Researchers have developed a new antibiotic that reduced or eliminated drug-resistant bacterial infections in mouse models of acute pneumonia and sepsis while sparing healthy microbes in the mouse gut. The drug, called lolamicin, also warded off secondary infections with Clostridioides difficile, a common and dangerous hospital-associated bacterial infection, and was effective against more than 130 multidrug-resistant bacterial strains in cell culture. The findings are detailed in the journal Nature. "People are starting to realize that the antibiotics we've all been taking—that are fighting infection and, in some instances, saving our lives—also are having these deleterious effects on us," said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemistry professor Paul Hergenrother, who led the study with former doctoral student Kristen Muñoz.

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The Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) is found all over the U.K. These orchids produce tiny seeds that can be carried anywhere by the wind, yet they often appear in clumps with small seedlings growing near mature plants. This phenomenon has puzzled ecologists since Darwin's time, with the exact reason remaining a mystery. A new study, led by researchers from the University of Sheffield in collaboration with The University of Manchester, provides the first evidence that early stage orchid seedlings germinate and thrive near to adult plants due to a kind of parental nurture using underground fungal networks. Scientists investigated the idea that fungal networks, known as mycorrhizal networks, act as a direct pathway for established orchid plants to share recently produced sugars with developing seedlings.

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The theory of coevolution says that when closely interacting species drive evolutionary changes in each other this can lead to speciation—the evolution of new species. But until now, real-world evidence for this has been scarce. Now a team of researchers has found evidence that coevolution is linked to speciation by studying the evolutionary arms race between cuckoos and the host birds they exploit. Bronze-cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of small songbirds. Soon after the cuckoo chick hatches, it pushes the host's eggs out of the nest. The host not only loses all its own eggs, but spends several weeks rearing the cuckoo, which takes up valuable time when it could be breeding itself. Each species of bronze-cuckoo closely matches the appearance of their host's chicks, fooling the host parents into accepting the cuckoo. The study shows how these interactions can cause new species to arise when a cuckoo species exploits several different hosts. If chicks of each host species have a distinct appearance, and hosts reject odd-looking nestlings, then the cuckoo species diverges into separate genetic lineages, each mimicking the chicks of its favored host. These new lineages are the first sign of new species emerging.

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Life appears to require at least some instability. This fact should be considered a biological universality, proposes University of Southern California molecular biologist John Tower. Biological laws are thought to be rare and describe patterns or organizing principles that appear to be generally ubiquitous. While they can be squishier than the absolutes of math or physics, such rules in biology nevertheless help us better understand the complex processes that govern life. Most examples we've found so far seem to concern themselves with the conservation of materials or energy, and therefore life's tendency towards stability.

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Antibiotics prevent snails from forming new memories by disrupting their gut microbiome—the community of beneficial bacteria found in their guts. The new research, led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in collaboration with Aberystwyth University, highlights the damaging effects that human pollution could be having on aquatic wildlife. In the study published in The ISME Journal, pond snails were given a favorite food—carrot juice—but had to quickly learn and remember that it was no longer safe to eat. Snails in clean water did well, avoiding feeding on the carrot juice when it had been paired with a chemical they dislike. However, snails that had been exposed to high concentrations of antibiotics in the water failed to learn and form a memory, and continued to show normal feeding behavior even after training.

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Only in recent years have scientists found that not everyone has the sense of an inner voice – and a new study sheds some light on how living without an internal monologue affects how language is processed in the brain. This latest study, from researchers at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US, also proposes a new name for the condition of not having any inner speech: anendophasia. This is similar to (if not the same as) anauralia, a term researchers coined in 2021 for people who don't have an inner voice, nor can they imagine sounds, like a musical tune or siren.

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New AI headphones let wearers listen to a single person in a crowd by looking at them just once. Noise-canceling headphones have gotten very good at creating an auditory blank slate. But allowing certain sounds from a wearer’s environment through the erasure still challenges researchers. The latest edition of Apple’s AirPods Pro, for instance, automatically adjusts sound levels for wearers—sensing when they’re in conversation, for instance—but the user has little control over whom to listen to or when this happens. Now, researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that lets a user wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them. The system, called “Target Speech Hearing,” then cancels all other sounds in the environment and plays just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time even as the listener moves around in noisy places and no longer faces the speaker.

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Around 8% of human DNA is made up of genetic sequences acquired from ancient viruses. These sequences, known as human endogenous retroviruses (or Hervs), date back hundreds of thousands to millions of years – with some even predating the emergence of Homo sapiens. Our latest research suggests that some ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome play a role in susceptibility to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder. Hervs represent the remnants of these infections with ancient retroviruses. Retroviruses are viruses that insert a copy of their genetic material into the DNA of the cells they infect.

