Researchers have lifted fertility rates in older female mice with small doses of a metabolic compound that reverses the aging process in eggs, offering hope for some women struggling to conceive.

The University of Queensland study found a non-invasive treatment could maintain or restore the quality and number of eggs and alleviate the biggest barrier to pregnancy for older women.

A team led by UQ’s Professor Hayden Homer found the loss of egg quality through aging was due to lower levels of a particular molecule in cells critical for generating energy.
“Quality eggs are essential for pregnancy success because they provide virtually all the building blocks required by an embryo,” Professor Homer said.

“We investigated whether...

A new study reveals good news for the possibility of using perovskite materials in next-generation solar cells. The study, published in the journal Acta Materialia, finds that though perovskite films tend to crack easily, those cracks are easily healed with some compression or a little bit of heat. That bodes well, the researchers say, for the use of inexpensive perovskites to replace or complement pricy silicon in solar cell technologies.

“The efficiency of perovskite solar cells has grown very quickly and now rivals silicon in laboratory cells,” said Nitin Padture, the Otis E...

Swedish and Japanese researchers have, after ten years, found an explanation to the peculiar emission lines seen in one of the brightest supernovae ever observed – SN 2006gy. At the same time they found an explanation for how the supernova arose.

Superluminous supernovae are the most luminous explosions in cosmos. SN 2006gy is one of the most studied such events, but researchers have been uncertain about its origin. Astrophysicists at Stockholm University have, together with Japanese colleagues, now discovered large amounts of iron in the supernova through spectral lines that have never previously been seen either in supernovae or in other astrophysical objects...

A therapeutic intervention for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, could be on the horizon thanks to unexpected findings by University of Arizona researchers.

ALS is the progressive degeneration of motor neurons that causes people to lose the ability to move and eventually speak, eat and breathe.

Within the neuronal cells of patients with ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases, two proteins – TDP-43 and FUS – a...