Scientists Discovered the Oldest Junipers in the Arctic

Dendrochronologists determined the age of the trees by cross-dating. The photo shows a sample of juniper.
Photo Credit: Rashit Khantemirov

A group of dendrochronologists from Italy, Denmark, Germany and Russia has discovered the longest-lived woody plant in the Arctic. It was the common juniper (Juniperus communis). The oldest juniper bush, which was found in the north of Finland, is 1647 years old. In the Polar Urals, the oldest juniper bush lived half as long, yet it is the longest-living organism in the Urals. Scientists told about the long-lived junipers in an article in the journal Ecology.

"Many species in the genus Juniperus are long-lived woody plants. But there was a lack of reliable data on the most common species, the common juniper. There are legends about junipers that are two thousand years old, but there was no reliable evidence. Counting the number of annual rings, rather than estimating the age by trunk thickness, shrub size and other indirect signs, can be considered reliable evidence," explains Rashit Khantemirov, co-author of the paper, a member of the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities at Ural Federal University and the Laboratory of Dendrochronology and IER&J of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Videos with Cold Symptoms Activate Brain Regions and Trigger Immune Response

 Study on Brain Activity and Antibody Concentration
Photo Credit: Andrea Piacquadio

People who watch videos of sneezing or sick people show increased activity in brain regions that represent an interface between the brain and the immune system and react to potential dangers. At the same time, the concentration of antibodies in their saliva increases. The findings of a study by researchers from the Department of Biology at the University of Hamburg indicate that an important part of the immune system responds even before a pathogen enters the body. The results were published in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity.

Throughout human history, communicable diseases, especially viral respiratory infections such as SARS-CoV-2 or influenza, have been among the main factors that significantly influence human mortality. The constant threat of pathogen transmission has led to the development of various physiological mechanisms of the immune system - for example, the body releases proteins to fight pathogens in the body.

Effects of Declining Diversity Documented in the World of Microbes

Phytoplankton, seen here inside a flask in the Jackrel Lab, are proving to be a valuable system for studying host-associated microbiomes
Photo Credit: Jackrel Lab / UCSD

Across the tree of life, human activities are accelerating declines in biological species diversity, from deserts to oceans to forests. But what about the microscopic world? Scientists in UC San Diego’s School of Biological Sciences recently investigated how declining biodiversity in tiny ecological systems unseen to the naked eye can carry significant consequences for the health of organisms and ecosystems.

Postdoctoral Scholar Jonathan Dickey and recent master’s graduate Nikki Mercer from Assistant Professor Sara Jackrel’s laboratory studied the implications of declining diversity within microbiomes — communities of microorganisms, such as bacteria, which can form tight associations with their hosts, such as plants and animals. Recent studies in microbial ecology have found that microbiomes can play a key role in regulating host health, leading researchers to believe that as our world changes it is imperative to understand the implications of biodiversity loss within the host microbiome.

AI unveils: Meteoroid impacts cause Mars to shake

High-resolution CaSSIS image of one of the newly discovered impact craters in Cerberus Fossae. The so-called "blast zone", i.e. the dark rays around the crater, is clearly visible.
Image Credit: © ESA/TGO/CaSSIS
(CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

Meteoroid impacts create seismic waves that cause Mars to shake stronger and deeper than previously thought: This is shown by an investigation using artificial intelligence carried out by an international research team led by the University of Bern. Similarities were found between numerous meteoroid impacts on the surface of Mars and marsquakes recorded by NASA's Mars lander InSight. These findings open up a new perspective on the impact rate and seismic dynamics of the Red Planet.

Meteoroid impacts have a significant influence on the landscape evolution of solid planetary bodies in our solar system, including Mars. By studying craters – the visible remnants of these impacts – important properties of the planet and its surface can be determined. Satellite images help to constrain the formation time of impact craters and thus provide valuable information on impact rates.

