264 articles from MONDAY 16.12.2019

How mysterious circular DNA causes cancer in children

Why do children develop cancer? An international team of researchers, led by Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, now reveal that mysterious rings of DNA known as extrachromosomal circular DNA can contribute to cancer development in children. Producing the first detailed map of circular DNA, the scientists have shed new unanticipated...

Visual neurons don't work the way scientists thought

A new survey of the activity of nearly 60,000 neurons in the mouse visual system reveals how far we have to go to understand how the brain computes. The analysis reveals that more than 90% of neurons in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that process our visual world, don't work the way scientists thought -- and it's not yet clear how they do work.

Birds' seasonal migrations shift earlier as climate changes

In what the authors believe is one of the first studies to examine climate change impact on the timing of bird migration on a continental scale, researchers report that spring migrants were likely to pass certain stops earlier now than they would have 20 years ago. Also, temperature and migration timing were closely aligned, with the greatest changes in migration timing occurring in the regions...

Home hospital reduces costs, improves care

The results of the investigators' randomized controlled trial with more patients strengthens the evidence, showing that home hospital care reduced cost, utilization, and readmissions while increasing physical activity compared with usual hospital care.

How we transport water in our bodies inspires new water filtration method

A multidisciplinary group of engineers and scientists has discovered a new method for water filtration that could have implications for a variety of technologies, such as desalination plants, breathable and protective fabrics, and carbon capture in gas separations. The research team, led by Manish Kumar in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, published their...

Dozens potentially exposed to toxic mercury in Houston spill

Dozens of people in Houston potentially were exposed to the toxic metal mercury after it was spilled outside a Walmart, a Sonic Drive-In and a gas station, officials said. Federal and local investigators were trying to determine if the spills were intentional. Fire Chief Sam Pena said up to 60 people were asked to take decontamination showers and a pregnant woman was taken to a hospital as a...

Underwater pile driving noise causes alarm responses in squid

Exposure to underwater pile driving noise, which can be associated with the construction of docks, piers, and offshore wind farms, causes squid to exhibit strong alarm behaviors, according to a study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published Dec. 16, 2019, in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Suomi NPP satellite views New South Wales fires raging on

NOAA-NASA's Suomi NPP satellite flew over the New South Wales fires in Australia on December 16, 2019 and found devastation from the ongoing fires. The New South Wales Rural Fire Service is reporting 96 fires are burning and to date the size of the area burned is 1.5 times the size of the state of Connecticut (approximately 5.3 million acres of land). These fires are largely the result of an...

With Second Warmest November, 2019 is Likely to Be Second Warmest Year Ever Recorded

Greta Thunberg might have been been named TIME’s Person of the Year for drawing global attention to climate change, but the climate continues to speak for itself. Last month was the second-hottest November in recorded history, and 2019 is likely to be the second warmest year ever. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month was 1.66...

New methods promise to speed up development of new plant varieties

A University of Minnesota research team recently developed new methods that will make it significantly faster to produce gene-edited plants. They hope to alleviate a long-standing bottleneck in gene editing and, in the process, make it easier and faster to develop and test new crop varieties with two new approaches described in a paper recently published in Nature Biotechnology.