WSU researcher pioneers new study model with clues to anti-aging

Jiyue Zhu and a student work in the laboratory.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Washington State University

Washington State University scientists have created genetically-engineered mice that could help accelerate anti-aging research.

Globally, scientists are working to unlock the secrets of extending human lifespan at the cellular level, where aging occurs gradually due to the shortening of telomeres–the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that function like shoelace tips to prevent unraveling. As telomeres shorten over time, cells lose their ability to divide for healthy growth, and some eventually begin to die.

But research studying these telomeres at the cellular level has been challenging in humans.

Now, a discovery by a WSU research team published today in the journal Nature Communications has opened the door to using genetically engineered mice.

Led by WSU College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Professor Jiyue Zhu, the research team has developed mice that have human-like short telomeres, enabling the study of cellular aging as it occurs in the human body and within organs. Normally mice have telomeres that are up to 10 times longer than humans.

Novel processor uses magnons to crack complex problems

The three first authors of the paper - Noura Zenbaa (on the right), Claas Abert (on the left) and Fabian Majcen (in the middle) at the moment when the universal inverse-design magnonic device was activated to solve its first problem.
Photo Credit: Andrii Chumak, NanoMag, U of Vienna

An international team of researchers, led by physicists from the University of Vienna, has achieved a breakthrough in data processing by employing an "inverse-design" approach. This method allows algorithms to configure a system based on desired functions, bypassing manual design and complex simulations. The result is a smart "universal" device that uses spin waves ("magnons") to perform multiple data processing tasks with exceptional energy efficiency. Published in Nature Electronics, this innovation marks a transformative advance in unconventional computing, with significant potential for next-generation telecommunications, computing, and neuromorphic systems.

Modern electronics face critical challenges, including high energy consumption and increasing design complexity. In this context, magnonics — the use of magnons, or quantized spin waves in magnetic materials — offers a promising alternative. Magnons enable efficient data transport and processing with minimal energy loss. With the growing demand for innovative computing solutions, ranging from 5G and upcoming 6G networks to neuromorphic computing (mimicking functions of the brain), magnonics represents a paradigm shift that redefines how devices are designed and operated. Developing an innovative magnonic processor that enables highly adaptive and energy-efficient computing was a challenge that Andrii Chumak of the University of Vienna's Nanomagnetism and Magnonics Group and his collaborators successfully met.

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

Earth systems models are an important tool for studying complex processes occurring around the planet, such as those in and between the atmosphere and biosphere, and they help researchers and policymakers better understand phenomena like climate change. Incorporating more data into these simulations can improve modeling accuracy; however, sometimes, this requires the arduous task of gathering millions of data points.

Researchers, including UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Assistant Professor James Knighton, Pablo Sanchez-Martinez from the University of Edinburgh, and Leander Anderegg from the University of California Santa Barbara, have developed a method to bypass the need for gathering data for over 55,000 tree species to better account for how plants influence the flow of water around the planet. Their findings are published in Nature Scientific Data.

Plants play essential roles in Earth’s processes, from capturing carbon and making oxygen available for other life forms like humans. Plants are also responsible for the movement of water, says Knighton, where an estimated 60% of all rain is returned to the atmosphere through transpiration. This huge global-scale movement of water through plants is complex and currently represented by Earth system models (ESMs) in a simplified way says Knighton, where all plants in a region may be considered as a single entity (i.e., a plant functional type),

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.”