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Research published in the journal ACS Materials and Interfaces has provided new understanding of how false-negative results in Lateral Flow Tests occur and provides opportunity for simple improvements to be made.

Many countries are already looking to adopt clean heating solutions more widely, with the International Energy Agency projecting that by 2045 nearly half of global heating will be done with heat pumps. A new study from Aalto University assesses the impact of heat pumps on energy consumption as well as how they should be subsidized.

Chinese researchers headed by Prof. CHEN Shengyun from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources (NIEER) and XUE Kai from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently discovered links between reduction in microbial stability and soil carbon loss in the active layer of degraded alpine permafrost on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

With increasing vaccination rates and decreasing numbers of infections in Germany, the population's feeling of safety is also rising. As the results of the 37th edition of the BfR-Corona-Monitor, a regular survey conducted by the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), show, the majority of the population in Germany thinks it can control its risk of an infection well.

Proteins are encoded by genes - however, this information is divided into small coding sections, which are only assembled during a process called splicing. Various combinations are possible, some of which are still unknown. Dr. Robin Herbrechter and Professor Andreas Reiner from the junior research group Cellular Neurobiology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) now systematically analysed alternative splicing in the family of ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs), which is essential for signal processing in the brain.

Diesel-polluted soil from now defunct military outposts in Greenland can be remediated using naturally occurring soil bacteria according to an extensive five-year experiment in Mestersvig, East Greenland, to which the University of Copenhagen has contributed.

The encryption algorithm GEA-1 was implemented in mobile phones in the 1990s to encrypt data connections. Since then, it has been kept secret. Now, a research team has analysed the algorithm and has come to the following conclusion: GEA-1 is so easy to break that it must be a deliberately weak encryption that was built in as a backdoor. Although the vulnerability is still present in many modern mobile phones, it no longer poses any significant threat to users, according to the researchers.

Getting energy and nutrients from the environment -- that is, eating -- is such an important function that it has been regulated through sophisticated mechanisms over hundreds of millions of years. Some of these mechanisms are only now beginning to be unraveled. A group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has found one of their key components -- a switch that controls the ability of organisms to adapt to low cellular nutrient levels.

An international team including researchers from The University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science has developed spherical colloidal particles for the visualization of rotational dynamics. The two-color fluorescent particles have an off-center core that allows tracking of dense suspensions using microscopy. The researchers observed coupling between the rotation of charged particles, correlation between local crystallinity and rotational diffusivity, and "slip-stick" friction between particles. The findings will enhance the understanding of biological systems and industrial processes.

Researchers from the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Perimeter Institute report in the latest issue of Physical Review Letters that nonlocality is a universal property of the world, regardless of how and at what speed quantum particles move.

1,660 routine diagnostic specimens that were collected at a Nottingham hospital between Jan. 2 and March 11, 2020, were retrospectively tested for SARS-CoV-2. Three people, who did not qualify for a PCR test for COVID-19 test at the time, were found to have the virus.

The accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics in the environment continues at an alarming rate. A radiolabelling technique developed at the University of Helsinki made it possible to monitor the movement and accumulation of plastics in the mouse body, as well as their elimination from it.

A group of researchers from the University of Jyvaskyla and Stanford University were part of an expedition to French Guiana to study tropical frogs in the Amazon. Various amphibian species of this region use ephemeral pools of water as their nurseries, and display unique preferences for specific physical and chemical characteristics. Researchers were surprised to find tadpoles of the dyeing poison frog surviving in an incredible range of both chemical (pH 3-8) and vertical (0-20 m in height) deposition sites.

A Clemson University researcher has developed a protein which links natural killer cells in the human body's immune system to breast cancer cells. It's a novel approach to developing breast cancer-specific immunotherapy and could lead to new treatment options for the world's most common cancer.

Just a small number of cells found in tumors can enable and recruit other types of cells nearby, allowing the cancer to spread to other parts of the body, report Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists. Working with their research collaborators, the scientists found that 'enabler cells' comprise about 20 percent or less of the cells in an aggressive tumor; their small numbers may account for why they are often missed when bulk tissue analyses are used to inform therapeutic decisions.

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest-yet-observed example of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the Universe.

Astrophysicists from the University of Bath in the UK find the magnetic field in gamma-ray bursts is scrambled after the ejected material crashes into, and shocks, the surrounding medium.

Microplastic pollution of waterways has become a huge concern, with the tiny pieces of plastic entering food webs and potentially having harmful effects on animals and people. In addition, microplastics can act as breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions.

Ozone is a pollutant at ground level, but very high in the atmosphere's 'ozone layer,' it absorbs damaging ultraviolet radiation. Past studies have examined ozone levels in the Southern Hemisphere, but little is known about levels of the molecule in Antarctica over long periods. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed more than 25 years of Antarctic data, finding that concentrations near the ground arose from both natural and human-related sources.

Québec produces more strawberries than any other Canadian province. Strawberries are delicate and difficult to keep fresh. In response to this challenge, Monique Lacroix, a professor at INRS (l'Institut national de la recherche scientifique), and her team have developed a packaging film that can keep strawberries fresh for up to 12 days. The team's findings on how this film protects against mould and certain pathogenic bacteria have been published in Food Hydrocolloids.