Tech
A Cambridge hospital has piloted the use of combined rapid point-of-care nucleic acid and antibody testing for SARS-CoV-2 infection after researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that this approach was superior to virus detection alone for diagnosing COVID-19 disease.
The technology behind the quantum computers of the future is fast developing, with several different approaches in progress. Many of the strategies, or "blueprints," for quantum computers rely on atoms or artificial atom-like electrical circuits. In a new theoretical study in the journal Physical Review X, a group of physicists at Caltech demonstrates the benefits of a lesser-studied approach that relies not on atoms but molecules.
Andres Luengo from the research group led by Professor M. Concepción Gimeno based at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) carried out part of the work during a research stay in the group headed by Professor Nils Metzler-Nolte at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). The international research team published its report in the coverstory of the journal Chemistry - A European Journal from 31. August 2020.
Visualisation and treatment in one step
For years, researchers have aimed to learn more about a group of metal oxides that show promise as key materials for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries because of their mysterious ability to store significantly more energy than should be possible. An international research team, co-led by The University of Texas at Austin, has cracked the code of this scientific anomaly, knocking down a barrier to building ultra-fast battery energy storage systems.
A study published in the Journal of the Medical Directors Association demonstrated that a partnership between long-term care organizations in two countries working in collaboration with researchers and national health care organizations can generate changes that improve quality of care for residents.
Active lifestyle choices such as eating vegetables, exercising and quitting smoking can reduce the risk of chronic kidney disease, a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Griffith University in Australia, reports. The study is published in The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Recent advancements in artificial nanomaterials and structured optical fields have expanded the concept of chiroptical phenomena. However, chiroptical phenomena originate from complicated processes involving transitions between states with opposite parities, so fundamentals of chiroptical processes are required for solid interpretation the phenomena. Here, theoretical frameworks on chiroptical properties of electromagnetic materials are discussed in the context of microscopic (discrete chiroptical scatterers) and macroscopic (continuous chiroptical media) systems.
Freshwater -- which falls to the earth as precipitation or exists beneath the surface as groundwater -- is desperately needed to sustain people, plants and animals. With an ever-increasing human population, water shortages already occurring in many areas are only expected to get worse. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have estimated the freshwater supply and demand of about 11,000 water basins across the globe, determining that one-fourth of freshwater consumption exceeds regional capacities.
Spectroscopy is an important tool of observation in many areas of science and industry. Infrared spectroscopy is especially important in the world of chemistry where it is used to analyze and identify different molecules. The current state-of-the-art method can make approximately 1 million observations per second. UTokyo researchers have greatly surpassed this figure with a new method about 100 times faster.
Newly published research, in Bird Study, carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in Scotland, shows that wintering waterbirds, such as ducks, geese, swans and wading birds can easily be scared into flight by drones.
NEW YORK...September 1, 2020 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) data scientist Prof. Mark Last sees the end of the coronavirus peak in Israel and believes that New York and California may have reached herd immunity.
Prof. Last of the BGU Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, presented these finding virtually at the Artificial Intelligence and the Coronavirus workshop at the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME) on August 26. He has been analyzing health data for the past 20 years.
Animal species that are at home in the high mountains are finding their habitats reduced and fragmented by roads. In addition, they face competition from scavengers from lower boreal areas that find their way to the mountains.
"More cabins, more tourism and increased car traffic means more litter and more roadkill. For the red fox, the crow and other scavengers, it means more tempting food," says Lars Rød-Eriksen, who is employed as a researcher in terrestrial ecology at NINA, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
A study of nearly 1200 UK adults, being presented at this year's European and International Conference on Obesity (ECOICO 2020), held online this year (1-4 September), suggests that there is a link between eating a larger proportion of one's daily energy intake during the evening, and having a higher total energy intake and lower quality of diet.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Innovators from Purdue University hope their new technology can help transform paper sheets from a notebook into a music player interface and make food packaging interactive.
About 4,000-5,000 parasitic plant species exist. Among these, dodders (Cuscuta, Convolvulaceae) are distributed worldwide. Compared with normal autotrophic plants, they have a unique morphology - they are rootless and leafless and carry out no or very little photosynthesis.
Flowering is critical to reproduction in higher plants. Leaves sense environmental factors, such as day length (photoperiod), and initiate flowering programs when the environment and internal physiology are appropriate.