The cells of plants, animals and humans all use electrical signals to communicate with each other. Nerve cells use them to activated muscles. But leaves, too, send electrical signals to other parts of the plant, for example, when they were injured and are threatened by hungry insects.

"We have been asking ourselves for many years what molecular components plants use to exchange information among each other and how they sense the changes in electric voltage," says Professor Rainer Hedrich, Head of the Chair for Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Würzburg.

Results published in Plant Biology

Physicists in the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences have made science history by confirming the existence of a rare four-quark particle and discovering evidence of three other "exotic" siblings.

Their findings are based on data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest, most powerful particle accelerator, located at the CERN science laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

In a study conducted by Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS), researchers discovered a new gene that controls blood vessel formation. This work presents a possible new drug target for cancer and heart disease, and was published in the journal, Nature Communications, on 8 July 2016.

Blood vessels form a network throughout the body to deliver the nutrients necessary to keep the tissues and organs alive and healthy. The formation of this network is controlled by a process called angiogenesis. Angiogenesis inhibition is commonly targeted in cancer treatment development that aims to starve tumours of the nutrients necessary for their survival. In the heart, increasing angiogenesis can help heart pump function.

Despite two generations of prevention, awareness and treatment, gay and bisexual continue to have high levels of HIV infection, a new study led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows. 

Imagine a planet where you experience constant daylight or even triple sunrises and sunsets each day, because the seasons last longer than human lifetimes. 

That's the case with HD 131399Ab, which has the widest known orbit within a multi-star system. Located about 340 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, HD 131399Ab is believed to be about 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date, and one of very few directly imaged planets. With a temperature of 850 Kelvin (about 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit or 580 degrees Celsius) and weighing in at an estimated four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly imaged exoplanets. 

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Since the 1970s, U.S. doctors have prescribed lithium to treat patients with bipolar disorder. While the drug has a good success rate, scientists are still unsure exactly how it achieves its beneficial effects.

MIT biologists have now discovered a possible explanation for how lithium works. In a study of worms, the researchers identified a key protein that is inhibited by lithium, making the worms less active.

While these behavioral effects in worms can't be translated directly to humans, the results suggest a possible mechanism for lithium's effects on the brain, which the researchers believe is worth exploring further.