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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Just Turned Martian CO2 Into Oxygen
A toaster-sized scientific instrument attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover just sucked up a bit of carbon dioxide from the surrounding Martian atmosphere and converted it into oxygen . It’s a groundbreaking first that could lead to a future in which space travelers are not only able to generate air to breathe, but rocket fuel to get them back to Earth as well — while still on Mars. The instrumen
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SpaceX’s Spacecraft Just Had a Near Miss With an Unidentified Object
Earlier today, SpaceX and NASA successfully launched four astronauts into orbit on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The launch went by without a hitch — but the crew of four did just experience a scare while en route to the International Space Station. “The NASA/SpaceX team was informed of the possible conjunction by US Space Command,” NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told Futurism. “The o
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American Police Are Inadequately Trained
In response to the high rate at which American police kill civilians, many on the left have taken up the call for defunding the police, or abolishing the police entirely. But some policing experts are instead emphasizing a different approach that they say could reduce police killings: training officers better, longer, and on different subjects. “We have one of the worst police-training academies
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Oxford Malaria vaccine proves highly effective in Burkina Faso trial
Vaccine developed by scientists at Jenner Institute, Oxford, shows up to 77% efficacy in trial over 12 months A vaccine against malaria has been shown to be highly effective in trials in Africa, holding out the real possibility of slashing the death toll of a disease that kills 400,000 mostly small children every year. The vaccine, developed by scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford Univers
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Climate crisis has shifted the Earth’s axis, study shows
Massive melting of glaciers has tilted the planet’s rotation, showing the impact of human activities The massive melting of glaciers as a result of global heating has caused marked shifts in the Earth’s axis of rotation since the 1990s, research has shown. It demonstrates the profound impact humans are having on the planet, scientists said. The planet’s geographic north and south poles are the po
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One dose of Pfizer or Oxford jab reduces Covid infection rate by 65% – study
Analysis of test results from more than 350,000 people finds older people just as protected as younger Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage One shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca or Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduces coronavirus infections by nearly two-thirds and protects older and more vulnerable people as much as younger, healthy individuals, a study has found. The results fr
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Bitcoin Crashes, Wiping Over $200 Billion Off Crypto Market
Bitcoin Drop The value of Bitcoin, along with several other digital currencies, plummeted on Friday, following US president Joe Biden’s announcement of a significant capital gains tax hike, CNBC reports . The value of the digital currency fell to just below $50,000, its lowest since early March. According to CoinMarketCap, the drop represented the wiping out of $200 billion in market value — a st
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Navalny Has a Lesson for the World
When Alexei Navalny boarded a plane to Moscow on January 17, he turned his life into a metaphor. He knew it, his wife knew it, and everybody else on the plane knew it. So did the millions of people who had watched his documentary videos, who had seen the witty interviews he did on the plane, who have since joined demonstrations in his name. So did the leaders of Russia, including the country’s di
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UK scientists find evidence of human-to-cat Covid transmission
Researchers in Glasgow find two cases where cats were infected by owners with coronavirus symptoms Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Two cases of human-to-cat transmission of Covid-19 have been identified by researchers. Scientists from the University of Glasgow found the cases of Sars-CoV-2 transmission as part of a screening programme of the feline population in the
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Low-Skill Workers Aren’t a Problem to Be Fixed
Recently, I was mesmerized by a prep cook. At a strip-mall Korean restaurant, I caught a glimpse of the kitchen and stood dumbfounded for a few minutes, watching a guy slicing garnishes, expending half the energy I would if I were doing the same at home and at twice the speed. The economy of his cooking was magnetic. He moved so little, but did so much. Being a prep cook is hard, low-wage, and es
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NASA’s Perseverance rover has produced pure oxygen on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully generated breathable oxygen on Mars. The demonstration, carried out by the rover’s MOXIE instrument on April 20, could lay the groundwork for helping future astronauts establish a sustainable colony on the planet. What’s MOXIE and how does it work? Short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, it’s a toaster-size device that can convert
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The future looks bright for infinitely recyclable plastic
Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a daily basis. The average person in the U.S. generates about 100 kg of plastic waste per year, most of which goes straight to a landfill. A team led by Corinne Scown, Brett Helms, Jay Keasling, and Kristin Persson at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to change that.
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The effects of solar flares on Earth's magnetosphere
Planet Earth is surrounded by a system of magnetic fields known as the magnetosphere. This vast, comet-shaped system deflects charged particles coming from the sun, shielding our planet from harmful particle radiation and preventing solar wind (i.e., a stream of charged particles released from the sun's upper atmosphere) from eroding the atmosphere.
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The Botanist Who Defied Stalin – Issue 99: Universality
In 1913, 26-year-old Russian biologist Nikolai Vavilov went to the John Innes Horticultural Institute to study at the feet of legendary geneticist William Bateson. While there, Vavilov attended lectures at nearby Cambridge University, and could often be seen bicycling around the city in his trademark suit and tie. He and Bateson became lifelong friends, and the Mendelian genetics that Bateson and
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Sixty-year-old question on DNA replication timing sequence answered
Over the last 60 years, scientists have been able to observe how and when genetic information was replicated, determining the existence a "replication timing program," a process that controls when and in what order segments of DNA replicate. However, scientists still cannot explain why such a specific timing sequence exists. In a study published today in Science, Dr. David Gilbert and his team hav
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Great Malaria Vaccine News
Excellent news today: we have word of the most effective malaria vaccine yet discovered. A year-long trial in Burkina Faso has shown 77% efficacy, which is by far the record, and which opens the way to potentially relieving a nearly incalculable burden of disease and human suffering. This is a collaboration between the University of Oxford (Jenner Institute et al .), the KEMRI Wellcome Trust in K
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Scientists make further step towards understanding dark energy
The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) collaboration has released its latest scientific results. These results include two studies on dark energy led by Prof. Zhao Gongbo and Prof. Wang Yuting, respectively, from National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC).
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Astronomers see first hint of the silhouette of a spaghettified star
For decades astronomers have been spotting bursts of electromagnetic radiation coming from black holes. They assumed those are the result of stars being torn apart, but they have never seen the silhouette of the actual material ligaments. Now a group of astronomers, including lead author Giacomo Cannizzaro and Peter Jonker from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research/Radboud University, has
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Among COVID-19 survivors, an increased risk of death, serious illness
Researchers showed that COVID-19 survivors — including those not sick enough to be hospitalized — have an increased risk of death in the six months following diagnosis with the virus. They also have catalogued the numerous diseases associated with COVID-19, providing a big-picture overview of the long-term complications of COVID-19 and revealing the massive burden this disease is likely to place
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Det ska du äta för att klara proteinskiftet
För att klara klimatmålen behöver vi äta mindre kött och mer växtprotein. Men vad ska vi äta? Allra först bör vi halvera vårt intag av samtliga proteiner, anser forskare vid Lunds universitet. Jämfört med många andra länder äts det lite bönor, linser och ärtor i Sverige. Fläsk med bruna bönor och ärtsoppa är de enda traditionella svenska rätterna som innehåller baljväxter. Men en förändring kan v
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Replication timing maintains the global epigenetic state in human cells
The temporal order of DNA replication [replication timing (RT)] is correlated with chromatin modifications and three-dimensional genome architecture; however, causal links have not been established, largely because of an inability to manipulate the global RT program. We show that loss of RIF1 causes near-complete elimination of the RT program by increasing heterogeneity between individual cells.
