Thermally-based industrial chemical separation processes such as distillation now account for 10 to 15 percent of the world's annual energy use. Slaking the global thirst for energy could therefore get a substantial boost from improved technologies for producing fuels, plastics, food and other products with reduced inputs of energy.

An effective vaccine against the virus that causes genital herpes has evaded researchers for decades. But now, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago working with scientists from Germany have shown that zinc-oxide nanoparticles shaped like jacks can prevent the virus from entering cells, and help natural immunity to develop.

Results of the study are published in The Journal of Immunology.

Sepsis constitutes the main cause of disease and death in people suffering from severe burns. This results from the dissemination of pathogens in the body, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, one of the three bacteria most frequently responsible for this complication. This microorganism is all the more fearsome as its virulence and its resistance to antibiotics can be modulated by various factors present in its host. Researchers led by Karl Perron, microbiologist at the Faculty of the sciences of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, studied the effect of exudates - biological fluids that seep out of burn wounds - on the survival and the virulence of these three bacteria.

Scientists have been studying how visual space is mapped in the cerebral cortex for many decades under the assumption that the map is equal for lights and darks. Surprisingly, recent work demonstrates that visual brain maps are dark-centric and that, just as stars rotate around black holes in the Universe, lights rotate around darks in the brain representation of visual space. The work was done by Jens Kremkow and collaborators in the laboratories of Jose Manuel Alonso at the State University of New York College of Optometry and will be published in the May 5, 2016 issue of Nature (advance online publication and press embargo lifted on April 27, 2016 at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time).

Specific regions of the brain are specialized in recognizing bodies of animals and human beings. By measuring the electrical activity per cell, scientists from KU Leuven, Belgium, and the University of Glasgow have shown that the individual brain cells in these areas do different things. Their response to specific contours or body shapes is very selective.

Facial recognition has already been the subject of much research. But what happens when we cannot recognize an animal or a human being on the basis of a face, but only have other body parts to go on? The mechanism behind this recognition process is uncharted territory for neuroscientists, says Professor Rufin Vogels of the KU Leuven Laboratory for Neuro- and Psychophysiology.

Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have discovered a protein complex that helps direct the growth of axons -- the parts of neurons that make up our nerves, connecting our senses and muscles to the brain and spinal cord. Published in Cell Reports, the study shows how the protein myosin-Va acts as a calcium sensor that tells new pieces of axon where they should go.

Scientists have announced a major breakthrough in their understanding of how the fungus Aspergillus terreus - the cause of serious illness in humans - can move around the body, rather than remaining in the lungs as with similar fungal infections.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Nottingham and published in the academic journal Cell Chemical Biology, has discovered that infections from A.terreus could hitch a ride on immune cells in order to transport themselves and cause systemic infection.

The Rök Runestone, erected in the late 800s in the Swedish province of Östergötland, is the world's most well-known runestone. Its long inscription has seemed impossible to understand, despite the fact that it is relatively easy to read. A new interpretation of the inscription has now been presented - an interpretation that breaks completely with a century-old interpretative tradition. What has previously been understood as references to heroic feats, kings and wars in fact seems to refer to the monument itself.

Using an ultra fast-scanning atomic force microscope, a team of researchers from the University of Basel has filmed "living" nuclear pore complexes at work for the first time. Nuclear pores are molecular machines that control the traffic entering or exiting the cell nucleus. In their article published in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers explain how the passage of unwanted molecules is prevented by rapidly moving molecular "tentacles" inside the pore.

Analyses of ancient DNA from prehistoric humans paint a picture of dramatic population change in Europe from 45,000 to 7,000 years ago, according to a new study led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator David Reich at Harvard Medical School.

The new genetic data, published May 2, 2016 in Nature, reveal two big changes in prehistoric human populations that are closely linked to the end of the last Ice Age around 19,000 years ago. As the ice sheet retreated, Europe was repopulated by prehistoric humans from southwest Europe (e.g., Spain). Then, in a second event about 14,000 years ago, populations from the southeast (e.g., Turkey, Greece) spread into Europe, displacing the first group of humans.