A recently published study led by Dr. Valentin Bickel from the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern presents the first comprehensive catalog of impacts on the Martian surface that took place near NASA's Mars lander during the InSight mission between December 2018 and December 2022. Bickel is also an InSight science team member. The study has just been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Plant Power: A New Method to Model How Plants Move Water Globally

Golden hour looking out on the UConn Forest.
Photo Credit: Sean Flynn/UConn Photo

Scientific Frontline: "At a Glance" Summary: A New Method to Model How Plants Move Water Globally

• Main Discovery: Researchers developed a novel method utilizing evolutionary relationships to infer the hydrologic traits of over 55,000 tree species, bypassing the need for individual field measurements to understand how plants influence global water circulation.
• Methodology: The team analyzed existing data on physical plant traits, such as tree height, root depth, and internal water flow speed. By applying numerical machine learning techniques and phylogenetic testing, they mapped the evolutionary relatedness of species to impute missing data, relying on the high level of trait conservation among closely related plants.
• Key Data: The newly created database encompasses vital hydrological values for 55,000 tree species, drastically expanding upon the 5,000 to 15,000 species previously cataloged. This dataset is critical given that an estimated 60 percent of all global rainfall is returned to the atmosphere through plant transpiration.
• Significance: This breakthrough enables Earth system models to move beyond oversimplified, generic plant classifications. Integrating highly detailed, species-specific vegetation data provides a much more accurate foundation for simulating complex atmospheric interactions and predicting climate change impacts.
• Future Application: The imputed data will be systematically tested against long-term physical observations from ten forested locations across the United States. Researchers ultimately aim to apply this methodology globally to refine Earth system models and investigate the underlying environmental drivers of plant trait variations.
• Branch of Science: Earth Science, Environmental Science, Hydrology

Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

Solar fuel generator 
Image Credit: Virgil Andrei

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

The device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. The results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

Improved treatment timing reduces honey bee losses to Varroa mites

Varroa destructor mite.
Photo Credit: Fera Science

Honey bee mortality can be significantly reduced by ensuring that treatments for the parasitic Varroa mite occur within specific timeframes, a new study reveals.

The mites—belonging to the species Varroa destructor—feed on the larvae of bees and can destroy colonies if not treated at key time points to reduce or remove infestations.

But researchers have found that more than a third of beekeepers surveyed in England and Wales deviate from recommended treatment guidelines, often missing these application windows.

They further observed that beekeepers who mistimed Varroa mite treatments experienced exacerbated colony losses, with this effect occurring across a wide range of medications.

“The main finding here was that a major cause of honeybee mortality could, in theory, be quite easy to reduce,” said Dr Thomas O’Shea-Wheller, lead author of the study, from the University of Exeter.

Temperature, rainfall and tides speed glacier flow on a daily basis

The calving front of the Bowdoin Glacier/Kangerluarsuup Sermia.
Photo Credit: Shin Sugiyama

Even though ‘glacial’ is commonly used to describe extremely slow, steady movement, a new study has found that glaciers speed up and slow down on a daily – even hourly – basis in response to changes in air temperature, rainfall and the tides.

A research team including scientists from Japan’s Hokkaido University studied the movement of a glacier in Greenland over six summers and mapped those movements against local weather patterns and tides to explore how these affect the glacier’s flow. The results have been published in the journal The Cryosphere.

“Short-term speed variations are key to understanding the physical processes controlling glacial motion, but studies are sparse for Greenlandic tidewater glaciers, particularly near the calving front,” says Hokkaido University’s Shin Sugiyama, lead author of the study. “Studying glacier dynamics near the ocean boundary is crucial to understanding the current and future mass loss of the ice sheet.”

DNA study targets drug making

Image Credit: Courtesy of Flinders University

DNA profiling technologies are rapidly advancing, creating the potential to identify individuals involved in making, packing and transporting illegal capsules by analyzing the exterior of the illicit drugs and the ziplock plastic bag in which they are carried.

Experiments carried out by Flinders University forensic science experts found DNA accumulates in different areas, depending on an individual’s involvement in the process, which could aid identification of people involved in the drug-making and trade.

The study also found DNA from the surface of capsules can be transferred to the inner surface of ziplock bags commonly used in transportation.

Self-Assembling Cerebral Blood Vessels: A Breakthrough in Alzheimer’s Treatment

Image Credit: Courtesy of Pohang University of Science and Technology

A 3D model accurately mimicking the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) in a laboratory environment has been successfully developed by research teams led by Professor Jinah Jang from the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Life Sciences, IT Convergence Engineering, and the Graduate School of Convergence at POSTECH, and Professor Sun Ha Paek from the Department of Neurosurgery at Seoul National University Hospital. This study was recently published in Biomaterials Research, an international academic journal on materials science.

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), result from the progressive decline of brain and nervous system functions, primarily due to aging. Chronic neuroinflammation, a key driver of these disorders, arises from the intricate interactions between cerebral blood vessels and neural cells, where the BBB plays a pivotal regulatory role. However, existing BBB models have been unable to replicate the complex three-dimensional 3D structure of cerebral blood vessels, posing significant challenges for research and drug development.