A new study led by UC Santa Cruz marine biologist Roxanne Beltran, being published on February 14 as the cover story for Science, reports that seals can essentially act as “smart sensors” for monitoring fish populations in the ocean’s eerily dim “twilight zone.”

A Nebraska research team recently published a study in Communications Earth and Environment that is one of the first to show that methanogens, micro-organsms ubiquitous in low-oxygen envrionments like aquifers, soil and even permafrost, can propel their growth by dissolving calcium carbonate, one of the Earth's most abundant minerals. The discovery paints a clearer picture of carbon flow through the environment and offers new information to guide bioenergy development. 

A paper published on February 12 in the journal Ecology details how the researchers used motion-triggered cameras placed at MacKerricher State Beach on California's North Coast during harbor seal pupping season in the spring of 2023 and 2024.

Imagine seeing a furry, four-legged animal that meows. Mentally, you know what it is, but the word “cat” is stuck on the tip of your tongue. 

This phenomenon, known as Broca’s aphasia or expressive aphasia, is a language disorder that affects a person’s ability to speak or write. While the current go-to treatment is speech therapy, scientists at Northwestern University are working toward a different, possibly more effective treatment: using a brain computer interface (BCI) to convert brain signals into spoken words. In a new study, Northwestern Medicine scientists have, for the first time, identified specific brain regions outside the frontal lobe — in the temporal and parietal cortices — involved in the intent to produce speech. This opens the door to one day using a BCI to treat Broca’s aphasia. 

Just like ChatGPT and other generative language models train on human texts to create grammatically correct sentences, a new modeling method by researchers at Penn State trains on recordings of birds to create accurate birdsongs. The results could improve understanding of the structure of birdsong and its underlying neurobiology, which could lend insight in the neural mechanisms of human language.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a promising new approach that could be used to treat a rare and complex class of genetic diseases caused by defects in a relatively large region of the genome. By identifying and activating a master epigenetic switch using CRISPR, the researchers showed they can turn on many naturally suppressed genes from one parent to compensate for defects in the same genes provided by the second parent.

In new research published this week, a team led by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) scientists reveals that symbiotic bacteria often accompany single-celled protists in the ocean’s upper layer. Some of these symbionts, they discovered, are close relatives of bacteria pathogenic to animals, including humans. The discovery of these symbiont lineages sheds light on the evolution of their bacterial relatives – whether symbionts or pathogens – insight that could help researchers understand disease vectors and the infections they cause in people.

 

What’s the only native insect of Antarctica have to do to survive? An Osaka Metropolitan University-led international research team has uncovered the special ability of the Antarctic midge to prosper in an extreme environment.

Dr. Alison Altman is using high-pressure chemistry to rewrite the rules of the periodic table—work that just earned her an NSF CAREER Award.