Zebrafish have the rare ability to regenerate their heart muscle after major damage, unlike humans. Researchers have now discovered the gene circuit that accomplishes this — an embryonic circuit that zebrafish are able to reactivate as adults. By identifying the gene or genes that trigger this reactivation, the scientists hope to be able to revive the dormant heart-repair circuit in other animals, such as humans, and perhaps reactivate dormant repair circuits in other tissues.

Rice researchers showed that even if the materials used in thick battery electrodes have nearly identical structures, their internal chemistry impacts energy flow and performance differently.

CSHL’s Lippman and McCandlish labs have discovered how interactions between cryptic genetic mutations can increase or decrease the number of reproductive branches on tomato plants. The scientists’ findings could lead to new and improved plant breeding techniques and clinical therapeutics.

Scientists at Rice and University of Houston have developed an innovative, scalable approach to engineer bacterial cellulose into high-strength, multifunctional materials.

Much of the internet runs on systems written in the C programming language, but C has major security vulnerabilities. Now, computer science researchers have created a tool that safeguards these systems while developers migrate them into safer languages, a process that will take many years.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that warmer summer temperatures increase tree growth, but less snow on the ground slows this growth significantly—meaning that New England forests’ ability to store carbon in future climate scenarios is likely overestimated. 

Melting glaciers may be silently setting the stage for more explosive and frequent volcanic eruptions in the future, according to research on six volcanoes in the Chilean Andes.