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Plants regulate their growth using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. Strigolactones also help plant roots form symbiotic relationships with microorganisms that allow the plant to absorb nutrients from the soil. These two factors have led to agricultural interest in using strigolactones to control the growth of weeds and root parasites, as well as improving nutrient uptake. These root-extruding compounds also stimulate germination of witchweeds and broomrapes, which can cause entire crops of grain to fail, making thorough research essential prior to commercial development. Now scientists have synthesized strigolactones from microbes.

Infants coming from homes with domestic violence often go on to have worse academic outcomes in school due to neurodevelopmental lags and a higher risk for a variety of health issues, including gastrointestinal distress, trouble eating and sleeping, as well as stress and illness.

Researchers have made a surprise discovery about how immune 'sentinel' cells are maintained, which could have implications for drugs in development for treating cancer.

Researchers attempted to unravel such mechanisms by adopting non-invasive diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the brains of SLE patients, particularly the white matter, coupled with computerized neuropsychological assessment. White matter lies beneath the grey matter cortex in the human brain and comprises millions of bundles of nerve fibers that transmit signals to different brain regions.

Imagine having your own digital personal chef; ready to cook whatever you want, tailoring the shape, texture, and flavor just for you -- all at the push of a button. Engineers have been working on doing just that, using lasers for cooking and 3D printing technology for assembling foods. In their new study they discovered that laser-cooked meat shrinks 50% less, retains double the moisture content, and shows similar flavor development to conventionally cooked meat.

Researchers have extracted Ancient DNA from human bones to re-write early Japanese history by underlining that modern day populations in Japan have a tripartite genetic origin -- a finding that refines previously accepted views of a dual genomic ancestry.

A new method for quantifying plant evolution reveals that after the onset of early seed plants, complexity halted for 250 million years until the diversification of flowering plants about 100 million years ago.