Eurekalert

A new method of DNA testing on cocoa beans could revolutionise the chocolate industry, offering consumers greater reassurance about the origins and ethics of their beloved confectionery, and giving the global cocoa industry a precision tool to help end slavery and child labour.

There are proven strategies to stop bandits from illegally fishing in Australian waters--but it currently comes at a cost to the Pacific region's poorer countries.

A new study from computer scientists at Columbia Engineering reveals what may be the first way to encrypt personal images on popular cloud photo services, such as those from Google, Apple, Flickr and others, all without requiring any changes to -- or trust in -- those services.

A research team, affiliated with South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has succeeded in developing a new optical microscope technology, capable of deeper imaging beyond the biological tissues.

mRNA plays a key role in the conversion of genetic information from DNA to proteins. Their production is a delicate process. A research team at the University of Würzburg (Germany) has now identified a crucial factor.

New mechanism of superconductivity discovered in graphene. Placing a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate in the vicinity of a graphene layer confers superconductivity to the material.

Interoperability describes the ability of different systems to communicate. With the SPHN, scientists (UNIGE/HUG/SIB/CHUV) have developed the strategy for a national infrastructure adopted by Swiss university hospitals and academic institutions. With its pragmatic approach, this strategy is based on the development of a common semantic framework that does not aim to replace existing standards, but to use them in a synergistic and flexible way according to the needs of the research and the partners involved.

New data on macaw movements gathered by the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences' (CVMBS) The Macaw Society has the potential to greatly improve conservation strategies for the scarlet macaw, as well as similar species of large parrots.

Prosthetics currently lack the sensation of "touch." To enable a more natural feeling prosthetic hand interface, researchers are the first to incorporate stretchable tactile sensors using liquid metal and machine learning. This hierarchical multi-finger tactile sensation integration could provide a higher level of intelligence for artificial hands by improving control, providing haptic feedback and reconnecting amputees to a previously severed sense of touch.

Vaccine skepticism among young adults may stall efforts to achieve herd immunity - a threshold in which approximately 80 percent of a population is vaccinated against the coronavirus.

A new study from the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in the journal Lancet Oncology, has found an association between alcohol and a substantially higher risk of several forms of cancer, including breast, colon, and oral cancers. Increased risk was evident even among light to moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day), who represented 1 in 7 of all new cancers in 2020 and more than 100,000 cases worldwide.

Cancer cell death is triggered within three days when X-rays are shone onto tumor tissue containing iodine-carrying nanoparticles. The iodine releases electrons that break the tumor's DNA, leading to cell death. The findings, by scientists at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan and the US, were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The extraordinary ability of animals to rapidly evolve in response to predators has been demonstrated via genetic sequencing of a waterflea population across nearly two decades.

The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that -- like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping -- the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are "primed" for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes and a greater likelihood of death.

Methamphetamine-related heart failure hospitalizations rose a staggering 585% between 2008 and 2018 in California.Costs associated with methamphetamine-related hospitalizations in California jumped even higher, 840%.

Before Millennials were over laugh-cry emojis, they were the most used emojis across the world, according to researchers at USC. The emoji was more popular than smiley faces say researchers who categorized millions of tweets across 30 countries and evaluated over 1700 emojis. Their study, "An empirical study of emoji usage on Twitter in linguistic and national contexts" was published in Online Social Networks and Media.

Unlike other population-level stressful events such as natural disasters, COVID-19 has not resulted in a net increase in smoking.

New research published online in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction found that Canadians with a history of drug dependence are much less likely to have flourishing mental health and are more likely to have mental illness.

CEA is not associated with survival outcomes in SCCA, and is not a clinically relevant biomarker in this disease.

New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person.