The It Ain't Magic Science Blog

Plant hormone combats dehydration

Scientists show that CLE25 is a plant hormone that travels from roots to leaves and helps close stomata in times of dehydration stress.

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Blue gene regulation helps plants respond properly to light

Blue light alters some gene expression in plants by changing the transcription start sites to downstream locations.

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Cubes of brain tissue allow drug discovery without animals

Modeling the blood-brain-barrier with brains-in-a-cube allows drug testing without the need for animals.

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Freedom from fear ?‍♀️

Researchers discover a dopaminergic circuit in the brain that allows fear associations to disappear when there isn’t anything to be afraid of anymore.

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Leaky plants bad for drought resistance

The KAI2 receptor for compounds found in smoke helps plants retain water and survive during drought.

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How does gravity affect antimatter?

Scientists find that antimatter reacts to gravity the same way that regular matter does.

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Self-assembly of spider silk

This gut microbe might protect against diabetes and reduce insulin resistance

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Atlas of the aging lipidome highlights kidneys and gut bacteria

The atlas revealed sex differences in the aging kidney lipidome and lipid byproducts of gut bacteria that accumulate throughout the body.

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Robotic exoskeleton learns to help people stand up

This new robotic exoskeleton uses machine learning to know when users want help standing up.

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New lab-grown retinal sheets almost ready for clinical trials

A new retinal transplant technique works by preventing bipolar cells from maturing in lab-grown retinal sheets.

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Toward human hibernation: cold-resistant mouse stem cells

Cold-resistant stem cells from “deep torpor” mice are a big step toward understanding why tissue survives hibernation.

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Bye-bye microplastics: new plastic is fully ocean-degradable

A new bioplastic that dissolves in saltwater — no more pesky microplastics!

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A researcher’s journey part 2: emotional memory and being human

Joshua Johansen from RIKEN CBS explains emotional memory, what his lab is doing, and what makes a good researcher.

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Jan

Godzilla-sized zooplankton for better aquafarming

by masataka sasabe | Hot Off the Press

Scientists have created extra large zooplankton to help feed the fish in aquafarms. The new plankton were created using an ion beam to generate mutations.

Dec

Electric rays to help us map the ocean floor

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Electric rays and sting rays could map the ocean floor through their natural behavior, helping us find resources and collect data on other ocean life.

Nov

Bacterial drug resistance studied by robotic E. coli evolution

by masataka sasabe | Hot Off the Press

Experimentally evolving E. coli under pressure from a large number of antibiotics was able to identify constraints underlying evolved drug resistance.

Nov

New artificial skin helps avoid animal testing

by masataka sasabe | Hot Off the Press

A new artificial skin that reproduces proper tension can be used to research skin function and disease while reducing the need to experiment on animals.

Oct

Social novelty in the brain: haven’t I seen you someplace before?

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Social novelty and contextual novelty are segregated in the SuM region of the hypothalamus and in projections to the hippocampus, allowing memories of meeting new people to be formed separately from memories of new places.

Sep

FABP4: A preschool-aged biomarker for autism

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Reduced FABP4 was found in preschool-aged children with autism spectrum disorder, making it a potential new biomarker for the condition.

Sep

Microbial infections are a parasitic plant’s dream

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Parasitic plants use quinones produced by their host to attack. Now we know that crops produce quinones as an immune response against microbial infection. How can we protect crops from both kinds of attack?

Aug

Gut bacteria double team worsens symptoms of multiple sclerosis

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Joint activity of two gut bacteria leads to excessive MOG-specific T-cell activity and demyelination of neurons in the spinal cord of a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.

Aug

Something smells fishy: categorizing odors in the brain

by masataka sasabe | Hot Off the Press

Calcium imaging and mathematical model explain how categories and mixtures of odors are represented in the fly brain and consistent across individual flies.

Super-thin wearable electronics just got more flexible

A method for making super-flexible and ultra-thin wearable electronics uses water-vapor plasma to create gold-gold bonds.

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Social contact-seeking behavior and loneliness in the brain

Levels of the peptide amylin in the brain are related to loneliness; activating amylin neurons in the MPOA drives isolated mice to seek social contact.

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H2AK119ub1: How you inherit acquired traits from your mom

H2AK119ub1. Say that three times really fast! But seriously, it allows maternally acquired traits to be inherited.

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New lab-grown retinal sheets almost ready for clinical trials

A new retinal transplant technique works by preventing bipolar cells from maturing in lab-grown retinal sheets.

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Jun

Extra “eye” movements are the key to better self-driving cars

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

If self-driving cars make saccades like people, they might make fewer mistakes identifying important features of the road.

May

Palaeospondylus: mystery of vertebrate evolution solved

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Micro-CT scans using synchrotron radiation X-rays reveal Palaeospondylus morphology, finally allowing its placement on the evolutionary tree.

Apr

Xist knockout rescues miscarriages in mice

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Xist knockout rescues miscarriages in mice whose egg cells lack H3K27me3 epigenetic instructions.

Apr

A new type of cell death discovered in fly guts

by masataka sasabe | Hot Off the Press

A completely unknown type of cell death called “erebosis” has been discovered in the guts of the common fruit fly.

Apr

Diagnosing fetal heart disease benefits from explanatory AI

by adam phillips | Hot Off the Press

Diagnosis accuracy improved when doctors used explanatory AI to help diagnose congenital heart disease from fetal ultrasound videos.

Apr

Chaos theory provides hints for controlling the weather

by jens wilkinson | Hot Off the Press

Computer simulations were used to show that small adjustments to certain variables in the weather system could modify weather phenomena such as sudden downpours.

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