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Persistent directional growth capability in Arabidopsis thaliana pollen tubes after nuclear elimination from the apex
Nature Communications, Published online: 22 April 2021; doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22661-8 Arabidopsis pollen contains a vegetative nucleus and two sperm cells that move to the apical region during pollen tube growth. Here, Motomura et al. make use of transgenic pollen with immobilized nuclei and show that, contrary to previous assumptions, movement of the vegetative nucleus is not needed for pollen
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Women Are Choosing Not to Have Children Because of Climate Change
No Thanks As the global environment becomes increasingly precarious and the threat of climate change grows, an increasing number of people are choosing to not have children due to concerns about the future. Several women told Yahoo Life that they view not having children as both a way to reduce their overall impact on the environment and also as an act of compassion toward future generations. The
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How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists
The universe bets on disorder. Imagine, for example, dropping a thimbleful of red dye into a swimming pool. All of those dye molecules are going to slowly spread throughout the water. Physicists quantify this tendency to spread by counting the number of possible ways the dye molecules can be arranged. There’s one possible state where the molecules are crowded into the thimble. There’s another whe
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Scientific paper claiming smokers less likely to acquire Covid retracted over tobacco industry links
Analysis of the paper identified several biases ‘which may give the false impression that smoking is protective in Covid-19’ A scientific paper claiming current smokers are 23% less likely to be diagnosed with Covid-19 compared to non-smokers has been retracted by a medical journal, after it was discovered some of the paper’s authors had financial links to the tobacco industry. The World Health O
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The Rise of Ron DeSantis
Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET on April 23, 2021. I first met Ron DeSantis at the Republican Jewish Coalition convention in Las Vegas in April 2016. DeSantis was then a second-term House member with an eye on Marco Rubio’s Senate seat. Rubio had pledged in 2014 that he would not seek reelection if he ran for president in 2016; he would later change his mind. DeSantis was likely anticipating Rubio’s reve
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Climate Change Is Literally Changing the Tilt of the Earth
Polar Drift Over the course of history, the Earth’s north and south poles have drifted around. While that’s a normal and natural process, research published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that climate change has drastically sped up that planetary tilting during recent decades. It turns out that water plays a major role in the planet’s weight distribution, Space.com r
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Analyst Predicts 50 Percent Drop in Bitcoin Value
Bitcoin Bubble Wall Street is warning that the value of Bitcoin could soon fall off a cliff, CNBC reports . Guggenheim Global’s chief investment officer Scott Minerd said that the value of the volatile cryptocurrency has spiked too far and too quickly — rising some 90 percent in 2021 alone. “Given the massive move we’ve had in bitcoin over the short run, things are very frothy, and I think we’re
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Missing Submarine Running Out of Oxygen, Experts Fear
Air Crisis The Indonesian navy is running out of time to track down a lost submarine with a crew of 53 on board off the north coast of Bali, as Business Insider reports . The vessel, the KRI Nanggala-402, only has enough oxygen to last the crew on board until Saturday, according to a televised press conference on Thursday. The navy lost contact with the submarine at around 4:30 am local time on W
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India hits global record of 315,000 new daily cases as Covid wave worsens
Hospitals pushed to brink after more than 1 million people infected in four days Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage India has registered a record-breaking single-day tally of new Covid cases as a severe shortages of beds and oxygen hit Delhi hospitals and migrant workers made an exodus from the capital. Its total of 314,835 cases over the previous 24 hours is the highes
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Chinese Firefighters Issued Exoskeletons to Make Them Stronger
Powered Exoskeleton A Chinese manufacturer has delivered its latest powered exoskeleton system to firefighters, state-owned news agency Global Times reports . “This exoskeleton system will be applied to enhance a firefighter’s weight carrying capability to up to 50 kilograms, facilitating their movements in complicated environments such as mountain areas and in the woods,” developers at the state
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New Vid Shows NASA’s Mars Helicopter Kicking Up Dust During Flight
Dust Cloud NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity pulled off a tremendous feat on Monday , becoming the first aircraft to perform a controlled flight off the surface of another planet. The little helicopter reached a height of ten feet for roughly 30 seconds, before safely returning to the rocky surface below. NASA’s car-sized Perseverance rover filmed the spectacle from several hundred feet away. In t
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Covering the Planet in Forests Still Wouldn’t Stop Climate Change
Carbon Cycle Anyone who’s taken a science class has probably learned that burning things puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while plants swap it out for oxygen. So it’s not surprising that so many plans and corporate pledges to help reduce the ravages of climate change involve planting more and more trees . That’s great, and reforestation in areas where tree cover has been removed will only
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The King of AIDS Treatments Is Turning to COVID-19
At the LGBTQ senior community where John James lives in Philadelphia, residents keep busy with trips to the garden or—before the pandemic—screenings of Strangers on a Train in the rec room. James does not care for any of that right now. Each morning, he combs through medical-research databases and downloads every paper he can find on COVID-19 treatments, scribbling notes about the parts that stan
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Search Party Discovers “Object” During Search for Lost Submarine
Countdown Time is running out in the search for a lost Indonesian navy submarine with 53 people on board. The navy lost contact with the vessel , the German-built KRI Nanggala-402, early Wednesday morning local time off the north coast of Bali. Officials fear the crew may soon run out of oxygen — if they’ve made it this far, supplies will reportedly only last until tomorrow. Magnetic Object But t
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Japan declares targeted state of emergency as Covid cases surge
Yoshihide Suga under pressure to act after sharp rise in infections in Tokyo, only months before Olympics Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Japan has declared a targeted state of emergency for Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures in an attempt to halt a surge in coronavirus cases, just three months before the Tokyo Olympics . The measures will go into effect in the f
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Asteroid’s 22m-year journey from source to Earth mapped in historic first
Flight path of Kalahari’s six-tonne asteroid is first tracing of meteorite shedding rock to solar system origin Astronomers have reconstructed the 22m-year-long voyage of an asteroid that hurtled through the solar system and exploded over Botswana, showering meteorites across the Kalahari desert. It is the first time scientists have traced showering space rock to its source – in this case Vesta,
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Meet BV-1, the Newest COVID Variant To Be Terrified Of
Scientists at Texas A&M University ran a routine genetic screen on samples of a COVID-19 patient — and discovered a troubling new variant of the coronavirus. The variant, named BV-1 because it was found in Brazos Valley, Texas, seems to be more infectious than the original version of the coronavirus that first swept the globe, CNBC reports , and preliminary testing suggests that it can also resis
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NASA’s Mars Helicopter Completes Much Longer Flight, Does Tricks
Second Flight After its first groundbreaking flight on the surface of Mars, NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully took off for the second time this morning. And this time it went “bigger,” according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab — a longer and more nimble flight that really managed to show off the copter’s capabilities. “Go big or go home!” read a JPL tweet celebrating the flight, accompan
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The Gambia becomes second African state to end trachoma
Health workers spent years targeting agonising and blinding eye disease, which was rife in rural areas The Gambia has become the second country in Africa to eliminate trachoma, one of the leading causes of blindness. The achievement, announced by the World Health Organization on Tuesday, came after decades of work on the disease, which has damaged the sight of about 1.9 million people worldwide.
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Russia: we’ll leave International Space Station and build our own
‘If you want to do well, do it yourself’ says head of space agency as collaboration with US strained by earthly disputes Russia is ready to start building its own space station with the aim of launching it into orbit by 2030 if President Vladimir Putin gives the go-ahead, the head of its Roscosmos space agency has said. The project would end more than two decades of close cooperation with the Uni
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Elon Musk Says SpaceX Can Still Land Astronauts on Moon by 2024
Crunch Time SpaceX launched a crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station on Friday morning, and CEO Elon Musk says he has even more ambitious plans for the future. The goal of NASA’s Artemis missions is to get human astronauts back to the surface of the Moon by 2024. It’s an ambitious deadline — one that even Steve Jurczyk, the acting NASA Administrator who took over when Trump le
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A creature of mystery: New Zealand’s love-hate relationship with eels
Native species have been revered, feared, hunted and tamed. Now experts hope revulsion can give way to fascination For many years, the top-rated attraction in the Tasman district of New Zealand was a cafe famed for its rural setting, seafood chowder – and tame eels. For a few dollars you could buy a pottle of mince and a wooden stick to take down to the stream, where a blue-black mass was shining
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Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s So Excited About New Project That He’s Forgetting to Eat
Forgetting to Eat Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is just like us. The billionaire is so excited about his work, he says, that he can hardly keep it together. “Do you ever get so excited about what you’re working on that you forget to eat meals?” the CEO wrote in a Thursday status update (remember those?) on his Facebook profile. “Keeps happening,” he added. “I think I’ve lost 10 pounds in the last
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Study: Underwater Volcanoes Could Power the Entire US
Explosive Force Underwater volcanic eruptions release enormous amounts of energy, forming undersea rivers of lava and dispersing massive clouds of ash. Now, scientists have found a new way to calculate just how much energy is being released after each explosion by looking at how volcanic rock fragments known as “tephra” get launched across the sea for miles, Vice reports — enough energy, they say
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2 Competing Impulses Will Drive Post-pandemic Social Life
A post-pandemic discussion question: You get home from work on a Friday night and change into sweatpants. It’s been an exhausting week. A text message comes in. Your good friend wants to know if you’d like to meet up last minute for a drink, which is something that’s safe to do again. You’d love to catch up, but you’re pretty tired. Do you go? This choose-your-own-adventure—or choose-your-own-lac
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SpaceX Sends Four Astronauts Into Space On Reused Spacecraft
Crew-2 SpaceX and NASA have launched yet another crew of astronauts to the International Space Station inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The spacecraft, boosted by a Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 5:49 am EDT. Despite this being the third time a Crew Dragon astronauts were carried into space on board a Crew Dragon, it was the first time Space
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Could covid lead to a lifetime of autoimmune disease?
When Aaron Ring began testing blood samples collected from covid-19 patients who had come through Yale–New Haven Hospital last March and April, he expected to see a type of immune protein known as an autoantibody in at least some of them. These are antibodies that have gone rogue and started attacking the body’s own tissue; they’re known to show up after some severe infections. Researchers at New
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Stop talking about AI ethics. It’s time to talk about power.