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On May 20th, 2024, an iceberg measuring 380 square kilometers (~147 mi2) broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. This event (A-83) is this region's third significant iceberg calving in the past four years. The first came in 2021, when A-74 broke off the ice sheet, while an even larger berg named A-81 followed in 2023.

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In the world of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide gets most of the blame. But tiny organisms that flourish in the world's farm fields emit a far more potent gas, nitrous oxide, and scientists have long sought a way to address it. Now some researchers think they've found a bacteria that can help. Writing in this week's Nature, they say extensive lab and field trials showed the naturally derived bacteria reduced the nitrous oxide without disrupting other microbes in the soil. It also survived well in soil and would be relatively cheap to produce. "I think that the avenue that we have opened here, it opens up for a number of new possibilities in bioengineering of the farmed soil," said Lars Bakken, a professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and one of the authors of the study.

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An estimated 2.8 million people worldwide have multiple sclerosis (MS). This autoimmune condition is the result of the immune system damaging parts of the nerves in the brain and spinal cord, which can lead to problems with movement, vision, balance and sensation. While many MS symptoms can be managed, there's currently no way to cure or prevent the condition. This is due to the complex immune response that leads to this disease. But a blood test recently developed by me and my colleagues has allowed us to estimate the strength of the immune response in people with MS. This finding may not only bring us one step closer to understanding the causes of MS, but to developing better treatments for the condition.

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Roughly 1,000 light-years from Earth, there is a cosmic structure known as IRAS 23077+6707 (IRAS 23077) that resembles a giant butterfly. Ciprian T. Berghea, an astronomer with the US Naval Observatory, originally observed the structure in 2016 using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). To the surprise of many, the structure has remained unchanged for years, leading some to question what IRAS 2307 could be. Recently, two international teams of astronomers made follow-up observations using the Submillimeter Array at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Hawaii to better understand IRAS 2307.

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, University of Copenhagen researchers have become the first to see the formation of three of the earliest galaxies in the universe, more than 13 billion years ago. The sensational discovery contributes important knowledge about the universe and is now published in Science. For the first time in the history of astronomy, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have witnessed the birth of three of the universe's absolute earliest galaxies, somewhere between 13.3 and 13.4 billion years ago.

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When we set off on a car ride, we might not think about the chances of an accident, or any other risks – including the potentially dangerous materials that researchers have found in 99 percent of cabins tested in vehicles manufactured in the US since 2015. These materials are fitted to meet flame retardant safety standards, but according to the US and Canadian team behind the new study, their inclusion may be causing more harm than good. They're now asking for a rethink on the inclusion of these substances. "Our research found that interior materials release harmful chemicals into the cabin air of our cars," says environmental scientist Rebecca Hoehn from Duke University. "Considering the average driver spends about an hour in the car every day, this is a significant public health issue."

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Even the simplest of creatures know hunger. That ache for food drives decisions and behaviors in all living things. For most of us, the consequent behaviors of hunger originate in our brains. Then, it's up to our outer nervous system to let our brains know when we've had enough to eat. But not all animals have brains, so University of Kiel zoologist Christoph Giez and colleagues examined jellyfish relatives found in freshwater, called hydra, to see how brainless creatures balance feeling hungry and full. To their surprise, they found hydra have more sophisticated networks of neurons than expected. Despite their brainlessness, hydra also have a nervous system, with one network acting like our central nervous system, which includes our brains, and another network acting like our peripheral nervous system, which includes all the nerves outside our brain and spinal cord, including the nerves in our guts.

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In a behavioral experiment, crows were able to learn to produce a set number of calls. This involves them planning in advance. From the sound of the first call in a numerical sequence, it is possible to predict how many calls the crows will make. A research team consisting of Dr. Diana A. Liao, Dr. Katharina F. Brecht and assistant professor Lena Veit led by Professor Andreas Nieder from the Institute of Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen has established this. Their study has been published in Science. Carrion crows, which belong to the group of songbirds, are not known for the beauty of their song but for their formidable learning ability. For instance, earlier studies have shown that the birds understand counting. "In addition, they have very good vocal control. They can control precisely whether they want to emit a call or not," reports Professor Nieder. Together with his team, he undertook behavioral experiments with three carrion crows to study whether they could apply these abilities in combination.

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For the first time, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ices have been observed in the far reaches of our solar system on trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). A research team, led by planetary scientists Mário Nascimento De Prá and Noemí Pinilla-Alonso from the University of Central Florida's Florida Space Institute (FSI), made the findings by using the infrared spectral capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to analyze the chemical composition of 59 trans-Neptunian objects and Centaurs. The pioneering study, published this week in Nature Astronomy, suggests that carbon dioxide ice was abundant in the cold outer regions of the protoplanetary disk, the vast rotating disk of gas and dust from which the solar system formed. Further investigation is needed to understand the carbon monoxide ice's origins, as it is also prevalent on the TNOs in the study.

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