How bacteria circumvent plants' immune system

Music streaming platforms such as Spotify hold tremendous power over whether fans listen to a musical artist, while social media boycotts have less impact, according to a new Cornell study. Jura Liaukonyte, professor at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, and co-authors analyzed several high-profile controversies involving R&B singer R. Kelly, country singer Morgan Wallen, industrial metal band Rammstein, and rapper and r

Researchers in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have discovered a powerful new way to control the electronic behavior of a metal—by manipulating the atomic properties of materials where they meet. The study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrates that interfacial polarization can tune the surface work function of metallic ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) by more than 1 electron volt (eV)—a tiny amount of energy—simply by adjusting film thickness at the nanometer scale.

Sticking with the same people might feel safe and comfortable. But a new Northwestern University study suggests it can actually trap new ideas and behaviors inside tight echo chambers. By contrast, the research, published in Communications Physics, shows that when interactions shift away from familiar contacts—and toward new ones—activity can spread more widely.

As cities sprawl into suburbs and exurbs, the distinction between urban areas and the countryside has become increasingly blurry. A new paper published in npj Urban Sustainability proposes that many modern landscapes can be managed more holistically when they are understood as a mixture of urban, rural, and wild features. The paper is titled "The continuum of urbanity: a synthetic concept for research on urban-rural mixtures."