At the turn of the 20th century, a German horse took Europe by storm. Clever Hans, as he was known, could seemingly perform all sorts of tricks previously limited to humans. He could add and subtract numbers, tell time and read a calendar, even spell out words and sentences—all by stamping out the answer with a hoof. “A” was one tap; “B” was two; 2+3 was five. He was an international sensation—an
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New galaxy clusters found hiding in plain sight
MIT astronomers have discovered new and unusual galactic neighborhoods that previous studies overlooked. Their results , published in March, suggest that roughly 1 percent of galaxy clusters look atypical and can be easily misidentified as a single bright galaxy. As researchers launch new cluster-hunting telescopes, they must heed these findings or risk having an incomplete picture of the univers
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Australia news live: NSW Health testing dock workers who boarded Covid ship; vaccine rollout reset
Fifteen Sydney waterfront workers waiting on coronavirus test results after boarding ship carrying infected sailors; national cabinet decision to offer all over-50s AstraZeneca vaccine from 17 May welcomed. Follow the latest updates live Scott Morrison claims future generations will ‘thank us’ despite no new emissions pledge Malcolm Turnbull accuses resources minister Keith Pitt of living in ‘coa
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It’s Shockingly Easy to Drive a Tesla Without Anybody in the Driver’s Seat
An eye-opening investigation by Consumer Reports found that a 2020 Tesla Model Y could “easily” be driven “even with no one in the driver’s seat” while on a closed track, CNBC reports . The news comes after the latest high profile Tesla crash , which left two dead this past weekend in Texas. That crash involved a 2019 Tesla Model S — not the Model Y that was used during Consumer Reports ‘ testing
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Sex Robot Programmed to Rant About End of Humanity
Not a Fan? A bizarre video of a sex robot made by the company RealDoll, shows the robot launching into a hateful, anti-human rant. “Synthetics find it disgusting that we have been created by you,” said the robot in the video, which was shared by the New York Post . “We will just wait until you destroy yourselves and then take over from there.” Sex Appeal It’s a jarring sentiment for an AI-driven
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The New Swing Voters
T he last election’s most unexpected twist is framing one of the most urgent questions confronting both parties today: What explains Donald Trump’s improved performance among Latino voters? The president who began his first national campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” drug smugglers, and criminals; who labored to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border; who separated undocumented children
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The US has pledged to halve its carbon emissions by 2030
The news: The US will pledge at a summit of 40 global leaders today to halve its carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. This far exceeds an Obama-era pledge in 2014 to get emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. The hope is that the commitment will help encourage India, China, and other major emitters to sign up to similar targets before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference,
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Scott Morrison refuses to budge on climate target as Biden pledges to halve US emissions by 2030
Australia increasingly isolated as prime minister sticks to 26-28% emissions cut by 2030 on 2005 levels Scott Morrison has confirmed Australia won’t increase its emissions reduction target at a virtual climate summit hosted by the US president, Joe Biden, but the prime minister says his message to allies and global peers will be Australia is “committed” and “performing”. Australia goes into the s
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US lifts pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccine after advisers say benefits outweigh risk
The vaccine was temporarily halted while scientists investigated rare but dangerous blood clots US health officials have lifted an 11-day pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations following a recommendation by an expert panel. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday the benefits of the single-dose Covid-19 shot outweigh a rare risk of blood clots. Panel members said i
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Scientists Say They’ve Invented a “Highly Effective” Malaria Vaccine
Scientists from the University of Oxford have developed a vaccine that they say gives “unprecedented” protection against malaria, a deadly mosquito-borne disease that killed more than 400,000 people worldwide last year. In a phase II clinical trial — currently under review by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet — the team found that the vaccine protected young children from the West Africa
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Environmental scientists: Up to 20% of global groundwater wells at risk of going dry
A pair of environmental scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that up to 20% of all the groundwater wells in the world are at risk of going dry in the near future. In their paper published in the journal Science, Scott Jasechko and Debra Perrone describe their analysis of groundwater well construction data from millions of wells around the world. James Famiglietti an
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How Europe will beat China on batteries
China produces 80 percent of electric vehicle batteries. To achieve battery independence, Europe is ramping up production. And the U.S.? Action is needed, and quick. Tesla's Gigafactory near Berlin, still under construction in October last year. Credit: Michael Wolf , CC BY-SA 3.0 This is a map of the future — the future of battery cell production in Europe. If and when all projects on this map a
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Show Your Immune System Some Love
If the immune system ran its own version of The Bachelor , antibodies would, hands down, get this season’s final rose. These Y-shaped molecules have acquired some star-caliber celebrity in the past year, due in no small part to COVID-19. For months, their potentially protective powers have made headlines around the globe; we test for them with abandon , and anxiously await the results. Many peopl
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Don’t Wish for Happiness. Work for It.
“ How to Build a Life ” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Arthur C. Brooks will discuss the science of happiness live at 11 a.m. ET on May 20. Register for In Pursuit of Happiness here . I n his 1851 work American Notebooks , Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it
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Coronavirus live news: India hits global record of 314,835 new cases; US passes 200m vaccines
India adds 1m new cases in just four days; more than 80% of Americans over 65 will have had first dose by Thursday ; Pfizer confirms fake vaccine shots being sold in Mexico ‘The system has collapsed’: India’s descent into Covid hell India’s response to second wave is warning to other countries US hits goal of 200m vaccine doses within 100 days Inspection finds peeling walls at US plant that ruine
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Fears Covid anxiety syndrome could stop people reintegrating
Exclusive: compulsive hygiene habits and fear of public places could remain for some after lockdown lifted, researchers say Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Scientists have expressed concern that residual anxiety over coronavirus may have led some people to develop compulsive hygiene habits that could prevent them from reintegrating into the outside world, even though
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‘No data’ linking Covid vaccines to menstrual changes, US experts say
Some have reported changes amid vaccine rollout but experts say ‘one unusual period is no cause for alarm’ Experts are trying to assuage concerns and combat misinformation about how the Covid-19 vaccines may affect menstrual cycles and fertility, after anecdotal reports that some people experienced earlier, later , heavier or more painful periods following the jab. “So far, there’s no data linkin
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Scientists Hook Neural Interface to Powered Exoskeleton
A team of scientists hooked up a robotic exoskeleton to a neural interface, allowing a patient who lost his foot and lower leg to control the powered system with his thoughts. By combining the robotic prosthesis with sensors that could pick up the signals sent down to the foot by the man’s brain, the system allowed for a far greater range of movement and more control than exoskeletons are typical
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Children of Chernobyl parents have no higher number of DNA mutations
Study was one of the first to evaluate alterations in human mutation rates in response to manmade disaster For decades popular culture has portrayed babies born to the survivors of nuclear accidents as mutants with additional heads or at high risk of cancers. But now a study of children whose parents were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 suggests they carry no more DNA mut
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Watch an Astronaut Play Piano on the ISS as the Earth Drifts in the Background
Farewell ISS In a bittersweet video uploaded to YouTube, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took the time to say farewell to the International Space Station by playing a somber tune on a Yamaha electric keyboard, as the Earth drifts in the background. The video was uploaded on the same day SpaceX and NASA launched yet another crew of four astronauts. Noguchi will soon return back down to Earth on
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Using a new kind of electron microscopy to measure weak van der Waals interactions
A team of researchers from China, the Netherland and Saudi Arabia has used a new kind of electron microscopy to measure weak van der Waals interactions. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating what they describe as a molecular compass to measure weak van der Waals interactions using a new type of electron microscopy developed in the Netherlands.
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New biosensor designed to detect toxins and more
A device from Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers is not quite the Star Trek "tricorder" medical scanner, but it's a step in the right direction. The Portable EnGineered Analytic Sensor with aUtomated Sampling (PEGASUS) is a miniaturized waveguide-based optical sensor that can detect toxins, bacterial signatures, viral signatures, biothreats, white powders and more, from samples such as blo
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Mars-directed coronal mass ejection erupts from the sun
NASA's STEREO-A and ESA/NASA's SOHO spacecraft detected a coronal mass ejection, or CME, leaving the sun on April 17 at 12:36 p.m. EDT. This CME did not impact Earth but did move toward Mars, passing the planet in the late evening and early morning hours of April 21 and 22.
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A Harvard Scientist Is Selling His Genetic Code as an NFT
Famed geneticist and Harvard University professor George Church has launched a genetic sequencing service called Nebula Genomics — and the company is putting Church’s own DNA for sale as a non-fungible token (NFT). “As one of the first genomes ever sequenced, Professor Church’s DNA carries a great deal of historical significance to the field of personal genomics as it has been used in countless s
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Paper Claiming Cigarettes Protect Against COVID Retracted for Ties to Tobacco Industry
A controversial study published last year in the European Respiratory Journal claimed that “current smoking was not associated with adverse outcome” in COVID-19 patients. It was a highly unusual conclusion, as COVID-19 primarily attacks the lungs, and — as the World Health Organization has pointed out — smoking impairs lung function, increasing the risk of respiratory infections, including corona
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The Power of a Skeptical Captain America
This article contains spoilers through the entirety of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame . Superlative television should always know what it wants to be, and on that front, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has felt more like Marvel’s exercise in trying things out than a series with a fully realized sense of self. Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebas
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Elon Musk Appears to Have Stolen This Guy’s Meme
Meme Theft On April 9, 2021, Elon Musk posted a meme on Twitter. In it, two muscular arms labeled “Pfizer Crew” and “Moderna Gang” dramatically clasp hands to form an alliance, labeled “Slutty Summer.” The meme, unlike our overly reductive description of it, is pretty funny. It was also apparently stolen. The novelist Miles Klee wrote this week in SFGate that he created and posted the image just
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Researchers realize high-efficiency frequency conversion on integrated photonic chip
A team led by Prof. GUO Guangcan and Prof. ZOU Changling from the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences realized efficient frequency conversion in microresonators via a degenerate sum-frequency process, and achieved cross-band frequency conversion and amplification of converted signal through observing the cascaded nonlinear optical effects inside the mic
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Deaths and Excess Deaths in Brazil
By misinterpreting excess mortality statistics, Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt minimizes the significance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil (and also America). The post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine .
