Earth
Using human population genetics, ancient pathogen genomics and isotope analysis, a team of researchers assessed the population history of the Lake Baikal region, finding the deepest con-nection to date between the peoples of Siberia and the Americas. The current study, published in the journal Cell, also demonstrates human mobility, and hence connectivity, across Eurasia during the Early Bronze Age.
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have boosted their control of the fundamental properties of molecules at the quantum level by linking or "entangling" an electrically charged atom and an electrically charged molecule, showcasing a way to build hybrid quantum information systems that could manipulate, store and transmit different forms of data.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have succeeded for the first time in recording, in action, a light-driven sodium pump from bacterial cells. The findings promise progress in the development of new methods in neurobiology. The researchers used the new X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL for their investigations. They have published their findings today in the journal Nature.
As one of the so-called essential climate variable (ECV), soil moisture plays an important role in the water-energy cycle and land-atmosphere interactions. While quite some microwave-based satellite missions have made soil moisture retrieval on top of their other objectives, it is still tough work in obtaining high-quality soil moisture products at regional scales mainly due to the impacts of vegetation and surface roughness.
On average, the human body contains 35 trillion red blood cells (RBCs). Approximately three million of these small disc-shaped cells die in one second. But in this second, the same number is also produced to maintain the level of active RBCs. Interestingly, all of these cells undergo a multi-level differentiation process called erythropoiesis.
You cannot see them with the naked eye, but most plants emit volatile gases - isoprenoids - into the atmosphere when they breathe and grow. Some plants emit close to nothing; others emit kilograms annually.
Fire is the primary form of terrestrial ecosystem disturbance on a global scale, and a major source of aerosols from the terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere.
Modern optical devices require constant tuning of their light interaction settings. For that purpose, there exist various mechanical apparatuses that shift lenses, rotate reflectors, and move emitters. An international research team that includes staff members of ITMO University and the University of Exeter have proposed a new metamaterial capable of changing its optical properties without any mechanical input. This development could result in a significant improvement in the reliability of complex optical devices while making them cheaper to manufacture.
You might have heard the advice to avoid eating a poppy seed bagel or muffin before a drug screen, lest you test positive for opiates. This urban legend is rooted in truth because the tiny black seeds contain small amounts of morphine and codeine that can show up in a drug test. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have studied how different treatments affect levels of opiates in poppy seeds.
For the first time, monolayers of transition metal dichalcogenides with excellent optical properties were grown. A team of physicists from the University of Warsaw managed to overcome the technical difficulties faced by industry and scientists from around the world, namely the very limited size, heterogeneity, and broadening of the spectral lines of fabricated materials. Monolayers without these defects were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on atomically flat boron nitride substrates.
PHILADELPHIA -- "Senotherapy," a treatment that uses small molecule drugs to target "senescent" cells, or those cells that no longer undergo cell division, blunts liver tumor progression in animal models according to new research from a team led by Celeste Simon, PhD, a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and scientific director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute. The study was published in Nature Cell Biology.
There is much debate about the correct storage of tomatoes. There are two main options available to consumers: storage in the refrigerator or at room temperature. A research team from the University of Göttingen has now investigated whether there are differences in the flavour of ripe tomatoes depending on how they are stored and taking into account the chain of harvesting from farm to fork. No perceptible difference was found: the variety of tomato is much more important. The results have been published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
Fluctuations in the Pacific Walker circulation (PWC), a zonally-oriented overturning cell across the tropical Pacific, can cause widespread climatic and biogeochemical perturbations. It remains unknown how the PWC developed during the Cenozoic era, with its substantial changes in greenhouse gases and continental positions. Yan and colleagues examined the evolution of the PWC across the Cenozoic using a suite of coupled model simulations on tectonic timescales. During the Early Eocene (ca.
California isn't running out of water," says Richard Luthy. "It's running out of cheap water. But the state can't keep doing what it's been doing for the past 100 years."
Luthy knows. As a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, as well as director of a National Science Foundation center to re-invent urban water supply (known as ReNUWIt), he has spent decades studying the state's metropolitan areas.
Scientists have created the first ever large-scale map of microscopic algae as they bloomed across the surface of snow along the Antarctic Peninsula coast. Results indicate that this 'green snow' is likely to spread as global temperatures increase.