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Increased dietary salt intake can induce a group of aggressive immune cells that are involved in triggering and sustaining autoimmune diseases. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks healthy tissue instead of fighting pathogens. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks healthy tissue instead of fighting pathogens.

Scientists have identified patterns of epigenomic diversity that not only allow plants to adapt to various environments, but could also benefit crop production and the study of human diseases.

The flip of a single molecular switch helps create the mature neuronal connections that allow the brain to bridge the gap between adolescent impressionability and adult stability. Now researchers have reversed the process, recreating a youthful brain that facilitated both learning and healing in the adult mouse.

After nearly a decade of careful observations astronomers have measured the distance to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, more accurately than ever before. This new measurement also improves our knowledge of the rate of expansion of the Universe — the Hubble Constant — and is a crucial step towards understanding the nature of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion to accelerate.

Scientists have provided critical information to identify CALHM1, a channel in the walls of taste receptor cells, as a necessary component in the process of sweet, bitter, and umami (savory) taste perception.

New work expands the understanding of how Th17 cells develop, and how their growth influences the development of immune responses. By figuring out how these cells are "wired," the researchers make a surprising connection between autoimmunity and salt consumption, highlighting the interplay of genetics and environmental factors in disease susceptibility.

Scientists have discovered how ATP -- the body's main fuel source -- is released as the neurotransmitter from sweet, bitter, and umami, or savory, taste bud cells. The CALHM1 channel protein, which spans a taste bud cell's outer membrane to allow ions and molecules in and out, releases ATP to make a neural taste connection. The other two taste types, sour and salt, use different mechanisms.

A region of the brain known to play a key role in visual and spatial processing has a parallel function: sorting visual information into categories. Different types of information can be simultaneously encoded within the posterior parietal cortex.

Researchers have discovered a likely origin of epithelial ovarian cancer (ovarian carcinoma), the fifth leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States.

Comet 2013 A1 (Siding Spring) will make a very close approach to Mars in October 2014.

The Herschel space observatory is expected to exhaust its supply of liquid helium coolant in the coming weeks, after spending more than three years studying the cool universe and surpassing the expectations of the international team of scientists involved.

Scientists have revealed new insights into the life and death of black holes. Their findings dispel the so-called firewall paradox which shocked the physics community when it was announced in 2012 since its predictions about large black holes contradicted Einstein's crowning achievement -- the theory of general relativity. Those results suggested that anyone falling into a black hole would be burned up as they crossed its edge -- the so-called event horizon.

Scientists have developed robots with a new sense -- lateral line sensing. All fish have this sensing organ but so far it had no technological counterpart on human-made underwater vehicles.

Many lines of evidence indicate that schizophrenia is a disorder of neurodevelopment. For example, genes implicated in the heritable risk for schizophrenia are also implicated in the development of nerve cells and their connections. Numerous findings in brain imaging studies describe the changes in brain structure and function associated with schizophrenia as emerging early in the course of the disorder. Some early brain imaging studies even found little or no evidence of progression of structural deficits. Yet, a new generation of studies now also describes degenerative processes in schizophrenia that resemble accelerated aging.

Researchers have developed a new process to make online banking more secure.

Scientists have developed a way to reprogram cochlear implants that dramatically improves the quality and clarity of users’ hearing.

When people or animals are thrust into threatening situations such as combat or attack by a predator, stress hormones are released to help prepare the organism to defend itself or to rapidly escape from danger —- the so-called fight-or-flight response. Now researchers have demonstrated for the first time that stress hormones are also responsible for altering the body shape of developing animals, in this case the humble tadpole, so they are better equipped to survive predator attacks.

People who suffer from insomnia appear to have an increased risk of developing heart failure, according to the largest study to investigate the link.

A new report concludes that nearly half of Africa's wild lion populations may decline to near extinction over the next 20-40 years without urgent conservation measures. The plight of many lion populations is so bleak, the report concludes that fencing them in -- and fencing humans out -- may be their only hope for survival.

New theoretical modeling provides clues to how the gas giant planets in our solar system -- Jupiter and Saturn -- might have formed and evolved.

Scientists report that a high calorie diet causes fat cells to act as if under pathogenic attack. The researchers have identified a root cause of the diet-caused fat tissue inflammation that has baffled medical researchers for decades.

A screening tool eases and greatly quickens one of the thorniest tasks in the biofuels industry: determining cell wall chemistry to find plants with ideal genes.

Researchers show how fish oils help lower blood pressure via vasodilation at ion channels. In vascular smooth muscle cells, such as those that line blood vessels, ion channels that span the outer membrane of a cell to let such ions as sodium, calcium, and potassium in and out, are critical to maintaining proper vessel pressure.

Researchers have found a new potential benefit of a molecule in green tea: preventing the misfolding of specific proteins in the brain.

The discovery and analysis of an extremely rare African American Y chromosome push back the time of the most recent common ancestor for the Y chromosome lineage tree to 338,000 years ago. This time predates the age of the oldest known anatomically modern human fossils.

New research has revealed how stresses of flow in the small blood vessels of the heart and brain could cause a common protein to change shape and form dangerous blood clots. The scientists report that the proteins can remain in the clot-initiating shape for up to five hours before settling back into their normal, healthy shape.

New research explains a novel interaction between aging and how neurons dispose of unwanted proteins and why this impacts the rising prevalence of dementia with advancing age.

Researchers have shown that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice – attributed to greenhouse warming – appears to increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy into the US Northeast.

Antarctica's topography began changing from flat to fjord-filled starting about 34 million years ago, according to a new report from a team of geoscientists.

A devastating sinkhole occurred in Florida on Feb. 28, 2013, raising questions and concerns about this incredible phenomenon. Around 20 percent of the United States lies in areas susceptible to sinkhole events, highlighting the need for research and to be informed about this hazard.