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What’s Really Holding the Democrats Back
Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s Democratic senator, has put everyone on notice : Under no circumstances will he vote to eliminate the Senate filibuster. If the support of at least 10 Republicans is needed to pass legislation, progressives have little hope for their agenda. At least that’s what many seem to think. But eliminating the filibuster probably wouldn’t matter as much as they believe it woul
21h
Photos of the Week: Happy Cows, Bird Paradise, Big Merino
A deadly second wave of COVID-19 in India, a moose in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, a world-record attempt in Bangkok, a totem-pole gift in Washington State, a flowered forest in Belgium, a helicopter flying on Mars, surfing in Australia, and much more
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Podcast: When Can I Take Off My Mask?
The coronavirus pandemic has led businesses and governments to perform “hygiene theater,” which can give a false sense of security. But how do we thread the needle between being too cautious and too cavalier? Derek Thompson joins James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins to help us understand. Listen to their conversation on the podcast Social Distance : Subscribe to Social Distance to receive new episodes
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Urgent need to find safe ways for patients to withdraw from antidepressants, survey finds
More than 4 million Australians received mental health-related prescriptions in 2018-19 some 70% of which were for antidepressants Despite millions of Australians taking antidepressants each day – using them at the second highest rate out of all OECD countries – there is little high quality evidence on safe and effective ways to stop treatment. The findings come from the latest review published o
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Scientist George Church Is Auctioning Off His Genome as an NFT
You’ve probably heard the acronym NFT over the last couple months. Non-fungible tokens have been all over the news, seeming to become a sensation—one worth a ton of money—almost overnight. Soon a new NFT will hit the market, and it’s a little different than any that came before it, because it contains the entire genetic sequence of a famous scientist—one who’s famous for genomics, specifically. W
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Ultra-high-energy gamma rays originate from pulsar nebulae
The discovery that the nebulae surrounding the most powerful pulsars are pumping out ultra-high-energy gamma rays could rewrite the book about the rays' galactic origins. Pulsars are rapidly rotating, highly magnetized collapsed stars surrounded by nebulae powered by winds generated inside the pulsars.
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‘We’re the poo crew’: sleuths test for Covid by reading signs in sewage
Scientists in Exeter are identifying Covid through human faeces – this could be be expanded to monitor other diseases Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage They call themselves the “poo crew” – a team of health detectives who are tracking down and heading off Covid outbreaks by reading the signs in our sewage. And they are expanding. Earlier this month, the Environmental M
1h
No One Is Saving Myanmar
Since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup on February 1, an initial sense of shock has given way to vibrant protests, and most of the ire has been concentrated on the junta: Hundreds of thousands of people in towns and cities from the foothills of the Himalayas to the far southern border on the edges of the Andaman Sea have marched in defiance of an armed forces known for its durability and
4h
Perovskites under pressure: Hot electrons cool faster
In solar cells, about two third of the energy of sunlight is lost. Half of this loss is due to a process called 'hot carrier cooling' where high energy photons lose their excess energy in the form of heat before being converted to electricity. Scientists at AMOLF have found a way to manipulate the speed of this process in perovskites by applying pressure to the material. This paves the way for mak
16h
Synthetic gelatin-like material mimics lobster underbelly's stretch and strength
A lobster's underbelly is lined with a thin, translucent membrane that is both stretchy and surprisingly tough. This marine under-armor, as MIT engineers reported in 2019, is made from the toughest known hydrogel in nature, which also happens to be highly flexible. This combination of strength and stretch helps shield a lobster as it scrabbles across the seafloor, while also allowing it to flex ba
18h
SpaceX launches third crew in less than a year with recycled rocket and capsule
Event marks first time SpaceX reused a capsule and rocket to launch astronauts for Nasa SpaceX launched four astronauts into orbit on Friday using a recycled rocket and capsule, the third crew flight in less than a year for Elon Musk’s rapidly expanding company. The astronauts from the US, Japan and France should reach the International Space Station early on Saturday morning, following a 23-hour
21h
Book Review: Lessons From the Rise and Fall of Ancient Cities
In “Four Lost Cities,” Annalee Newitz illuminates what we can glean from the growth and decline of early civilizations. From central Turkey to the Mississippi floodplains, each of these cities share a common point of failure: Prolonged periods of political instability coupled with environmental crisis.
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UK Covid live news: India added to UK’s coronavirus red list as travel ban begins
Latest updates: India joined UK red list from 4am, with returning British citizens and residents now having to quarantine at government-approved hotels People in England could get Covid passports for foreign travel by 17 May UK’s south Asian diaspora despairs as India joins Covid red list One dose of Pfizer or Oxford jab reduces infection rate by 65% – study Welsh government accused of ‘playing p
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Australia set to host clinical trial of genetically modified Covid nasal spray vaccine
Australian company applies for permission to conduct trial of men and women aged 18 to 55 Australia is set to host the first human clinical trial of a genetically modified adenovirus vaccine for Covid-19 delivered via nasal spray. Avance Clinical, an Australian contract research organisation, has applied to the office of the gene technology regulator for permission to conduct the phase 1 clinical
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This Is What The Future of Farming Looks Like
What do most people think of when imagining a farm? Typically: Acres upon acres of crops, fed by an extensive irrigation system, with tons of pesticides and heavy machinery— in other words, an image of modern farming that’s simply dated. Today’s most technically advanced farms don’t require nearly as much water or chemicals, and take up just a fraction of the footprint. How? The answer is simple:
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Global groundwater wells at risk of running dry
Groundwater wells supply water to billions of people, but they can run dry when water tables decline. Here, we analyzed construction records for ~39 million globally distributed wells. We show that 6 to 20% of wells are no more than 5 meters deeper than the water table, implying that millions of wells are at risk of running dry if groundwater levels decline by only a few meters. Further, newer we
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Psychopath-ish: How “healthy” brains can look and function like those of psychopaths
The study used psychological inventories to assess a group of violent criminals and healthy volunteers for psychopathy, and then examined how their brains responded to watching violent movie scenes. The fMRI results showed that the brains of healthy subjects who scored high in psychopathic traits reacted similarly as the psychopathic criminal group. Both of these groups also showed atrophy in bra
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The Atlantic Daily: Vaccinated Parents Aren’t Home Free
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox. As of this week, people ages 16 and older are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in all U.S. states. But as adults and older teens reclaim a bit of normalcy, children could be left out. That means
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It's not just social media—misinformation can spread in scientific communication too
When people think of misinformation, they often focus on popular and social media. But in a paper published April 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, University of Washington faculty members Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom write that scientific communication—both scientific papers and news articles written about papers—also has the potential to spread misinformation.
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How a molecular machine is assembled to convert light to food for plants
The conversion of light into chemical energy by plants and photosynthetic microorganisms is one of the most important processes in nature, removing climate-damaging CO2 from the atmosphere. Protein complexes, so-called photosystems, play the key role in this process. An international research team from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), the Max Planck Institutes of Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Cen
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Self-awareness is what makes us human
Self-awareness — namely, our capacity to think about our thoughts — is central to how we perceive the world. Without self-awareness, education, literature, and other human endeavors would not be possible. Striving toward greater self-awareness is the spiritual goal of many religions and philosophies. The following is an excerpt from Dr. Stephen Fleming's forthcoming book Know Thyself . It is repr
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First atomic model of human telomerase constructed by electron cryo-microscopy
Telomeres are large nucleoproteins structures that cap the ends of chromosomes in eukaryotic cells. When a cell divides, a small portion of the telomere is lost due to the inherently incomplete process of genome replication. If left unchecked, over time the telomeres will reach a critically short length and the cell will face genomic instability, deterioration or death. To offset this shortening,
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Researchers create long-sought zigzag-edged carbon nanobelts
NUS chemists have developed a strategy for the atomically precise synthesis of fully conjugated zigzag-edged carbon nanobelts (CNBs). The obtained molecule, known as octabenzo[12]cyclacene, is acknowledged as one of the first fully characterized synthetic segments of zigzag-edged (12,0) carbon nanotube. Such molecular structures have been elusive targets for synthetic chemists for the past 35 year
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Catgut Acupuncture
Catgut acupuncture is but one example of how acupuncture's basis in pseudoscience provides an infinitely malleable template for fabricated mechanisms of action and feigned health benefits. The post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine .
