The immune system is regulated by a body clock and is more active during the day, scientists at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland have discovered. A breakthrough study, led by scientists at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, has uncovered how daylight can boost the immune system’s ability to…

Amyloid-beta plaques (brown) and tau protein tangles (blue). Credit: National Institute on Aging/NIH Investigative journalist Charles Piller’s latest book, Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, came out in February. It details the work of Matthew Schrag, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and…

Chronic stress can lead to increased blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, decreased immune function, depression, and anxiety. Unfortunately, the tools we use to monitor stress are often imprecise or expensive, relying on self-reporting questionnaires and psychiatric evaluations. Now a Tufts interdisciplinary engineer and his team have devised a simple device…

A gene that regulates the development of roots in vascular plants is also involved in the organ development of liverworts — land plants so old they don’t even have proper roots. The Kobe University discovery highlights the fundamental evolutionary dynamic of co-opting, evolving a mechanism first and adopting it for…