More than 23.5 million Americans suffer from autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma and lupus, in which an overzealous immune response leads to pain, inflammation, skin disorders and other chronic health problems. The conditions are so common that three of the top-five selling drugs in the United States aim to ease their symptoms. But no cure exists, and treatments are expensive and come with side effects.

Now CU Boulder researchers have developed a potent, drug-like compound that could someday revolutionize treatment of such diseases by inhibiting a protein instrumental in prompting the body to start attacking its own tissue.

Power stored in electric cars could be sent back to the grid – thereby supporting the grid and acting as a potential storage for clean energy – but it will only be economically viable if we upgrade the system first. In a new paper in Energy Policy, two scientists show how their seemingly contradictory findings actually point to the same outcome and recommendations: that pumping energy back into the grid using today’s technology can damage car batteries, but with improvements in the system it has the potential to provide valuable clean energy – and improve battery life in the process.

As intense rain storms moved into Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Nov. 21, NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission or GPM core satellite analyzed the severe storms.

Satellites are keeping an eye on the U.S. and NOAA’s GOES East satellite showed two storm systems for pre-Thanksgiving travelers on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2017. One system was exiting the northeastern U.S. while the other was affecting the Pacific Northwest.

Do songbirds and humans have common biological hardwiring that shapes how they produce and perceive sounds?

Leishmaniasis is an important human and veterinary disease caused by Leishmania parasites that affect 12 million people in over 98 endemic countries. The disease is now emerging in Europe due to climate change and massive population displacement. The parasite is known to rapidly adapt to novel environments with important consequences for disease outcome. It has therefore been recognized as an emerging public health threat for the EU.

A team of university and government scientists, selected by an expert review panel convened by the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, will conduct an independent study to estimate the number of red snapper in the U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“American communities across the Gulf of Mexico depend on their access to, as well as the long term sustainability of, red snapper,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “I look forward to the insights this project will provide as we study and manage this valuable resource.”

A new study, led by a University of Bristol earth scientist, has shown that recently reported unexpected behaviour on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is due to its unique atmospheric chemistry.

For more than a century, plant geneticists have been studying maize as a model system to understand the rules governing the inheritance of traits, and a team of researchers recently unveiled a previously unknown mechanism that triggers gene silencing in corn.

When a Cornell-led team of scientists analyzed two dozen environmental factors to understand bumblebee population declines and range contractions, they expected to find stressors like changes in land use, geography or insecticides.