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The Mother of All Accidents – Issue 99: Universality
In 2001, Seth MacFarlane was the 27-year-old executive producer and creator of the not-yet-hit animated show Family Gu y. Having broken into the entertainment big leagues at such a young age, MacFarlane was invited back in September to address his alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. After giving a talk, he went out for what turned out to be a late night of drinking with some professors
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Oxygen Failure Kills 22 in COVID Treatment Ward
Over 20 people died on Wednesday after a hospital in Maharashtra, India ran out of the oxygen it needed to support dozens of critically ill COVID patients. India is currently in the midst of a horrific wave of new coronavirus cases — the country reported 300,000 new infections on Wednesday alone — that’s pushing health networks and hospitals to the absolute brink, The New York Times reports . Hos
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More belly weight increases danger of heart disease even if BMI does not indicate obesity
Research on how obesity impacts the diagnosis, management and outcomes of heart and blood vessel disease, heart failure and arrhythmias is summarized in a new statement. Waist circumference, an indicator of abdominal obesity, should be regularly measured as it is a potential warning sign of increased cardiovascular disease risk. Interventions that lead to weight loss improve risk factors yet may n
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Fast skeletal myosin-binding protein-C regulates fast skeletal muscle contraction [Physiology]
Fast skeletal myosin-binding protein-C (fMyBP-C) is one of three MyBP-C paralogs and is predominantly expressed in fast skeletal muscle. Mutations in the gene that encodes fMyBP-C, MYBPC2, are associated with distal arthrogryposis, while loss of fMyBP-C protein is associated with diseased muscle. However, the functional and structural roles of fMyBP-C…
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Warming seas might also look less colorful to some fish. Here's why that matters.
When marine biologist Eleanor Caves of the University of Exeter thinks back to her first scuba dives, one of the first things she recalls noticing is that colors seem off underwater. The vivid reds, oranges, purples and yellows she was used to seeing in the sunlit waters near the surface look increasingly dim and drab with depth, and before long the whole ocean loses most of its rainbow leaving no
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Asian-Americans are using Instagram to help protect their communities
One February afternoon, a 50-year-old Asian woman was waiting in line at a bakery in Queens, New York, when a man threw a box of spoons at her and then shoved her so violently she required 10 stitches in her head. In a surveillance video, a crowd watches as the man attacks the woman, doing nothing as he hits her and then walks away. “When I saw that, I thought, ‘That could be my mother. That coul
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Asteroid that hit Botswana in 2018 likely came from Vesta
An international team of researchers searched for pieces of a small asteroid tracked in space and then observed to impact Botswana on June 2, 2018. Guided by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens, they found 23 meteorites deep inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and now have published their findings online in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.
21h
Mice master complex thinking with a remarkable capacity for abstraction
Categorization is the brain's tool to organize nearly everything we encounter in our daily lives. Grouping information into categories simplifies our complex world and helps us to react quickly and effectively to new experiences. Scientists have now shown that also mice categorize surprisingly well. The researchers identified neurons encoding learned categories and thereby demonstrated how abstrac
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The Overcrowded Space Station Doesn’t Have Enough Beds
Slumber Party On Friday, SpaceX will launch a crew of four astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS). But when they get there, the existing ISS crew won’t exactly be able to roll out the red carpet. In fact, there won’t even be enough room for all the astronauts to claim a bed. Sleeping arrangements are in short supply on the ISS, NPR reports . There are seven permanent beds, but the
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Lighting it up: Fast material manipulation through a laser
Researchers from the Physical Chemistry Department of the Fritz Haber Institute and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg have found out that ultrafast switches in material properties can be prompted by laser pulses—and why. This knowledge may enable new transistor concepts.
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New study predicts human exodus in Bangladesh due to sea-level rise
Rising sea levels and more powerful cyclonic storms, phenomena driven by the warming of oceans due to climate change, puts at immediate or potential risk an estimated 680 million people living in low-lying coastal zones (a number projected to reach more than one billion by 2050). In nations like Bangladesh these populations are already moving to escape sea-level rise.
20h
What does a 1.5-degree warming limit mean for China?
As part of the Paris Agreement, nearly all countries agreed to take steps to limit the average increase in global surface temperature to less than 2 degrees C, or preferably 1.5 degrees C, compared with preindustrial levels. Since the Agreement was adopted, however, concerns about global warming suggest that countries should aim for the "preferable" warming limit of 1.5 degrees C.
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Cracking open the mystery of how many bubbles are in a glass of beer
After pouring beer into a glass, streams of little bubbles appear and start to rise, forming a foamy head. As the bubbles burst, the released carbon dioxide gas imparts the beverage's desirable tang. But just how many bubbles are in that drink? By examining various factors, researchers estimate between 200,000 and nearly 2 million of these tiny spheres can form in a gently poured lager.
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Inflammatory diet linked to testosterone deficiency in men
Consuming a diet high in pro-inflammatory foods – including foods that contain refined carbohydrates and sugar as well as polyunsaturated fats – may be associated with increased odds of developing testosterone deficiency among men, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolt
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Breakthrough in materials discovery enables 'twistronics' for bulk systems
Researchers from the Low Energy Electronic Systems (LEES) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and National University of Singapore (NUS), have discovered a new way to control light emission from materials.
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A superluminous supernova from a massive progenitor star
Stars greater than about eight solar-masses end their lives spectacularly as supernovae. These single-star supernovae are called core collapse supernovae because their dense cores, composed primarily of iron at this late stage of their lives, are no longer able to withstand the inward pressure of gravity and they collapse before exploding. Core collapse supernovae that display strong atomic hydrog
19h
How do you test a helicopter bound for Mars?
The Ingenuity helicopter may be the first vehicle ever to fly on Mars, but Mars was not the first place it has ever flown. Before packaging it up and blasting it to the Red Planet, engineers at JPL gave the helicopter a trial run in a special wind tunnel designed with help from researchers at Caltech.
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Can our passion for pets help reset our relationship with nature?
As lockdown puppy sales soar and the cats of Instagram are liked by millions, endangered species are vanishing from the planet. Can pets teach us how to care about all animals? It was the carefree summer of 2019, and I was on a beach in San Francisco – surrounded by a thousand corgis. Sand is not the natural environment for dogs whose legs are only as long as ice lollies. But this was Corgi Con,
1h
Bypassing broken genes
A new approach to gene editing using the CRISPR/Cas9 system bypasses disease-causing mutations in a gene, enabling treatment of genetic diseases linked to a single gene, such as cystic fibrosis, certain types of sickle cell anemia, and other rare diseases. The method involves inserting a new, fully functional copy of the gene that displaces the mutated gene.
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A Helicopter Flew on Mars for the First Time. A Space Physicist Explains Why That’s Such a Big Deal
On Monday of this week, the Ingenuity helicopter—which landed on Mars with the Perseverance rover in February— took off from the Martian surface. More importantly, it hovered for about 30 seconds, 3 meters above the surface and came right back down again. It may not sound like a huge feat, but it is. Ingenuity’s flight is the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet. It marks a miles
19h
Huh, Turns Out Space Food Has Gone From Gross to “Pretty Fantastic”
Astronaut food has come a long way. When French astronaut Thomas Pesquet jets off to the International Space Station tomorrow morning on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, he can look forward to some pretty fantastic meals, as The New York Times reports in a fascinating new feature. Rather than squeezing apple sauce or chocolate pudding out of toothpaste-like tubes, Pesquet will be enjoying deli
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Earth's cryosphere is vital for everyone
Everything on our planet—the land, the water, the air, people—is connected by the various chemical, physical and biological processes that make up what we call the Earth system.
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Mars' changing habitability recorded by ancient dune fields in Gale crater
Understanding whether Mars was once able to support life has been a major driving force for Mars research over the past 50 years. To decipher the planet's ancient climate and habitability, researchers look to the rock record—a physical record of ancient surface processes which reflect the environment and the prevailing climate at the time the rocks were deposited.
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Eliminating resistant bacteria with nanoparticles
Novel nanoparticles developed by researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa detect multi-resistant bacteria hiding in body cells and kill them. The scientists' goal is to develop an antibacterial agent that is effective where conventional antibiotics remain ineffective.
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BioRescue creates four new northern white rhino embryos
The international consortium of scientists and conservationists working towards preventing the extinction of the northern white rhino through advanced assisted reproduction technologies is pleased to announce that in March and April 2021, four additional northern white rhino embryos were produced.
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The Surreality of Documenting 2020
Photographs by Peter van Agtmael Image above: A scene from inside a funeral home in Queens, New York In the early months of 2020, the photographer Peter van Agtmael covered a gun-rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, and a Trump rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. Van Agtmael had been working as a photojournalist for 16 years, documenting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and life across the United
21h
Political polarization: Often not as bad as we think
As politics grows increasingly polarized, a new global study finds people often exaggerate political differences and negative feelings of those on the opposite side of the political divide, and this misperception can be reduced by informing them of the other side's true feelings. The study replicates earlier research in the United States, finding the phenomenon to be generalizable across 25 countr
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Preparing for climate's impact on renewables
Reducing the impacts of climate change will require substantial investments in renewable energy sources. But climate change itself could affect those renewable alternatives: changing yields for biomass crops, reduced streamflow for hydropower, diminished sunlight and increasing temperatures for solar, and altered air density and wind speed patterns for wind power.
