Laboratory could improve crop resilience In a discovery three decades in the making, scientists at Rutgers and Brookhaven National Laboratory have acquired detailed knowledge about the internal structures and mode of regulation for a specialized protein and are proceeding to develop tools that can capitalize on its ability to help plants combat a wide range of diseases.

The work, which exploits a natural process where plant cells die on purpose to help the host plant stay healthy, is expected to have wide applications in the agricultural sector, offering new ways to protect major food crops from a variety of devastating diseases, the scientists said. The study was published in Nature Communications.

Eric Markvicka and graduate students Ethan Krings and Patrick McManigal recently unveiled their invention of a robotic actuator -- the "muscle" that converts energy into a robot's physical movement -- that has the ability to detect punctures or pressure, heal the injury and repair its damage-detecting "skin." The trio presented their findings earlier in May at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Atlanta. Their technology would mark an improvement for robotic system used in agriculture and manufacturing that are susceptible to puncture by thorns, twigs, plastic and glass and also could be used to prolong the life of wearable health monitoring devices and consumer electronics,  thus stemming the tide of toxins like lead and mercury entering waste streams and endangering the environment and human health. 

Rice University anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer examine the societal consequences of global glacier loss in a commentary published today in Science.

Scientists at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have developed a powerful new tool for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing.

The significant breakthrough means that, for the first time, researchers have found a way to determine once and for all whether a material can effectively be used in certain quantum computing microchips.

Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a paper featured on the cover of this week’s edition of the journal Science. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds nesting in the polar regions.

A 10-story cold-formed steel-framed building will soon be put to the test on an earthquake simulator at the University of California San Diego to see how well it can withstand earthquakes. The UC San Diego shake table is the only outdoor facility of its kind in the world, and the only simulator capable of testing a building of this height. 

To better capture the complex architecture of real human blood vessels, researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University have developed a customizable vessel-chip method, enabling more accurate vascular disease research and a drug discovery platform.

Stanford-led study finds small-scale tree cover in Costa Rica boosts biodiversity while limiting dangerous mosquito species