Culture
Bacteria are everywhere. They are the most abundant form of life on our planet. Pick up just about any surface and its likely covered in bacteria. The aquatic environment is no different. Indeed, the ocean is full of small particles and debris, some inert, some highly nutritious. But how do bacteria differentiate between these surfaces, how do they hold onto them in moving water and how do they recognise each other so that they can work together?
A recent forecast of the size of the "Dead Zone" in the northern Gulf of Mexico for late July 2019 is that it will cover 8,717-square-miles of the bottom of the continental shelf off Louisiana and Texas. The unusually high Mississippi River discharge in May controls the size of this zone, which will likely be the second largest zone since systematic measurements began in 1985.
In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found that our brains are more sensitive to pitch, the harmonic sounds we hear when listening to music, than our evolutionary relative the macaque monkey. The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, highlights the promise of Sound Health, a joint project between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that aims to understand the role of music in health.
RIVERSIDE, CA - Scientists may need to rethink their estimates for how many planets outside our solar system could host a rich diversity of life.
In a new study, a UC Riverside-led team discovered that a buildup of toxic gases in the atmospheres of most planets makes them unfit for complex life as we know it.
TROY, N.Y. --Machine learning has the potential to vastly advance medical imaging, particularly computerized tomography (CT) scanning, by reducing radiation exposure and improving image quality.
Those new research findings were just published in Nature Machine Intelligence by engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
In a study published in Nature on June 10, researchers from Dr. YANG Hui's Lab at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and collaborators from the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology of CAS and Sichuan University demonstrated that DNA base editors generated tens of thousands of off-target RNA single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and these off-target SNVs could be eliminated by introducing point mutations to the deaminases.
Newly-built planet-finding instrument installed on Very Large Telescope, Chile, begins 100-hour observation of nearby stars Alpha Centauri A and B, aiming to be first to directly image a habitable exoplanet
Breakthrough Watch, the global astronomical program looking for Earth-like planets around nearby stars, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), Europe's foremost intergovernmental astronomical organisation, today announced "first light" on a newly-built planet-finding instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert, Chile.
At Earlham Institute (EI), artificial intelligence based techniques such as machine learning is moving from being merely an exciting premise to having real-life applications, where it's needed most: improving efficiency and precision on the farm.
Researchers in the Zhou Group at EI, in cooperation with Ely-based G's Growers, have developed a machine learning platform, AirSurf-Lettuce, which works with computer vision and ultra-scale images taken from the air to help categorise lettuce crops in fields.
Researchers have developed a new technique that uses microneedle patches to collect DNA from plant tissues in one minute, rather than the hours needed for conventional techniques. DNA extraction is the first step in identifying plant diseases, and the new method holds promise for the development of on-site plant disease detection tools.
New Rochelle, NY, May 28, 2019--A new study has shown that obese adolescents are not only significantly more likely to experience bullying, but they are also more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of bullying compared to their healthy weight peers. The study also found that overweight or obese adolescents who are either victims or perpetrators of bullying, or both, have significantly greater odds of having depression, behavioral problems, and difficulty making friends.
Could a small ringlike structure made of plastic and copper amplify the already powerful imaging capabilities of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine? Xin Zhang, Stephan Anderson, and their team at the Boston University Photonics Center can clearly picture such a feat. With their combined expertise in engineering, materials science, and medical imaging, Zhang and Anderson, along with Guangwu Duan and Xiaoguang Zhao, designed a new magnetic metamaterial, reported in Communications Physics, that can improve MRI quality and cut scan time in half.
A team of researchers from the NYU Silver School of Social Work has found that bureaucratic barriers rather than personal intransigence lead many street homeless people in New York City to refuse outreach workers' offers of shelter.
Pill testing services at music festivals may be most effective in reducing harm for people trying ecstasy for the first time, but less so for prior users.
The new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research also found:
Experienced ecstasy users are no more knowledgeable than novices when it comes to safe dosage amounts and harmful ingredients.
Festival attendees would be willing to pay an average $12 subsidy to fund pill testing services.
Viruses, spread through mosquito bites, cause human illnesses such as dengue fever, Zika and yellow fever. A new control technique harnesses a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia that blocks replication of viruses and breaks the cycle of mosquito-borne disease, according to an international team of researchers.
A team of researchers led by a member of the University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty at the Anschutz Medical Campus examined post-advisory financial relationships between U.S. physicians who advised FDA committees during dermatological drug approval processes. Critics of these industry-physician relationships claim these types of payments could incentivize advisors to alter their voting habits.
The findings are published in a research letter in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.