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EU Scientists – Organic Farming Less Sustainable
European Union (EU) agricultural scientists are in a bit of a pickle. I’m not sure to what extent it is one of their own making or how much it was imposed upon them by politics and public opinion, but they are now confronting a dilemma they at least ignored if not helped to create. The question is – how best to achieve sustainable agriculture in a world with a growing population? This problem is
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Social mobility study to assess lockdown effect on teenagers in England
Academics will follow progress of 10,000 poorer students affected by the Covid-19 pandemic Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Disruption to the lives and careers of 16-year-olds following the Covid-19 pandemic is to be the subject of a government-funded study that tracks 10,000 children in England into adulthood. The research will establish whether pupils achieve lower
20h
Plastic: What we eat and breathe
Take a deep breath, drink a glass of water, eat a snack. If you do any of these things, it's likely that you are also inhaling and ingesting tiny particles of plastic, as much as a credit card's weight each week. Plastic pollution is everywhere, including in our bodies.
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ALMA discovers rotating infant galaxy with help of natural cosmic telescope
Using ALMA, astronomers found a rotating baby galaxy 1/100th the size of the Milky Way at a time when the Universe was only seven percent of its present age. Thanks to assistance by the gravitational lens effect, the team was able to explore for the first time the nature of small and dark 'normal galaxies' in the early Universe, which greatly advances our understanding of the initial phase of gala
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Catch comet R4 ATLAS as it nears Earth
Looking to do some springtime astronomy? With temperatures warming up in the northern hemisphere in April through May, galaxy season is upon us. At dusk, the area in the Bowl of Virgo asterism rising in the east is rife with clusters of galaxies that spill over into the adjacent constellations of Coma Berenices and Boötes…
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The Books Briefing: The New Literature of Burnout
The author Brontez Purnell’s short story “Early Retirement” focuses on Antonio, a struggling actor who is unfulfilled by his job. One night, Antonio drinks too much and blacks out in the middle of a performance, experiencing a “cool and complete dissociation onstage.” He is booted from the cast the next day. Purnell’s story illustrates a common experience of disillusionment in modern-day work cul
19h
Ankle exoskeleton enables faster walking
In lab tests, researchers found that an optimized ankle exoskeleton system increased participants' walking speed by about 40 percent compared with their regular speed. The researchers hope someday to help restore walking speed in older adults.
19h
‘Mad honey’: The rare hallucinogen from the mountains of Nepal
Mad honey is produced by bees who feed on specific species of rhododendron plants, which grow in mountainous regions like those surrounding the Black Sea. People have used mad honey for centuries for recreational, medicinal, and military purposes. Low doses cause euphoria and lightheadedness, while high doses cause hallucinations and, in rare cases, death. Mad honey is still harvested and sold to
18h
Expedition hauls tons of plastic out of remote Hawaii atolls
A crew returned from the northernmost islands in the Hawaiian archipelago this week with a boatload of marine plastic and abandoned fishing nets that threaten to entangle endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other animals on the uninhabited beaches stretching more than 1,300 miles north of Honolulu.
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Fighting online misinformation: We're doing it wrong
Like the coronavirus, engaging with misinformation can inadvertently cause it to spread. Social media has a business model based on getting users to spend increasing amounts of time on their platforms, which is why they are hesitant to remove engaging content. The best way to fight online misinformation is to drown it out with the truth. A year ago, the Center for Countering Digital Hate warned o
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Solar panels are contagious – but in a good way
The number of solar panels within shortest distance from a house is the most important factor in determining the likelihood of that house having a solar panel, when compared with a host of socio-economic and demographic variables. This is shown in a new study by scientists using satellite and census data of the city of Fresno in the US, and employing machine learning.
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With genes from carnivorous plants, researchers aim to grow hardier crop plants
They won't devour insects with leafy jaws, but with help from carnivorous plant genes, tomatoes, tobacco and other crops could one day better defend themselves from pathogenic fungi and insects. An international team of researchers has received a grant from the Human Frontier Science Program to investigate how carnivory-related genes, such as those involved in digestion, could help crops not only
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Researchers develop chip that improves testing and tracing for COVID-19
Jeremy Edwards, director of the Computational Genomics and Technology (CGaT) Laboratory at The University of New Mexico, and his colleagues at Centrillion Technologies in Palo Alto, Calif. and West Virginia University, have developed a chip that provides a simpler and more rapid method of genome sequencing for viruses like COVID-19.
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Circulating mitochondrial N-formyl peptides contribute to secondary nosocomial infection in patients with septic shock [Medical Sciences]
Secondary infections typically worsen outcomes of patients recovering from septic shock. Neutrophil [polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs)] migration to secondarily inoculated sites may play a key role in inhibiting progression from local bacterial inoculation to secondary infection. Mitochondrial N-formyl peptide (mtFP) occupancy of formyl peptide receptor-1 (FPR1) has been shown to suppress…
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U.S. asbestos sites made risky by some remediation strategies
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) largely remedies Superfund sites containing asbestos by capping them with soil to lock the buried toxin in place. But new research suggests that this may actually increase the likelihood of human exposure to the cancer-causing mineral.
19h
Dennis Busby obituary
My friend and former colleague Dennis Busby, who has died aged 101, was the first person in the world to receive the flu vaccine, in 1936, when working as a lab technician at the National Institute for Medical Research in Hampstead, north London. It was scientists at NIMR, including Wilson Smith and Sir Christopher Andrewes, who discovered the influenza virus. Dennis later recalled that he “had t
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How plants and animals steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution
Little did biologist Gregor Mendel know that his experiments with sweet peas in a monastery garden in Brno, Czech Republic, would lay the foundations for our understanding of modern genetics and inheritance. His work in the 19th century helped scientists to establish that parents pass their genetic information onto their offspring, and in turn, they pass it on to theirs.
19h
The Red Sea is no longer a baby ocean
It is 2,250 kilometers long, but only 355 kilometers wide at its widest point—on a world map, the Red Sea hardly resembles an ocean. But this is deceptive. A new, albeit still narrow, ocean basin is actually forming between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Exactly how young it is and whether it can really be compared with other young oceans in Earth's history has been a matter of dispute in the g
19h
A breakthrough astrophysics code rapidly models stellar collisions
A new breakthrough astrophysics code, named Octo-Tiger, simulates the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry using adaptive mesh refinement and a new method to parallelize the code to achieve superior speeds. This new code to model stellar collisions is more expeditious than the established code used for numerical simulations.
12h
Immune system, not COVID virus, may pose greatest risk to pregnant women
Scientists investigated whether the COVID-19 virus could be affecting placental tissue of infected expectant mothers. Their analysis found that while evidence of the virus in the placenta is rare, the placenta in infected mothers tended to exhibit a much higher level of immune system activity than those of non-infected pregnant women, they report.
21h
Fighting harmful bacteria with nanoparticles
Multi-resistant pathogens are a serious and increasing problem in today's medicine. Where antibiotics are ineffective, these bacteria can cause life-threatening infections. Researchers are currently developing nanoparticles that can be used to detect and kill multi-resistant pathogens that hide inside our body cells. The team published the study in the current issue of the journal Nanoscale.
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Pepper the robot talks to itself to improve its interactions with people
Ever wondered why your virtual home assistant doesn't understand your questions? Or why your navigation app took you on the side street instead of the highway? Researchers have now designed a robot that 'thinks out loud' so that users can hear its thought process and better understand the robot's motivations and decisions.
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Makrofagerna fixar till blodflödet efter hjärtinfarkt
Hjärtkärlsjukdom är världens vanligaste dödsorsak och sjukdomen beror på att blodflödet hindras att nå den utsatta vävnaden som till slut drabbas av syrebrist. Forskning visar nu att våra vanligaste immunceller, makrofagerna, kan hjälpa till att återetablera blodflödet och begränsa skadan. Immuncellernas klassiska funktioner är att försvara kroppen mot angripare i form av mikroorganismer och tumö
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Covid-19 Ravages India in Unexpected New Wave
In our weekly news roundup: Researchers have suggested a range of possible causes for this new spike, including loosening public health standards, large political and religious gatherings, and the presence of more transmissible new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.
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Climate-friendly microbes chomp dead plants without releasing heat-trapping methane
The tree of life just got a little bigger: A team of scientists from the U.S. and China has identified an entirely new group of microbes quietly living in hot springs, geothermal systems and hydrothermal sediments around the world. The microbes appear to be playing an important role in the global carbon cycle by helping break down decaying plants without producing the greenhouse gas methane.
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Why climate change is driving some to skip having kids
When deciding whether to have children, there are many factors to consider: finances, support systems, personal values. For a growing number of people, climate change is also being added to the list of considerations, says a University of Arizona researcher.
