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Categories: Biology: Biochemistry, Chemistry: Biochemistry

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Mantis shrimp are small creatures known for their superlatives. Their eyes have 12 to 16 different color receptors, versus our own three, and can detect the polarization of light. Their punches are famously fast, accelerating on par with a 22-caliber bullet. They use these strikes on prey, predators and competitors alike.

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The tool will help researchers better understand major challenges that afflict undernourished children, such as changes in cognitive development and higher infection rates.

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A team has developed a vaccine approach that works like a GPS, guiding the immune system through the specific steps to make broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV.

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What if your earbuds could do everything your smartphone can, but better? A new class of synthetic materials could allow for smaller devices that use less power.

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Most people with early-stage glaucoma don't know they have it, even though early treatment is key to reducing vision loss. While detecting a subtle increase in eye pressure helps doctors to diagnose glaucoma, it's challenging to monitor continuously, especially with the variety of temperatures eyes experience. Now, researchers report a prototype 'smart' contact lens that measures eye pressure accurately, regardless of temperature.

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Researchers report a new method that reduces the amount of iridium needed to produce hydrogen from water by 95%, without altering the rate of hydrogen production. This breakthrough could revolutionize our ability to produce ecologically friendly hydrogen and help usher in a carbon-neutral hydrogen economy.

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Scientists have discovered a new partnership between a marine diatom and a bacterium that can account for a large share of nitrogen fixation in vast regions of the ocean. The newly-discovered bacterial symbiont is closely related to the nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia which live in partnership with many crop plants and may open up new avenues to engineer nitrogen-fixing plants.

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In a study of a species of African butterfly, researchers have discovered a previously undescribed molecular mechanism of how the sex of an embryo is initially specified.

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Perovskites are among the most researched topics in materials science. Recently, a research team has solved an age-old challenge to synthesize all-organic two-dimensional perovskites, extending the field into the exciting realm of 2D materials. This breakthrough opens up a new field of 2D all-organic perovskites, which holds promise for both fundamental science and potential applications.

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Researchers have developed a robotic feeding system that uses computer vision, machine learning and multimodal sensing to safely feed people with severe mobility limitations, including those with spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis.

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Walking and running is notoriously difficult to recreate in robots. Now, a group of researchers has overcome some of these challenges by creating an innovative method that employs central pattern generators -- neural circuits located in the spinal cord that generate rhythmic patterns of muscle activity -- with deep reinforcement learning. The method not only imitates walking and running motions but also generates movements for frequencies where motion data is absent, enables smooth transition movements from walking to running, and allows for adapting to environments with unstable surfaces.

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After a century of functional extinction on the Australian mainland, a Flat oyster reef has been successfully restored along a metropolitan Adelaide coastline.

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A research team has identified the primary cause of sensory hypersensitivity in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

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Nature has consistently inspired engineering applications. Recently, a group of researchers drew new inspirations from the vascular network and developed a new type of fluidic system named VasFluidics.

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A recent study led to the development of a powerful epigenetic editing technology. The system unlocks the ability to precisely program chromatin modifications at any specific position in the genome, to understand their causal role in transcription regulation. This innovative approach will help to investigate the role of chromatin modifications in many biological processes, and to program desired gene activity responses, which may prove useful in disease settings.

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Chemists created an enzyme with boronic acid at its reactive center. This approach can produce more selective reactions with boron, and allows the use of directed evolution to improve its catalytic power.

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A tiny, flexible electronic device that wraps around the spinal cord could represent a new approach to the treatment of spinal injuries, which can cause profound disability and paralysis. A team of engineers, neuroscientists and surgeons developed the devices and used them to record the nerve signals going back and forth between the brain and the spinal cord. Unlike current approaches, the new devices can record 360-degree information, giving a complete picture of spinal cord activity.

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Adjuvants make vaccines more effective, though one of the best is an expensive extract from the soap bark tree. To lower the cost and avoid the laborious extraction process from bark, synthetic biologists introduced 38 separate genes into yeast to recreate the synthesis of the active molecule, a complex chemical, QS-21, that has a terpene core and numerous sugars. This may be the longest biosynthetic pathway ever inserted into yeast.

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Two species of marine bacteria from the North Sea have established an unusual and sometimes destructive relationship to produce the important vitamin B12. The team's experiments show that the two microbial species have developed a coordinated strategy to obtain the scarce but essential vitamin.

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Freshwater bacteria with small genomes frequently undergo prolonged periods of adaptive stagnation. Based on genomic analyses of samples from European lakes, researchers uncovered specific evolutionary strategies that shape these bacteria's lifestyles. Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of aquatic microbial communities is key to safeguarding ecosystem services.