Latest News Releases 14 April

Platforms such as iNaturalist and eBird encourage people to observe and document nature, but how accurate is the ecological data that they collect? A new study from UC Davis shows that citizen science data from iNaturalist and eBird can reliably capture known seasonal patterns of bird migration in Northern California and Nevada — from year-round residents such as California Scrub-Jays, to transient migrants such as the Western Tanager and the Pectoral Sandpiper.

Environmental Engineering Science, a premier peer-reviewed journal dedicated to critical advancements in environmental engineering and science, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, PhD, PE, BCEE, MASCE, as its new Editor-in-Chief. Environmental Engineering Science is the official journal of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP).

About one in five  American adults have osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis,  according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. No treatment, however, exists to target the causes of the disease or to reverse or halt the damage the disease does to joints. Medications currently on the market only to help patients manage symptoms like joint pain, stiffness and mobility issues. In an effort to learn more about the genetic underpinnings of the condition –which is expected to afflict 1 billion people worldwide by 2050 – a team of international researchers conducted the largest genome-wide association study ever performed on osteoarthritis.

Scientists from UMass Amherst are among the researchers worldwide honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)  alongside its sister experiments ALICE, CMS and LHCb. Among the laureates are 36 scientists from the UMass Amherst research team, including 14 Ph.D. students, who produced results based on the data collected at the LHC from 2015 to 2018. The UMass Amherst team is led by physicists Stéphane Willocq, also the ATLAS spokesperson, as well as Benjamin Brau, Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sa, Carlo Dallapiccola and Verena Martinez Outschoorn.

Water molecules flip their orientation before splitting into hydrogen and oxygen. These acrobatics require significant energy, leading to the reaction’s inefficiency. Researchers quantified the precise energy costs of flipping. Efficiency is significantly affected by the water’s pH levels.

A novel artificial intelligence (AI) tool has revealed how disease-linked proteins misfold into harmful structures, a key advance in understanding neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The study, led by Mingchen Chen of the Changping Laboratory and Rice University’s Peter Wolynes, introduces RibbonFold, a new computational method capable of predicting the structures of amyloids.

Researchers from Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania, City University of New York and Monell Chemical Senses Center recently reported that American pallets are likely to accept pearl millet — a hardy, gluten-free grain that has been cultivated for centuries in rugged, drought conditions in Africa and India — as an acceptable substitute in recipes that use wheat flour.

SAN ANTONIO — April 15, 2025 —The Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission is preparing to survey the next target in its epic 4-billion-mile, 12-year, 11-asteroid tour. On April 20, 2025, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will fly past the three-mile-wide main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson as a test run to the main event: visiting the never-before-explored Trojan asteroids in the Jupiter system.