Government needs to simplify the plethora of schemes aiming to facilitate business-industry research collaboration across all disciplines, according to a new review published today by Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. 

The author of a new study of evolutionary convergence argues that the development of life on Earth is predictable, meaning that similar organisms should therefore have appeared on other, Earth-like planets by now. 

With the announcement July 2 that BP has settled federal, state and local claims related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for a total of more than $18.7 billion, leaders with Texas’ RESTORE Centers of Excellence are moving forward with plans to use millions in spill-related Clean Water Act funding on research and science activities that will benefit Texas and help to restore the health of the Gulf of Mexico.

A research group at Umeå University has managed to capture and describe a protein structure that, until now, has been impossible to study. The discovery lays the base for developing designed enzymes as catalysts to new chemical reactions for instance in biotechnological applications. The result of the study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

The first comprehensive analysis of the woolly mammoth genome reveals extensive genetic changes that allowed mammoths to adapt to life in the arctic. Mammoth genes that differed from their counterparts in elephants played roles in skin and hair development, fat metabolism, insulin signaling and numerous other traits. Genes linked to physical traits such as skull shape, small ears and short tails were also identified. As a test of function, a mammoth gene involved in temperature sensation was resurrected in the laboratory and its protein product characterized. 

New instrument is small enough to function within a smartphone, enabling portable light analysis

Clemson University's Institute of Translational Genomics, led by geneticist Stephen Kresovich, has been awarded $6 million by Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy as one of six projects seeking to accelerate the development of sustainable energy crops for the production of renewable transportation fuels.

The traditional image of a solitary researcher working in an isolated laboratory in pursuit of a scientific discovery is outdated. Today’s scientists are more social than ever, driven by the imperative to collaborate in order to innovate.

Spiny lobsters practice “behavioral immunity” to create safe havens that prevent them from contracting a lethal disease in the wild, an important finding for the $50 million annual spiny lobster fishery in Florida, according to a new study co-authored by a University of Florida scientist.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a detailed model of the source of a puzzling limitation on fusion reactions. The findings, published in June in Physics of Plasmas, complete and confirm previous PPPL research and could lead to steps to overcome the barrier if the model proves consistent with experimental data. “We used to have correlation,” said physicist David Gates, first author of the paper. “Now we believe we have causation.” This work was supported by the DOE Office of Science.