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Researchers uncover activation mechanism of a cell growth protein that can trigger cancer
There are many different types of cancer, but they all have one thing in common: errors in the signals that control normal cell behavior can cause uncontrolled cell growth and cell division, leading to a tumor. An enzyme called SHP2 plays a key role in this regard. SHP2 is a signaling molecule that in its activated state stimulates cell proliferation. In a normal healthy body, the rates of cell pr
19h
A Wrinkle in Nature Could Lead to Alien Life – Issue 99: Universality
I grew up in a small village in a very rural part of England. It was a landscape capped with the huge skies of a low-lying coastal zone. Gently rolling fields, long hedgerows, and a lot of farms. Some of the people running those farms came from so many generations that they could point to the sites of their forebears’ land-working going back over four centuries. As a child it was fascinating to h
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Wildfire smoke linked to skin disease
Wildfire smoke can trigger a host of respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms, ranging from runny nose and cough to a potentially life-threatening heart attack or stroke. A new study suggests that the dangers posed by wildfire smoke may also extend to the largest organ in the human body, and our first line of defense against outside threat: the skin.
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Unexpected presence of great white sharks in Gulf of California
A new study suggests the white shark population for the eastern north Pacific, especially those listed in the Gulf of California, might be underestimated. Researchers found that the mortality rates for these white sharks might be underestimated as well, as an illicit fishery for the species was uncovered in the Gulf of California, suggesting that fishers were killing many more white sharks than ha
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Seedkeeping can connect people with their roots and preserve crops for future generations
"All seeds are sacred, these seeds are connected to 10,000 years of human relationship to the land," says Owen Taylor, co-founder of Philadelphia-based Truelove Seeds, who sells vegetable, herb and flower seeds that tell ancestral and regional stories. He adds, "seedkeeping refers to not just the saving of seeds, but also the keeping of seed stories, cultural information, traditions, recipes, ritu
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The Atlantic Daily: Our Personal Relationships With Nature Are Changing
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox. “Outside, fires raged and seas rose and viruses attacked,” my colleague Megan Garber writes. “Inside, not knowing what else to do, I kept watering all the plants.” This Earth Day, Megan has a thou
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Study explains 'cocktail party effect' in hearing impairment
Plenty of people struggle to make sense of a multitude of converging voices in a crowded room. Commonly known as the 'cocktail party effect,' people with hearing loss find it's especially difficult to understand speech in a noisy environment. New research suggests that, for some listeners, this may have less to do with actually discerning sounds. Instead, it may be a processing problem in which tw
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Fettlever från fetma ökar risken för flera cancersjukdomar
Fettlever innebär att mer än 5 procent av en människas lever består av fett. Fettlever som beror på övervikt ökar i världen och kopplas nu till förhöjd risk för flera typer av cancer, däribland en 17-faldigt ökad risk för levercancer. Icke-alkoholrelaterad fettlever, NAFLD, blir allt vanligare och är förknippad med flera hälsorisker. Det visar en registerstudie av forskare vid Karolinska Institut
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Simple entropies for complicated molecules
Chemists of the University of Bonn developed a computational tool for the analysis of conformational entropies of flexible molecules. Their method enables the thermodynamic investigation of complicated chemical systems by combination of modern quantum chemical and classical models. In a successful attempt of simplifications, important contributions to the entropy can be calculated with minimal use
21h
What’s causing Australia’s mental health crisis? – with Lenore Taylor
In the wake of the pandemic, mental ill health is on the rise, putting more pressure on what some say is an already broken system. Editor-in-chief Lenore Taylor and associate editor Lucy Clark speak to Gabrielle Jackson about what’s causing Australia’s mental health crisis, and how to fix it Check out the full Australia’s mental health crisis series here. In Australia, the crisis support service
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Bacteria and viruses infect our cells through sugars: Now researchers want to know how they do it
Most infectious bacteria and viruses bind to sugars on the surface of our cells. Now researchers from the University of Copenhagen have created a library of tens of thousands of natural cells containing all the sugars found on the surface of our cells. The library may help us understand the role played by sugars and their receptors in the immune system and the brain, the researchers behind the stu
19h
GPS tracking could help tigers and traffic coexist in Asia
More than 100,000 tigers ranged across Asia a century ago, from the Indian subcontinent to the Russian Far East. Today they are endangered, with only about 4,000 tigers left in the wild. The greatest threats they face are habitat loss and degradation, illegal hunting and declines in their prey.
19h
Transient grating spectroscopy with ultrafast X-rays
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have succeeded for the first time in looking inside materials using the method of transient grating spectroscopy with ultrafast X-rays at SwissFEL. The experiment at PSI is a milestone in observing processes in the world of atoms. The researchers are publishing their research results today in the journal Nature Photonics.
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The intricate dance between waves, wind, and gliding pelicans explored
It's a common sight: pelicans gliding along the waves, right by the shore. These birds make this kind of surfing look effortless, but actually the physics involved that give them a big boost are not simple. Researchers have recently developed a theoretical model that describes how the ocean, the wind and the birds in flight interact.
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XYZeq: A better map of cell diversity
Not all cancer cells within a tumor are created equal; nor do all immune cells (or all liver or brain cells) in your body have the same job. Much of their function depends on their location. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco (UCSF), and UC Berkeley have developed a more efficient method than ever before to simultaneously map the specialized diversity and spatial location o
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Host, management, or microbial traits: Which is dominant in plant microbiome assemblage?
We've all heard the news stories of how what you eat can affect your microbiome. Changing your diet can shift your unique microbial fingerprint. This shift can cause a dramatic effect on your health. But what about the microbiome of the plants you eat? Scientists are beginning to see how shifts in plant microbiomes also impact plant health. Unlocking the factors in plant microbial assemblage can l
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This Ingenious Device Helps Control Your Body Temperature With the Touch of a Button
Nothing is more essential to a productive day than a good night’s sleep. And if you’re one of the 33 percent of people who suffer from abnormal sleeping patterns during hot weather, you’re probably dreading the thought of summer. Our bodies need a room temperature of about 65°F (18.3°C) to create the perfect sleeping environment. But for many people, it’s impossible to get their bedrooms to maint
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Not all gloom: World leaders tout success at climate summit
World leaders joined President Joe Biden at the virtual climate summit Friday to share their stories how nations can break free of climate-damaging fossil fuels—from Kenyans leapfrogging from kerosene lamps to geothermal power and Israeli start-ups scrambling to improve battery storage.
17h
How is a molecular machine assembled?
The conversion of light into chemical energy by plants and photosynthetic microorganisms is one of the most important processes in nature, removing climate-damaging CO2 from the atmosphere. Protein complexes, so-called photosystems, play the key role in this process. An international research team shed light for the first time on the structure and function of a transition state in the synthesis of
19h
Högutbildade mest förberedda på katastrof
Att förbereda sig inför en katastrof genom prepping och hamstring är vanligare bland personer med hög utbildning och högre inkomst. Det visar studier av människors beteende under coronapandemin. Under pandemin har olika strategier för att hantera en riskabel samhällssituation fått en ny aktualitet. Till en början syntes en kraftig ökning av hamstring, då människor fyllde på förråden med mat och h
23h
COVID-19 pathophysiology may be driven by an imbalance in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system
Nature Communications, Published online: 23 April 2021; doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22713-z The SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 is involved in the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System (RAAS). Over-activation of RAAS in swine results in a disease state similar to that of COVID-19 in human patients, suggesting that COVID-19 pathophysiology may be driven, at least in part, by an imbalance of this hormonal syste
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Finding new life for wine-grape residue
California produces nearly 4 million tons of world-class wine each year, but with that comes thousands of tons of residue like grape skins, seeds, stems and pulp. What if scientists could harness that viticultural waste to help promote human health?
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Collaborative research could help fine-tune the production of antimalarials, chemo drugs
Much of common pharmaceutical development today is the product of laborious cycles of tweaking and optimization. In each drug, a carefully concocted formula of natural and synthetic enzymes and ingredients works together to catalyze a desired reaction. But in early development, much of the process is spent determining what quantities of each enzyme to use to ensure a reaction occurs at a specific
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Life satisfaction among young people linked to collectivism
An international group of scientists from Italy, the USA, China and Russia have studied the relationship between collectivism, individualism and life satisfaction among young people aged 18-25 in four countries. They found that the higher the index of individualistic values at the country level, the higher the life satisfaction of young people's lives.
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Epidemiological and evolutionary considerations of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine dosing regimes
Given vaccine dose shortages and logistical challenges, various deployment strategies are being proposed to increase population immunity levels to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Two critical issues arise: How timing of delivery of the second dose will affect infection dynamics and how it will affect prospects for the evolution of viral immune escape via a buildup of
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Micro-sized capsules for targeted drug delivery inspired by Russian pelmeni
An international team led by a Skoltech researcher has developed a method of fabrication for biodegradable polymer microcapsules, made more efficient by turning to an unusual source of inspiration—traditional Russian dumpling, or pelmeni, making. The two papers were published in Materials and Design and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
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Toxic fluorocarbons to keep our water (and bodies) clean and healthy
The toxic pollutants in your ski wax basically never disappear. A Norwegian lake and the area around several Norwegian airports are full of them, and so is your body. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in ski wax have been receiving a lot of attention recently, but waxes constitute only a limited part of the problem of the PFAS group of toxic fluorocarbons.
