change, the accord calls for participating nations to strengthen their NDCs over time....

Researchers from the ALLIUM Phase 3 clinical trial reported their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), demonstrating that cefepime and enmetazobactam were more successful than the conventional treatment of piperacillin and tazobactam in treating complicated urinary tract infections and acute pyelonephritis (AP), a bacterial infection that causes kidney inflammation. Urinary tract infections are considered complicated when they are coupled with risk factors such as fevers, sepsis, urinary obstruction, or catheters, all of which increase the likelihood of antibiotic failure....

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a new aspect to the way that DNA binds itself, and the role played by hydrophobic effects. They show how small changes in water properties can delicately control the binding process. The discovery opens doors for a new understanding in research in medicine and life sciences. The research is presented in the journal PNAS. DNA is constructed of two strands, consisting of sugar molecules and phosphate groups....

A hot and dense mass of complex molecules, cocooning a newborn star, has been discovered by a Japanese team of astronomers using ALMA. This unique hot molecular core is the first of its kind to have been detected outside the Milky Way galaxy. It has a very different molecular composition from similar objects in our own galaxy — a tantalizing hint that the chemistry taking place across the Universe could be much more diverse than expected....

Points matter when designing nanoparticles that drive important chemical reactions using the power of light. Researchers at Rice University’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) have long known that a nanoparticle’s shape affects how it interacts with light, and their latest study shows how shape affects a particle’s ability to use light to catalyze important chemical reactions. In a comparative study, LANP graduate students Lin Yuan and Minhan Lou and their colleagues studied aluminum nanoparticles with identical optical properties but different shapes....