Culture

Rochester Institute of Technology scientists have developed the first three-dimensional mass estimate to show where microplastic pollution is collecting in Lake Erie. The study examines nine different types of polymers that are believed to account for 75 percent of the world's plastic waste.

How do mountains form? What forces are needed to carve out a basin? Why does the Earth tremble and quake?

Earth scientists pursue these fundamental questions to gain a better understanding of our planet's deep past and present workings. Their discoveries also help us plan for the future by preparing us for earthquakes, determining where to drill for oil and gas, and more. Now, in a new, expanded map of the tectonic stresses acting on North America, Stanford researchers present the most comprehensive view yet of the forces at play beneath the Earth's surface.

When two scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) brought black lights and glow powder into the Maryland State Police crime lab, they weren't setting up a laser tag studio or nightclub.

Instead, their aim was to study the way drug particles get spread around crime labs when analysts test suspected drug evidence. Their study, recently published in Forensic Chemistry, addresses safety concerns in an age of super-potent synthetic drugs like fentanyl, which can potentially be hazardous to chemists who handle them frequently.

Fructans are naturally occurring plant polymers composed of fructose molecules. They are found in approximately 15% of flowering plant species, including wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Fructans serve important physiological roles in plant stress tolerance as well as in human diets. Given the importance of wheat in diets across the world, targeting increases in wheat fructan levels through breeding would facilitate the development of climate-resilient, nutritionally improved wheat cultivars.

All deaths of health and social care workers during the covid-19 pandemic should be referred to the coroner for independent review, says Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief of The BMJ today.

With many hundreds of deaths around the world, and over 100 reported in the UK, "it is impossible not to feel let down by political and healthcare leaders who, while sloganning, clapping for, and praising the NHS, have so evidently failed to protect those who work within it," she writes.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - Have you ever wondered what kind of rocks make up those bright and dark splotches on the moon? Well, the USGS has just released a new authoritative map to help explain the 4.5-billion-year-old history of our nearest neighbor in space.

For the first time, the entire lunar surface has been completely mapped and uniformly classified by scientists from the USGS, in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar Planetary Institute.

CINCINNATI – Although advances in genetics and genomics reveal numerous disease-associated gene mutations, physicians and researchers still wrestle with the tricky challenge of linking those mutations to actual disease-causing processes.

Add this to the growing use of single-cell biology, which detects gene and/or protein expression in each cell at a given moment, and the task becomes even more daunting.