Gene-Swaps Could Let Influenza Jump Species Influenza viruses like bird flu can mix and match their genomes, and this has played a role in at least three of the last four flu pandemics By Stephanie Pappas edited by Jeanna Bryner Avian influenza, a virus of the orthomyxoviridae family. The flu virus causes an infectious and…
Naps are thought to be important for early brain development Quintanilla/Shutterstock A short nap during the day seems to increase the overall amount of sleep a young child gets, rather than being a serious threat to night-time slumbers. Babies and young children typically nap during the day, a habit that has been linked to the…
CLIMATEWIRE | Artificial intelligence is showing promise when it comes to weather forecasting, but it still couldn’t predict the Texas floods. The best-performing weather models during the July 4 floods were traditional ones specially designed to produce local forecasts at high resolution. Global-scale models were far less accurate — and so were AI models, weather…
A false-colour nuclear magnetic resonance image of a child’s brain CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Children with anorexia nervosa have widespread brain changes that can’t be explained by starvation alone. The finding brings us closer to identifying the neurological processes behind the condition, which could lead to better treatments for it. Anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder characterised…
Aging Rates Vary by Country. Politics Might Be Why Social inequality and the decay of democratic institutions are linked to accelerated aging, but education seems to slow the process By Julian Nowogrodzki & Nature magazine Social inequality and weak democratic institutions are linked to faster ageing, as are other environmental features such as high levels…
Libor Šmejkal has a fondness for the artwork of M. C. Escher, whose work was often inspired by mathematics. One of Šmejkal’s favourite pieces is Horseman, a striking picture that features an elaborate, tessellating series of mounted figures. Strangely enough, it was this piece that inspired him to predict the existence of an entirely new…
You could be 45 on paper but 60 in your kidneys. Turns out, your organs have birthdays of their own — and how well they’re faring may set the pace for your health, researchers report July 9 in Nature Medicine. Using data from nearly 45,000 people, scientists developed a blood-based test to estimate the biological…
Plague is often associated with Medieval history and the centuries-old Black Death epidemic, but a recent death in northern Arizona is a troublesome reminder of the flea-borne disease’s lingering hold in parts of the world, including the U.S. Local health officials in Arizona’s Coconino County, which includes the city of Flagstaff, confirmed late last week…
The Pilbara craton in Western Australia is made up of some rocks that are 3.5 billion years old Elizabeth Czitronyi / Alamy Rocks in Australia preserve evidence that plates in Earth’s crust were moving 3.5 billion years ago, a finding that pushes back the beginnings of plate tectonics by hundreds of millions of years. Today,…
For the first time, astronomers have spotted a star that exploded not once, but twice. A new image of a roughly 300-year-old supernova provides visual evidence that some dying stars undergo a double explosion, researchers report July 2 in Nature Astronomy. Supernovas usually mark the death of massive stars. But medium-sized ones, like the sun,…
