Tech
As climate warming stokes longer fire seasons and more severe fires in the North American boreal forest, being able to calculate how much carbon each fire burns grows more urgent. New research led by Northern Arizona University and published this week in Nature Climate Change suggests that how much carbon burns depends more on available fuels than on fire weather such as drought conditions, temperature, or rain.
MADISON - Ecologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that carnivores living near people can get more than half of their diets from human food sources, a major lifestyle disruption that could put North America's carnivore-dominated ecosystems at risk.
It's one of the world's deadliest animals, and it has a taste for human blood: the mosquito.
Mosquitoes spread diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever that kill at least a half a million people each year. Now researchers are learning what humans taste like to mosquitoes, down to the individual neurons that sense blood's distinctive, delectable flavor.
New research led by Queen Mary University of London and UCL has shown that small bioengineered molecules can be used to repair defects in the fetal membranes that surround and protect babies developing in the womb.
The study, published in the journal Prenatal Diagnosis, found that these molecules, known as peptide amphiphiles (PAs) self-assemble to form a 'plug' that seals holes within the fetal membranes, and could potentially help repair any damage.
PHILADELPHIA--A team led by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has engineered powerful new antimicrobial molecules from toxic proteins found in wasp venom. The team hopes to develop the molecules into new bacteria-killing drugs, an important advancement considering increasing numbers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which can cause illness such as sepsis and tuberculosis.
Scientists have made a breakthrough in their work to develop semi-autonomous colonoscopy, using a robot to guide a medical device into the body.
The milestone brings closer the prospect of an intelligent robotic system being able to guide instruments to precise locations in the body to take biopsies or allow internal tissues to be examined.
A doctor or nurse would still be on hand to make clinical decisions but the demanding task of manipulating the device is offloaded to a robotic system.
Virtual reality software which allows researchers to 'walk' inside and analyse individual cells could be used to understand fundamental problems in biology and develop new treatments for disease.
The software, called vLUME, was created by scientists at the University of Cambridge and 3D image analysis software company Lume VR Ltd. It allows super-resolution microscopy data to be visualised and analysed in virtual reality, and can be used to study everything from individual proteins to entire cells. Details are published in the journal Nature Methods.
RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 12, 2020) -- For every two deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., a third American dies as a result of the pandemic, according to new data publishing Oct. 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study, led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, shows that deaths between March 1 and Aug. 1 increased 20% compared to previous years -- maybe not surprising in a pandemic. But deaths attributed to COVID-19 only accounted for 67% of those deaths.
TAMPA, Fla (Oct. 12, 2020) -- In a healthy brain, the multistep waste clearance process known as autophagy routinely removes and degrades damaged cell components - including malformed proteins like tau and toxic mitochondria. This cellular debris would otherwise pile up like uncollected trash to drive the death of brain cells (neurons), ultimately destroying cognitive abilities like thinking, remembering and reasoning in patients with Alzheimer's and certain other neurodegenerative diseases.
Osaka, Japan -- The current COVID-19 climate has made vaccines, antibodies, and immune responses topics of everyday conversation. Now, it isn't just immunologists who want to know how our bodies respond to re-infections months, years, or sometimes decades after an initial immune response. A new study by Tomohiro Kurosaki at Osaka University shows that this ability requires Bach2, a protein that regulates the expression of genes needed to instruct activated B cells under selection to become memory B cells.
Coherent extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and soft x-ray radiation are very powerful in studying various material properties in biology, chemistry, and physics. Synchrotron radiation (SR) and X-ray free electron laser (XFEL), which are based on large-scale particle accelerators, are developed as multiuser facilities providing XUV~ x-ray radiation. Although SR allows multi-port operation with a MHz repetition rate, the pulse duration is several tens of ps with no temporal coherence. While XFEL can provide high intensity fs XUV pulse, multi-port and high-repetition rated operations are limited.
According to EU Science Hub, increasingly frequent extreme weather events will cause intensifying damage to infrastructure, with losses estimated to reach €20 billion annually by 2030. These pressing threats bring into sharp focus the need for new answers to the problem of soil stabilization.
A new online game that puts players in the shoes of a purveyor of fake pandemic news is the latest tactic in efforts to tackle the deluge of coronavirus misinformation costing lives across the world.
The Go Viral! game has been developed by the University of Cambridge's Social Decision-Making Lab in collaboration with the UK Cabinet Office and media collective DROG.
A University of Waikato study has found that transgender people who have experienced stigma, including harassment, violence, and discrimination because of their identity are much more likely to have poor mental health outcomes.
An algal bloom refers to a phenomenon in which phytoplankton including blue-green algae rapidly proliferate in summer marked by high levels of solar irradiation and water temperature. It has lately been raising concerns due increased frequency of occurrence resulting from abnormally high temperatures and decreases in precipitation caused by climate change. There is a reason to be perturbed as certain species of blue-green algae produce substances that have an earthy or moldy taste and odor as well as toxic substances.