Intestinal worms beneficially influence the composition of gut microbiota in the presence of inflammatory bowel disease, a new study suggests. The findings provide important insights into how intestinal worms, or helminths, manipulate the gut microbiota in a way that is beneficial for its host. Building upon previous research, Deepshika Ramanan and colleagues found that mice deficient in the gene Nod2, which are used to model Crohn's disease, develop abnormalities in their small intestines, including a compromised layer of mucus and changes to intestinal cell morphology. These alterations allowed for greater colonization by the bacteria Bacteroides vulgatus.

Scientists have mapped how thousands of genetic mutations can affect a cell's chances of survival.

The study involving yeast reveals how different combinations of mutations in a single gene can influence whether the cell lives or dies.

It is the first time scientists have been able to measure the effects of every possible combination of mutations in a gene.

An article in the latest edition of the journal Science describes an innovative form of heat engine that operates using only one single atom. The engine is the result of experiments undertaken by the QUANTUM work group at the Institute of Physics of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in collaboration with theoretical physicists of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).

Heat engines have played an important role in shaping society ever since the Industrial Revolution. As in the case of motor vehicle engines, they transform thermal energy into mechanical force, and our modern lifestyle would be impossible without them. At the same time, progress in miniaturization is resulting in the creation of ever smaller devices.

After a stroke, there is inflammation in the damaged part of the brain. Until now, the inflammation has been seen as a negative consequence that needs to be abolished as soon as possible. But, as it turns out, there are also some positive sides to the inflammation, and it can actually help the brain to self-repair.

"This is in total contrast to our previous beliefs", says Professor Zaal Kokaia from Lund University in Sweden.

After decades of theoretical studies and experimental measurements, forty years ago particle physicists managed to construct a very successful theory, one which describes with great accuracy the dynamics of subnuclear particles. This theory is now universally known as the Standard Model of particle physics. Since then, physicists have invested enormous efforts in the attempt of breaking it down.

It is not a contradiction: our understanding of the physical world progresses as we construct a progressively more refined mathematical representation of reality. Often this is done by adding more detail to an existing framework, but in some cases a complete overhaul is needed. And we appear to be in that situation with the Standard Model. 

Working women who want to minimize career income losses related to motherhood should wait until they are about 30 years old to have their first children, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

The findings, published in PLOS ONE, hold true regardless of whether a woman has earned a college degree.

For college graduates and those without a college degree, the researchers found lower lifetime incomes for women who gave birth for the first time at age 30 or younger. The hit was particularly stark for women without college degrees who had their first children before age 25.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Using the latest computer game technology, a Cornell-led team of physicists has come up with a "suitably beautiful" explanation to a puzzle that has baffled researchers in the materials and theoretical physics communities for a century.

Physics professor James Sethna has co-authored a paper on the unusual microstructure of smectics - liquid crystals whose molecules are arranged in layers and form ellipses and hyperbolas - and their similarity to martensites, a crystalline structure of steel.

In fact, Sethna and his cohorts have termed smectic liquids "the world's weirdest martensite."

Women are closing the education gap with men, but a global study of gender equality shows these advances are failing to bring equal access to quality jobs and government representation.

The study, which explored decades of data from more than 150 countries, finds that women have reached 91 percent of the education that men have - but only 70 percent of their rate of employment, and just 25 percent of political representation.

The findings challenge the assumption that education--a hallmark of international development efforts--translates into equal access to high-paying jobs, and suggest greater policy interventions are required to close political and workplace gender gaps.

Laughter plays a crucial role in every culture across the world. But it’s not clear why laughter exists. While it is evidently an inherently social phenomenon – people are up to 30 times more likely to laugh in a group than when alone – laughter’s function as a form of communication remains mysterious.

Expectations are rising for the 2016 run of the Large Hadron Collider. The machine has restarted colliding protons in the cores of ATLAS and CMS, where finally the reality of the tantalizing 750 GeV diphoton bumps seen by the two experiments in their Run 1 and 2015 data *will* be assessed one way or the other.

The flurry of papers discussing possible interpretations of the observed effect, first reported last December during a data jamboree at CERN, has slightly reduced in intensity but is still going rather strong in an absolute sense. Over 300 phenomenological interpretations have been published on the preprint Arxiv (but I wonder how many will end up with a publication on a refereed journal ? Maybe just a handful).