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Our food and our bodies are full of tiny protein fragments called peptides. These small chains of amino acids act as biological messengers, influencing processes ranging from sensory perception to physiological functions.

A study carried out by scientists from Ifremer, IRD, the universities of Western Brittany (UBO) and Bordeaux, CNRS, and the University of Tartu (Estonia) reveals the impact of nickel mining on the coastal ecosystems of New Caledonia. Published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, this research shows that starting in the 1950s, the mechanization of mining operations led to a sharp increase in sediment inputs into the Thio Lagoon and a disruption of microbial communities that persists to this day.

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Researchers using two of humanity's most powerful observatories—NASA's James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes—have definitively shown that Terzan 5 is not a globular star cluster, as it was once classified, offering new insight into how galaxies like our own form and evolve over time.

There's nothing like this in nature, Jonathan Wendel said as he showed a visitor in his Bessey Hall office the long white puffs billowing from a cotton boll—the protective flower capsule of the plant cultivated by humans for thousands of years. In the wild, cotton bolls are far smaller and hold darker, coarser and shorter fibers.

California's iconic Santa Cruz Mountains are an outdoor recreation wonderland. With a world-class network of hiking, mountain biking and equestrian trails, they draw millions of visitors each year from neighboring Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Francisco and San Mateo counties.

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Cleveland Clinic researchers are unlocking quantum computing's full potential through the creation of a new computing paradigm inspired by the human brain. Fabio Cumbo, Ph.D., research associate in the lab of Daniel Blankenberg, Ph.D., associate staff, Computational Life Sciences, is developing the model, called quantum hyperdimensional computing (QHDC).

Amorphous materials such as glass are solids whose internal structure lacks a repeating pattern. Their molecules are arranged in a random and irregular way. Surprisingly, these disordered materials can "remember" past mechanical experiences; that is, the way they respond to a force can depend on how they have responded to external forces before.

For humans, death is surrounded by culture, emotion, ritual and language. But the question can be framed in a much more basic way: What would an animal have to understand in order to recognize that someone has died?

An interdisciplinary team of Rice University researchers has uncovered previously unknown relationships between bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—and their bacterial hosts, offering a powerful new tool for next-generation microbiome engineering.

A research team has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that proposes suitable molecular structures from the raw data of spectroscopic measurements and assesses their plausibility. The system is openly accessible and has been published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for Materials and Energy, the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena and the Swiss software company Zakodium Sárl.

Neural interfaces are devices that can detect or modulate neuronal activity when placed in contact with the brain. They are already used to treat various conditions related to the nervous system. However, current technologies still have limitations that can reduce their effectiveness. One example is their unidirectional function. While most existing interfaces can stimulate the brain, they cannot accurately detect or decode brain activity simultaneously. Even when they can do so, they often face limitations in the detection of certain signals, particularly those at very low frequencies.

The sail-backed predator Dimetrodon is one of the most iconic animals of the early Permian—long before dinosaurs dominated Earth. Most known species of this early relative of mammals reached large body sizes, sometimes up to 3 meters (10 feet) in length and 250 kilograms (550 pounds). Yet some species remained surprisingly small. A new study by an international research team led by Dr. Aurore Canoville of the Friedenstein Stiftung Gotha and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin now shows that these small body sizes were achieved through very different growth strategies.

In an effort to open the door to new and useful products, chemistry researchers are on the continual lookout for processes that unlock important molecules and the bonds that can put them together. Such is the case for UC Santa Barbara chemistry professor Yang Yang, who builds his research around discovering novel biocatalytic methods, processes that facilitate chemical reactions with biocatalysts from evolved natural proteins.

The Ramsar Convention is the world's longest-standing international treaty for wetland and waterbird protection. Signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat has to date been signed by 172 countries, which have agreed to engage in "working together for wetland conservation and wise use" in more than 2,500 protected areas covering over 2.5 million square kilometers (965,000 square miles) around the world. However, the Ramsar Convention's measures are not legally binding, leaving open the possibility that many Ramsar sites may be akin to "paper parks"—protected in theory, but not in reality.

A paper on new research into the cause of death of Simonetta Vespucci, model for the world-renowned Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, has been published by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, Universita Campus Bio-Medico di Roma and the University of California in the journal Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism.

Female chickadees living in monogamous mating systems will proactively seek out males that have better cognitive skills than their nest mate, according to new findings.

Life on Earth has evolved under an uninterrupted rhythm of day and night. While light provides the energy that powers countless molecular processes, periods of darkness often allow biological systems to reorganize, recover and transform that energy into functional outcomes. Inspired by this natural balance, an international team led by Javier Montenegro at the Center for Research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CiQUS) of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela has demonstrated that the same principle can govern the behavior of simple synthetic molecular systems.

Many quantum effects can be observed only when a small number of particles is studied—individual atoms, molecules or photons, for example, carefully shielded from the rest of the world. But what about macroscopic objects, consisting of an unimaginably large number of particles? Can they, too, display effects that provide a direct glimpse into the quantum world?

A Yale-led team of astronomers has found a third galaxy devoid of dark matter—located alongside the other two in a formation that has never been seen before. Astronomers have followed a faint, cosmic trail of gas to a third galaxy that has no dark matter.

When living cells grow, divide or respond to drugs, they give off tiny amounts of heat that offer information about what the cells are doing. But because these heat signals are so vanishingly small, they have traditionally been impossible to measure directly. Researchers in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a calorimeter—a device that measures the heat transfer between a living system and its environment—that can detect metabolic heat signals on the order of 100 picowatts, or trillionths of a watt, in living cells.

Created by Japanese confectioner Matte, Corteccia is a unique dessert that consists of a rolled sheet of chocolate only 0.03 millimeters thick.The post The World’s Thinnest Chocolate Is Just 0.03 Millimeters Thick first appeared on Oddity Central - Collecting Oddities.

Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons.

An injured man from the Corded Ware culture was buried in a pit previously used as a kiln, and he may have been sacrificed.