Earth
An international team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang A & F University and the University of Eastern Finland have found that regardless of whether flowering or leaf unfolding occurred first in a species, the first event advanced more than the second over the last seven decades.
Scientists at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA - the largest marine mammal hospital in the world - and international colleagues have identified a novel skin disease in dolphins that is linked to climate change. The study is a groundbreaking discovery, as it is the first time since the disease first appeared in 2005 that scientists have been able to link a cause to the condition that affects coastal dolphin communities worldwide.
Leading a collaboration of institutions in the U.S. and abroad, the Princeton University Department of Chemistry is reporting new topological properties of the magnetic pyrite Cobalt disulfide (CoS2) that expand our understanding of electrical channels in this long-investigated material.
A team of researchers, using satellite data and other analytical tools, has identified companies fishing in high seas--waters that lie outside of national jurisdiction where fishing has raised fears about environmental and labor violations. The study, which appears in the journal One Earth, is the first to link companies to fishing activity in these largely unregulated areas.
Peroxisomes are essential, membrane-enclosed vesicles that occur in every cell. An arsenal of enzymes inside them breaks down harmful substances, thereby detoxifying the cells. A team of scientists led by Prof. Dr. Bettina Warscheid from the University of Freiburg, Prof. Dr. Ralf Erdmann from the Ruhr University Bochum and Prof. Dr. Christos Gatsogiannis from the University of Münster, formerly at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, has studied the molecular complex that carries the enzymes to where they are needed in the peroxisome.
In urban environments, allergic diseases are more common among dogs and their owners compared to those living in rural areas. Simultaneous allergic traits appear to be associated with the microbes found in the environment, but microbes relevant to health differ between dogs and humans.
Systemic risks like climate change, cybersecurity and pandemics are characterised by high complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and effects beyond the system in which they originate. That's why novel research approaches and regulatory measures are indispensable for the evaluation and management of these risks. An interdisciplinary team recently published a paper on this subject, which appears as the first article in a special issue of the journal "Risk Analysis," edited by Ortwin Renn and Pia-Johanna Schweizer from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies.
On the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz light is located between infrared radiation and microwaves. It holds enormous potential for tomorrow's technologies: Among other things, it might succeed 5G by enabling extremely fast mobile communications connections and wireless networks. The bottleneck in the transition from gigahertz to terahertz frequencies has been caused by insufficiently efficient sources and converters.
What The Viewpoint Says: This Viewpoint uses Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to compare the COVID-19 mortality rate in 2020 with prior leading causes of death (heart disease, cancer, lung disease and injury) to put into context the cost of the infection in loss of life in the United States.
Authors: Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond, Virginia, is the corresponding author.
New York, NY (December 17, 2020) -- Mount Sinai researchers have solved one of the enduring mysteries of cancer immunotherapy: Why does it completely eliminate tumors in many patients, even when not all the cells in those tumors have the molecular target that the therapy is aimed at?
The answer involves a protein called fas, and regulating fas may be a route to preventing cancer relapse, the researchers reported in a study published in Cancer Discovery in December.
Researchers are using?Cold?War spy satellite images to explore changes in the environment, including deforestation in Romania, marmot decline in Kazakhstan and ecological damage from bombs in Vietnam.?
Ecologists have harnessed new advances in image processing?to?improve analysis of declassified US military intelligence photographs and detect previously unseen?changes in the environment.?Dr Catalina Munteanu, of Humboldt University, and Dr Mihai Daniel Nita,?Transilvania?University of?Bra?ov, present new findings from the US Geological Survey?declassified?satellite imagery.?
Application of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound in combination with microbubbles might enhance the delivery of chemotherapy medication used for treating cancers. In their study, a team of Lithuanian researchers from three universities - KTU, LSMU and VMU - claim that the rate of microbubble survival time is the best indicator for determining the efficiency of sonoporation, i.e. ultrasound-induced laceration of the cancer cell membrane.
In a new study published in Nature Communications, research groups of Professor J. Matias Palva and Research Director Satu Palva at the Neuroscience Centre of the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, in collaboration with the University of Glasgow and the University of Genoa, have identified a novel coupling mechanism linking neuronal networks by using human intracerebral recordings.
Materials used in biomedicine must be characterized by controlled biodegradability, sufficient strength and total absence of toxicity to the human body. The search for such materials is, therefore, not a simple task. In this context, scientists have been interested in magnesium for a long time. Recently, using such techniques as positron annihilation spectroscopy, the researchers were able to demonstrate that magnesium subjected to surface mechanical attrition treatment obtains the properties necessary for a biocompatible material.
Whale Song Reveals Behavioural Patterns of Antarctic Minke Whales and Humpback Whales in the Weddell Sea
The AWI's underwater recordings confirm: minke whales prefer the shelter of sea ice, while humpback whales avoid it