For roughly 70 years, Play-Doh has been entertaining children with its moldable, squishy form. This familiar substance belongs to a broader category known as soft matter, which includes some foods (such as mayonnaise), 3D printer gels, battery electrolytes and latex paint.
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have traced the domestication of maize back to its origins 9,000 years ago, highlighting its crossbreeding with teosinte mexicana for cold adaptability.
The discovery of a genetic mechanism known as Teosinte Pollen Drive by Professor Rob Martienssen provides a critical link in understanding maize’s rapid adaptation and distribution across America, shedding light on evolutionary processes and potential agricultural applications.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists have begun to unravel a mystery millennia in the making. Our story begins 9,000 years ago. It was then that maize was first domesticated in the Mexican lowlands. Some 5,000 years later, the crop crossed with a species from the Mexican highlands called teosinte mexicana. This resulted in cold adaptability. From here, corn spread across the continent, giving rise to the vegetable that is now such a big part of our diets. But how did it adapt so quickly? What biological mechanisms allowed the highland crop’s traits to take hold? Today, a potential answer emerges.
In the next 20 years, AI will eat software.
“We made it possible for the computer to write software by itself.”
—NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang on the future of AI
(CNN) — Regular aspirin use may keep the oncologist away, at least when it comes to colorectal cancer, according to a new study, and people with unhealthy lifestyles seemed to see the greatest benefit.
Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide, predicted to cause more than 52,500 deaths in the US alone in 2023. About 153,020 people in the US were diagnosed with the condition in 2023, and it’s become much more prevalent among people under 55, with numbers more than doubling in this group from a decade ago, studies show.
The causes of colorectal cancer can be genetic, but certain lifestyle factors also seem to raise risk, including eating an unhealthy diet, not getting enough exercise, drinking alcohol, smoking and having a high body mass index.
Future studies can now be designed to understand the discovery in greater depth and use it to develop treatments. “The essential next step is to investigate the efficacy of IL-22BP inhibitors in animal models and possibly in clinical trials to treat severe intestinal infections,” Fachi said. Another possibility will be to explore how different types and quantities of food fiber affect short-chain fatty acid production. “The composition of gut microbiota in the absence of IL-22BP can provide valuable information,” he added.
Gut microbiota modulation may benefit other intestinal inflammatory conditions, such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as infections caused by other pathogens.
“Finding out how IL-22 interacts with other molecules and immune system cells in the absence of IL-22BP will help us better understand its function in intestinal immunity. Future studies could transform our understanding of the role of these proteins in intestinal health and lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies to prevent and treat intestinal infections,” Vinolo said.
Drugs that selectively kill senescent cells may benefit otherwise healthy older women but are not a “one-size-fits-all” remedy, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Specifically, these drugs may only benefit people with a high number of senescent cells, according to findings publishing July 2 in Nature Medicine.
Senescent cells are malfunctioning cells in the body that lapse into a state of dormancy. These cells, also known as “zombie cells,” can’t divide but can drive chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction linked to aging and chronic diseases. Senolytic drugs clear tissues of senescent cells.
In the 20-week, phase 2 randomized controlled trial, 60 healthy women past menopause intermittently received a senolytic combination composed of FDA-approved dasatinib and quercetin, a natural product found in some foods. It is the first randomized controlled trial of intermittent senolytic treatment in healthy aging women, and the investigators used bone metabolism as a marker for efficacy.
A team of computer scientists and roboticists with members from Texas A&M University in the U.S., and the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi, working with a colleague from Boston Dynamics, has configured a robot made by Boston Dynamics to seek out and stun weeds using a small blowtorch. The team has posted a paper describing their efforts to the arXiv preprint server.
Boston Dynamics, maker of the well-known quadruped Big Dog, has been working on technology to improve both the robot’s agility and processing ability. Its latest quadruped is Spot, a robot with increased agility, highly accurate sensors and a brain that includes AI capabilities. In this new effort, the research team used some of Spot’s abilities to tame weeds growing on cropland.
The researchers trained Spot to recognize weeds among a field of regular crops. They also strapped a small tank filled with propane to its back that is used to fuel a small blow torch held by the robot’s arm. The idea is for Spot to wander around cropland looking for weeds and upon finding them, stun them by blasting their central parts with burning gas. The blowtorch is not used to incinerate the weed, but to heat its core to such an extent that the growth of the weed is stunted for several weeks.
A new study shows that suppressing a protein turns ordinary fat into a calorie burner and may explain why drug trials attempting the feat haven’t been successful.
Researchers at UC San Francisco have figured out how to turn ordinary white fat cells, which store calories, into beige fat cells that burn calories to maintain body temperature.
The discovery could open the door to developing a new class of weight-loss drugs and may explain why clinical trials of related therapies have not been successful.
PepsiCo uses robotics, satellites, and sensors to optimize its supply chain, from the farm to the factory line where soda bottles are filled.
