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Soybean improvement through plant breeding has been critical over the years for the success of the crop. In a new study that traces the genetic changes in varieties over the last 80 years of soybean breeding, researchers concluded that increases in yield gains and an increased rate of gains over the years are largely due to the continual release of greater-yielding cultivars by breeders.

(Phys.org) —Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly. This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time.

As science and technology go nano, scientists search for new tools to manipulate, observe and modify the “building blocks” of matter at the nanometer scale. With this in mind, the recent publication in Nature Nanotechnology in which ICFO researchers demonstrate for the first time the ability to use near-field optical tweezers to trap a nano-size object and manipulate it in the 3 dimensions of space, is an exciting achievement.

Researchers at Columbia University have made a significant step toward visualizing small biomolecules inside living biological systems with minimum disturbance, a longstanding goal in the scientific community. In a study published March 2nd in Nature Methods, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Wei Min’s research team has developed a general method to image a broad spectrum of small biomolecules, such as small molecular drugs and nucleic acids, amino acids, lipids for determining where they are localized and how they function inside cells.

At the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), now under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe beamline (HXN) will enable scientists to image structures at ever-smaller spatial scales. HXN’s long-range goal is to achieve a resolution of 1 nanometer (nm), or a billionth of a meter, completely eliminating the long-standing resolution gap between x-ray and electron microscopes

Scientists studying the sexual transformation of the malaria parasite have solved a long-standing mystery in parasite biology. Two research teams have independently discovered that a single protein acts as the master genetic switch that triggers the development of male and female sexual forms of the malaria parasite.

Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have developed software that greatly expands the types of multi-scale QM/MM (mixed quantum and molecular mechanical) simulations of complex chemical systems that scientists can use to design new drugs, better chemicals, or improved enzymes for biofuels production.

Baylor University researchers, in collaboration with an international team of scientists, have discovered definitive evidence of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul on Rusinga Island, Kenya. The groundbreaking discovery provides additional information that will help scientists understand and interpret the connection between habitat preferences and the early diversification of the ape-human lineage.

(Phys.org) —Self-replicating malware has struck some older Linksys routers and Linksys has acknowledged awareness of the malware, called “TheMoon.” They plan to make firmware fixes for all affected products available “Linksys will be working on the affected products with a firmware fix that is planned to be posted on our website in the coming weeks,” according to a company statement. Only those routers with Remote Management Access enabled within the administrative settings are vulnerable

Ignition – the process of releasing fusion energy equal to or greater than the amount of energy used to confine the fuel – has long been considered the “holy grail” of inertial confinement fusion science. A key step along the path to ignition is to have “fuel gains” greater than unity, where the energy generated through fusion reactions exceeds the amount of energy deposited into the fusion fuel.