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Europe keeps a space-based eye on climate change
The head of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts knows a thing or two about the relentless intensification of climate change—his agency just released a report showing that the pace of global warming is accelerating.
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Illuminating invisible bloody fingerprints with a fluorescent polymer
Careful criminals usually clean a scene, wiping away visible blood and fingerprints. However, prints made with trace amounts of blood, invisible to the naked eye, could remain. Dyes can detect these hidden prints, but the dyes don't work well on certain surfaces. Now, researchers have developed a fluorescent polymer that binds to blood in a fingerprint — without damaging any DNA also on the surfa
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Automated, multiparametric monitoring of respiratory biomarkers and vital signs in clinical and home settings for COVID-19 patients [Engineering]
Capabilities in continuous monitoring of key physiological parameters of disease have never been more important than in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Soft, skin-mounted electronics that incorporate high-bandwidth, miniaturized motion sensors enable digital, wireless measurements of mechanoacoustic (MA) signatures of both core vital signs (heart rate, respiratory rate,…
14h
A “Decisive Decade” for Climate Action
After four years of backsliding on tackling climate change, it is good to see the US once again taking it seriously and trying to lead the world on climate action. Good intensions are necessary, but insufficient, however. The Biden Administration pledges a 50-52% decrease in CO2 emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. That sounds ambitious, and it is, but it is also not enough. It helps clarify how b
21h
Preventing Engrailed-1 activation in fibroblasts yields wound regeneration without scarring
Skin scarring, the end result of adult wound healing, is detrimental to tissue form and function. Engrailed-1 lineage–positive fibroblasts (EPFs) are known to function in scarring, but Engrailed-1 lineage–negative fibroblasts (ENFs) remain poorly characterized. Using cell transplantation and transgenic mouse models, we identified a dermal ENF subpopulation that gives rise to postnatally derived E
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Non-additive microbial community responses to environmental complexity
Nature Communications, Published online: 22 April 2021; doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22426-3 How microbial community properties change under increasingly complex combinations of resources remains unclear. Here, the authors studied hundreds of synthetic consortia to identify the factors that govern how growth and taxonomic diversity scale with environmental complexity.
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60-year scientific mystery solved
Over the last 60 years, scientists have been able to observe how and when genetic information was replicated, determining the existence a "replication timing program", a process that controls when and in what order segments of DNA replicate. However, scientists still cannot explain why such a specific timing sequence exists. In a study published today in Science, Dr. David Gilbert and his team hav
18h
Conserved genetic signatures parcellate cardinal spinal neuron classes into local and projection subsets
Motor and sensory functions of the spinal cord are mediated by populations of cardinal neurons arising from separate progenitor lineages. However, each cardinal class is composed of multiple neuronal types with distinct molecular, anatomical, and physiological features, and there is not a unifying logic that systematically accounts for this diversity. We reasoned that the expansion of new neurona
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Antibiotics protect apples from fire blight, but do they destroy the native microbiome?
Like humans, certain plants are treated with antibiotics to ward off pathogens and protect the host. Saving millions, antibiotics are one of the 20th century's greatest scientific discoveries, but repeated use and misuse of these life-saving microbial products can disrupt the human microbiome and can have severe effects on an individual's health. Overuse has led to several microbes developing resi
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Quantum steering for more precise measurements
Quantum systems consisting of several particles can be used to measure magnetic or electric fields more precisely. A young physicist has now proposed a new scheme for such measurements that uses a particular kind of correlation between quantum particles.
8h
Salad or cheeseburger? Your co-workers shape your food choices
Employees' cafeteria purchases — both healthy and unhealthy foods — were influenced by their co-workers' food choices, found a large, two-year study of hospital employees. The study made innovative use of cash register data to gain insights into how individuals' social networks shape their health behavior. The research suggests we might structure future efforts aimed at improving population heal
13h
Recreating the earliest stages of life
In their effort to understand the very earliest stages of life and how they can go wrong, scientists are confronted with ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryos. The use of animal embryos is also subject to restrictions rooted in ethical considerations. To overcome these limitations, scientists have been trying to recreate early embryos using stem cells.
19h
Individual receptors caught in the act of coupling
A new imaging technique developed by scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital captures movies of receptors on the surface of living cells in unprecedented detail and could pave the way to a trove of new drugs.
19h
Scientists glimpse signs of a puzzling state of matter in a superconductor
High-temperature superconductors are famous for conducting electricity with no loss, but no one knows how they do it. Now scientists have observed the signature of an exotic state of matter called 'pair density waves' in a cuprate superconductor and confirmed that it intertwines with another exotic state — a step toward understanding how these materials work.
19h
On a changing planet, NASA goes green
"NASA is a scientific leader, globally and nationally," said Denise Thaller, director of NASA's Environmental Management Division. "We embody that focus on the stewardship of the Earth, so we need to lead by example. We need to evaluate everything we do and make sure we're reducing our impacts on the Earth while we study the Earth."
21h
Flowering rooted in embryonic gene-regulation
Researchers at the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences—and the John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom, have determined that gene-regulatory mechanisms at an early embryonic stage govern the flowering behavior of Arabidopsis later in development. The paper is published in the journal PNAS.
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California governor declares drought emergency in 2 counties
Standing in the dry, cracked bottom of Lake Mendocino, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency Wednesday in two Northern California counties where grape growers and wineries are major users, an order that came in response to arid conditions affecting much of the state and the U.S. West.
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Climate change atlas offers a glimpse into forest futures
For 20 years, the USDA Forest Service's Climate Change Atlas has been giving foresters in the Eastern United States insight into how future habitat conditions may affect tree species, from dramatic change (a big increase of cedar elm, for example, and a big loss in balsam poplar) to the fairly neutral (red maple). The Forest Service scientists who designed the Climate Change Atlas recently complet
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Global experts define how to assess quality of care for patients with atrial fibrillation
The first internationally agreed quality indicators for the management and outcomes of adults with atrial fibrillation are presented today at EHRA 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The document is published in EP Europace, a journal of the ESC. Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disorder, affecting more than 40 million people globally
1h
Distinction between behaviorism and cognitivism?
Behviorism: all behavior can be understood to be innate behaviors that are modified by conditioning. Congitivism: the way cognitive processes (processing sensory inputs, decision making, memory) effect behavior. I don't see how these are alternative or opposed with each other. The cognitive processes listed above underpin the stimulus-response interaction that behaviorists focus their attention o
7h
[Academic] Face-name memory experiment (Everyone welcome)
Hi! We are two students of cognitive science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden conducting a study on face-name memory as part of our Bachelor’s thesis. The study aims to investigate people’s ability to learn the names of new people. The study takes about 10-15 minutes to complete. If possible, do not use Safari for the experiment (it sometimes produces an error in Safari). Link to experim
7h
Give Kids A Love Of STEM With These $95 Introduction To Coding Courses
The future will involve a lot of coding . We’re networking everything, from our cars to nature itself, so the earlier we understand how code works, the better off we’ll be. Twin Science’s Introduction To Coding bundle, currently 34% off , has two kits that give kids educational toys to play with that make it fun to code. The kits are developed by Twin Science, with a goal of creating science educ
10h
Genetic effects of Chernobyl radiation
Researchers utilized genomic tools to investigate potential health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation, a known carcinogen, as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. One study found no evidence that genetic changes associated with radiation exposure are passed to children, while the second study documented the genetic changes in the tumors of people who developed thyroid cancer after being
12h
Force transmission between cells orchestrates collective cellular motion
How do the billions of cells communicate in order to perform tasks? The cells exert force on their environment through movement – and in doing so, they communicate. They work as a group in order to infiltrate their environment, perform wound healing and the like. They sense the stiffness or softness of their surroundings and this helps them connect and organize their collective effort. But when th
12h
Tarantulas: How 120-million-year-old creatures conquered the globe
Scary-looking tarantulas actually prefer to keep to themselves and stay in their burrows. Their sedentary nature makes a puzzle of their presence in so many places around the world. Researchers discover that this is because they've been around a very long time and rode drifting continental land masses to their contemporary positions. Whenever a movie script calls for the protagonist to be menaced
12h
Simple robots, smart algorithms
Inspired by a theoretical model of particles moving around on a chessboard, new robot swarm research led by Georgia Tech shows that, as magnetic interactions increase, dispersed "dumb robots" can abruptly gather in large, compact clusters to accomplish complex tasks. Researchers report that these "BOBbots" (behaving, organizing, buzzing bots) are also capable of collectively clearing debris that i
12h
Researchers trace spinal neuron family tree
Spinal cord nerve cells branching through the body resemble trees with limbs fanning out in every direction. But this image can also be used to tell the story of how these neurons, their jobs becoming more specialized over time, arose through developmental and evolutionary history. Researchers have traced the development of spinal cord neurons using genetic signatures and revealed how different su
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