About 1 million insect species have been described, but a new analysis suggests tens of millions more may be out there
Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.
Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online
We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is highly engaging and need not be accurate to achieve its communicative goals, making it an attractive signal to embed in misinformation. In eight studies that used US data from Facebook (1,063,298 links) and Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users) and two behavioral experiments (1475 participants), we show that (i) misinformation sources evoke more outrage than do trustworthy sources; (ii) outrage facilitates the sharing of misinformation at least as strongly as sharing of trustworthy news; and (iii) users are more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first.
Conflict of interest
Address correspondence to: Puneet Opal, Denning Ataxia Center, Department of Neurology, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Ward 10–332303 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 69,611, USA. Phone: 312.503.4699; Email: p-opal@northwestern.edu.
AARS1 promotes tumor progression and immune evasion via ATF6 lactylation-mediated tryptophan metabolism in hepatocellular carcinoma
Wang et al. identify a metabolic-immune feedback circuit in hepatocellular carcinoma, in which tumor cell-intrinsic AARS1-mediated ATF6 lactylation activates the TDO2-kynurenine axis to promote Treg differentiation and immunosuppression, while Treg-derived eNAMPT enhances tumor glycolysis and lactate production, revealing a therapeutic vulnerability to AARS1 inhibition combined with PD-1/PD-L1 blockade.
Global density and biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi form symbioses with ~70% of plant species, building hyphal networks that exchange nutrients for host-derived carbon. These tubular networks move ~1 billion metric tons of carbon per year into Earth’s soils. However, we have no quantitative understanding of the hyphal infrastructure required to carry out this resource transfer. We assembled data from 322 studies representing more than 16,000 soil cores across nine biomes and developed machine-learning models to predict hyphal densities globally. With robotic imaging of more than 300,000 hyphae, we calibrated a biomass model from our spatial predictions. We estimate that global topsoils contain 1.10 × 1017 ± 0.13 × 1017 SD kilometers of living hyphae, weighing ~300 ± 60 SD megatons, ~4-to 6-fold the biomass of humans.
Disentangling global soil fungal diversity
A worldwide sampling effort reveals the global drivers of soil fungal biodiversity [Also see Research Article by Tedersoo et al.]
David A. Wardle and Björn D. Lindahl Authors Info & Affiliations
Science.
Method for stress-testing cloud computing algorithms helps avoid network failures
This new approach can identify worse-case scenarios that an engineer might miss if they use a traditional method that compares an algorithm against a set of human-designed past test cases. It is also less labor-intensive than other verification tools that require engineers to rewrite an algorithm in a complex mathematical code each time they want to test it.
Instead of needing a mathematical reformulation, the new method reads the algorithm’s source code directly and automatically searches for worse-case scenarios that lead to the highest level of underperformance.
By helping engineers quickly and easily stress-test a networking algorithm before deployment, the method could catch failure modes that might otherwise only appear in a real outage. The technique could also be used to analyze the risks of deploying AI-generated code.
Bacteria’s ‘mix-and-match’ code could create new cancer-fighting drugs
A team of researchers at the University of Warwick and Monash University has solved a puzzle that has stumped drug developers for decades: how bacteria naturally create multiple versions of powerful cancer therapies. The breakthrough could accelerate the development of new treatments for hard-to-treat cancers.
Harnessing bacterial enzymes to create drug variants, a strategy known as combinatorial biosynthesis, has long been a goal for scientists. But without understanding how these enzymes interact, progress has stalled.
Published in Nature Communications, the researchers have finally revealed how bacterial enzymes communicate and work together to assemble a family of related anticancer compounds. This family includes romidepsin (Istodax), a clinically approved blood cancer treatment. By understanding this “mix-and-match” process and replicating the principle in the lab, the researchers have established an approach to designing new therapies.
Robotic bird helps uncover the mysteries of flight turbulence
A bio-inspired robotic bird capable of mimicking the key movements of kestrels is helping researchers unravel the mysteries behind the species’ exceptional hovering capabilities.
With atmospheric turbulence expected to worsen due to climate change, understanding how birds naturally cope with rough air could help engineers design small unmanned aerial vehicles that are safer, more efficient and fly more smoothly.
Small unmanned aerial vehicles (sUAVs) are commonly used for applications including aerial photography, search and rescue, agricultural monitoring and package delivery, but are often grounded in turbulent conditions.
Microstructure-based model predicts sheet metal behavior in seconds for car and battery design
A research team led by Kyung Mun Min and Seonghwan Choi of Materials Processing Research Division (Korea Institute of Materials Science) has developed a new analysis model capable of predicting the anisotropic mechanical behavior of sheet metals within seconds using only microstructural information of metallic materials.
The technology is expected to reduce the time and cost required to design forming processes for metallic materials used in automobiles and batteries by enabling fast, accurate prediction of how sheet metals stretch and deform without complex, repetitive experiments.
The study is published in the International Journal of Plasticity.