Earth
Research creates hydrogen-producing living droplets, paving way for alternative future energy source
Scientists have built tiny droplet-based microbial factories that produce hydrogen, instead of oxygen, when exposed to daylight in air.
The findings of the international research team based at the University of Bristol and Harbin Institute of Technology in China, are published today in Nature Communications.
Normally, algal cells fix carbon dioxide and produce oxygen by photosynthesis. The study used sugary droplets packed with living algal cells to generate hydrogen, rather than oxygen, by photosynthesis.
Waste fishing gear in the River Ganges poses a threat to wildlife including otters, turtles and dolphins, new research shows.
The study says entanglement in fishing gear could harm species including the critically endangered three-striped roofed turtle and the endangered Ganges river dolphin.
Surveys along the length of the river, from the mouth in Bangladesh to the Himalayas in India, show levels of waste fishing gear are highest near to the sea.
Fishing nets - all made of plastic - were the most common type of gear found.
On November 18 scientists from the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) National Solar Observatory (NSO) predicted the arrival of a large sunspot just in time for Thanksgiving. Using a special technique called helioseismology, the team has been “listening” to changing sound waves from the Sun’s interior which beckon the arrival of a large sunspot. Recent changes in these sound waves pointed to the imminent appearance of new sunspots which we can now see from Earth near the eastern solar limb.
BOSTON - When it comes to brain scans for assessing head trauma, detecting brain cancer, and performing numerous other tests, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the best option, but MRI scanners are costly, require special infrastructure, and are immobile. Now a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a low-cost, compact, portable and low-power "head only" MRI scanner that could be mounted in an ambulance, wheeled into a patient's room, or put in small clinics or doctors' offices around the world.
Memory is as much about the future as it is the past.
Whether experiencing something new, or something we've experienced a hundred times, people use memories of the past to navigate subsequent encounters. Traditionally, psychologists believed that the more ingrained a memory of something was, the more difficult it would be to update your understanding of that thing, should it change.
In 2015, hundreds of children were born with brain deformities resulting from a global outbreak of Zika virus infections. Recently, National Institutes of Health researchers used a variety of advanced drug screening techniques to test out more than 10,000 compounds in search of a cure. To their surprise, they found that the widely used antibiotic methacycline was effective at preventing brain infections and reducing neurological problems associated with the virus in mice.
"Childhood obesity is a major public health issue that has increased over the last 10 years," said lead investigator Miriam A. Bredella, M.D., professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and vice chair of the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "Sleeve gastrectomy is the most common bariatric surgery procedure performed in children and adults."
A recent study evaluating the use of force by police against children found that Black and Hispanic adolescents are significantly more likely to die from shootings related to police intervention compared to non-Hispanic white adolescents. The findings, led by Children's National Hospital researchers and reported online Nov.
Once enough people receive effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus, experts say, the end of the pandemic may be in sight. But a new poll of older adults - one of the highest-priority groups for vaccination - suggests an uphill climb lies ahead to reach that goal.
Researchers have revealed how high-frequency sound waves can be used to build new materials, make smart nanoparticles and even deliver drugs to the lungs for painless, needle-free vaccinations.
While sound waves have been part of science and medicine for decades - ultrasound was first used for clinical imaging in 1942 and for driving chemical reactions in the 1980s - the technologies have always relied on low frequencies.
KEY FINDINGS
Almost half the world's most connected cities straddle animal-human spillover hotspots
14-20 percent of these cities are in areas with poor health infrastructure, meaning infections resulting from spillovers are likely to go unreported
South and southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have the most cities at greatest risk
Despite being rare, fossils nonetheless appear to be common elements in archaeological records. Their presence is documented at some of the main Iberian archaeological sites from the Palaeolithic (Altamira, Parpalló, Reclau Viver, Aitzbitarte, La Garma, Rascaño, El Juyo and La Pileta) to the Metal Ages (Los Millares, Valencina, Los Castillejos, El Argar, Fuente Álamo, Vila Nova de São Pedro, etc.).
Long ago and far across the universe, an enormous burst of gamma rays unleashed more energy in a half-second than the Sun will produce over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. In May of 2020, light from the flash finally reached Earth and was first detected by NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Scientists quickly enlisted other telescopes -- including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array radio observatory, the W. M. Keck Observatory, and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope network -- to study the explosion's aftermath and the host galaxy.
There are known differences in the survival rates of women and men with lung cancer. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden set out to investigate potential reasons behind this disparity, such as the presence of other underlying diseases and smoking status. The study, which was published in Chest, shows that women have better survival rates after lung cancer surgery than men, independent of other factors.
Researchers have used cutting edge technology to bioprint miniature human kidneys in the lab, paving the way for new treatments for kidney failure and possibly lab-grown transplants.
The study, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and biotech company Organovo and published in Nature Materials, saw the research team also validate the use of 3D bioprinted human mini kidneys for screening of drug toxicity from a class of drugs known to cause kidney damage in people.