Scientists have found how a protein produced by bacteria disrupts the mechanism that controls flower development in plants, turning reproductive organs into leaf-like structures. These findings shed light on a plant disease that is expected to spread as climate change expands the range of its insect vectors in northern latitudes. They used synchrotron technique at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France. The results are the Editor’s Pick in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

When public health researchers want to know whether diseases such as COVID-19 or polio are circulating in a community, they can look for genetic evidence in wastewater.

Entomologist Dana Price wondered whether the same principle could be applied to mosquitoes. The question led to an unconventional experiment.

“What we did, colloquially, was build a mosquito toilet,” said Price, an associate professor at the Center for Vector Biology, Department of Entomology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a lead author of a study published in Microbiology Spectrum.

Research using mice and human airway cells reveals that crystalline silica can exacerbate allergic lung inflammation and reduce the effectiveness of corticosteroid treatment.

Four years of monitoring after the 2019 Brumadinho tailings dam collapse show that Brazil's Paraopeba River has not returned to a stable state. Bottom-dwelling invertebrate communities were reshuffled continuously at every site, and the reaches that received tailings show no sign of settling. Tributaries held most of the species, including many found nowhere else, and act as reservoirs that resupply the damaged channel. Protecting them is now the priority for restoring the basin.

Engineering Porous Carbon

Electromagnetic-wave pollution and electromagnetic interference are growing concerns alongside the expansion of 5G and 6G communications, radar systems, the Internet of Things, and high-speed electronics. Researchers from Shenyang Aerospace University, AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Co. Ltd., Shenyang Agricultural University, and the Institute of Strength Physics and Materials Science SB RAS developed lightweight carbon aerogels designed to address both microwave absorption and heat management.

The materials were prepared from chitosan and chitin nanofibrils using directional freezing, carbonization, solvothermal deposition, and a second carbonization step. Adjusting the relative content of the rigid chitin nanofibrils altered the pore architecture from vertically layered structures to aligned, straight-through polygonal channels. Rational pore-structure control allowed the researchers to tune electrical conductivity, dielectric response, impedance matching, and electromagnetic-energy dissipation.

CoNi Components Add Magnetic Loss

CoNi-based metal–organic frameworks were deposited in situ onto the carbon aerogel skeleton and converted into CoNi@C components during carbonization. Microscopy, X-ray diffraction, spectroscopy, and elemental mapping confirmed the porous carbon framework, graphitized carbon, nitrogen-containing structures, and dispersed CoNi alloy nanocrystals.

True to its name, the spider-tailed horned viper has a fake spider at the end of its tail, which it uses to lure in birds to eat. In this study, scientists took the closest-ever look at this snake's bizarre tail, using X-ray computed tomography. By peering inside the snake's tail, they learned that the bones inside its tail are... strangely normal-- all the weird stuff is on the outside. Which means that for paleontologists studying fossils, there could be a lot of unusual features in prehistoric snakes that no one knows about.

More than 8 in 10 U.S. adults know that preventing mosquito bites and controlling mosquitoes in and around the home is the best defense against mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile virus and dengue fever, but far fewer know how to correctly apply or choose insect repellent, according to an Annenberg Public Policy Center survey.