108 articles from MONDAY 30.12.2019

Pharmacies Don’t Know How to Dispose of Leftover Opioids and Antibiotics

Today (Dec. 30), a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., published the results of an investigation into whether or not pharmacy workers could provide accurate information on the disposal of two classes of drugs: opioids and antibiotics. The results are frightening: The researchers enlisted volunteers...

Life could have emerged from lakes with high phosphorus

Life as we know it requires phosphorus, and lots of it. But phosphorus is scarce. A new study reports that certain types of carbonate-rich lakes, which could have formed on early Earth, have the right chemistry to keep phosphorous levels high and available to organisms.

The experimental demonstration of a spin quantum heat engine

The theoretical notion of a 'quantum heat engine' has been around for several decades. It was first introduced around sixty years ago by Scovil and Schulz-DuBois, two physicists at Bell Labs who drew an analogy between three-level masers and thermal machines.

The mysterious case of the ornamented coot chicks has a surprising explanation

The American coot is a somewhat drab water bird with gray and black feathers and a white beak, common in wetlands throughout North America. Coot chicks, however, sport outrageously bright orange and red feathers, skin, and beaks. A new study explains how the bright coloring of coot chicks fits in with the reproductive strategy of their less colorful parents.

Life could have emerged from lakes with high phosphorus

Life as we know it requires phosphorus. It's one of the six main chemical elements of life, it forms the backbone of DNA and RNA molecules, acts as the main currency for energy in all cells and anchors the lipids that separate cells from their surrounding environment.

Year in Science: Revisit a black hole and other sights that weren’t seen before 2019

What will people remember about the year 2019 in the year 3019? Just as they're likely to recall 1969 as the year humans first walked on the moon, they might well hold up the first portrait of a black hole as this year's most memorable achievement. By that measure, there's little question that the Event Horizon Telescope's radio view of M87's supermassive black hole, 55 million...

Mars Helicopter is Ready for Extraterrestrial Flight

This blog post originated in the 2018 Science Mission Directorate Science and Technology Report. PROJECT Mars Helicopter KEY POINTS The Mars Helicopter is a technology demonstration for the Mars 2020 rover mission, intended to show the feasibility and utility of using helicopters for Mars exploration. This technology may enable future missions to perform reconnaissance or independent...

First study to compare citrus varieties with combination of metabolomics and microbiome

Citrus greening disease, or Huanglongbing (HLB), is deadly, incurable, and the most significant threat to the citrus industry. Most HLB research focuses on the tree canopy, but scientists in California studied the impact of HLB on root systems. They recently published the first study to report on the response of two different varieties of citrus to the causal bacterium, 'Candidatus Liberibacter...

New study investigates properties of the Melotte 105 cluster

A new study recently conducted by astronomers has investigated the Melotte 105 open cluster with the aim on uncovering its fundamental properties. The research, presented in a paper published December 18 on arXiv.org, provides more accurate measurements of the cluster's distance, age and metallicity.

Scientists have developed a new concept of mathematical modeling

A team of scientists from the Research Center "Fundamental Problems of Thermophysics and Mechanics," of Samara Polytech is engaged in the construction of new mathematical models and the search for methods for their study in relation to a wide range of local nonequilibrium transport processes in various physical systems. An innovative approach developed not so long ago is based on a modern version...

Asia's hardest year for dengue fever – in pictures

More than a million cases were reported in south-east Asia last year with poorer households most at riskThe global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only...

How cells learn to 'count'

One of the wonders of cell biology is its symmetry. Mammalian cells have one nucleus and one cell membrane, and most humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Trillions of mammalian cells achieve this uniformity—but some consistently break this mold to fulfill unique functions. Now, a team of Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have found how these outliers take shape.

North Atlantic Current may cease temporarily in the next century

The North Atlantic Current transports warm water from the Gulf of Mexico towards Europe, providing much of north-western Europe with a relatively mild climate. However, scientists suspect that meltwater from Greenland and excessive rainfall could interfere with this ocean current. Simulations by scientists from the University of Groningen and Utrecht University showed that it is unlikely that the...

How bacteria control their cell cycle

Researchers at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel have demonstrated how bacteria coordinate cell division with the replication of their genetic material. In an interdisciplinary study they explain why the current concept of the bacterial cell cycle has to be rewritten. The results were published in eLife.

Harnessing hot carriers for high efficiency solar cells

Two-dimensional solar materials may offer a way to extract more energy from sunlight. By tuning the structure of a 2-D perovskite solar material, researchers from KAUST and the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown they can prolong the lifetime of highly energetic hot carriers generated by light striking the material. The approach could offer a way to capture solar energy more efficiently.

Strategies to generate larger pores in metal-organic frameworks

Due to the advantages such as large specific surface area, adjustable pore size and tunable functionality, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown great application potential in the fields of gas adsorption and separation, catalysis, sensing and biomedicine. However, most metal-organic frameworks have pore sizes below 2 nm and are typical microporous structures, which limits pore structure and...

The growing Tibetan Plateau shaped modern biodiversity

Holding particular biological resources, the Tibetan Plateau is a unique geologic-geographic-biotic interactive unit and hence plays an important role in the global biodiversity domain. The Tibetan Plateau has undergone vigorous environmental changes since the Cenozoic, and played roles as switching from "a paradise of tropical animals and plants" to "the cradle of Ice Age mammalian fauna."

Replacing one gas with another helps efficiently extract methane from permafrost

Scientists from Skoltech and Heriot-Watt University proposed extracting methane by injecting flue gas into permafrost hydrate reservoirs. Since the flue gas contains carbon dioxide, the new technology will also contributes to reduction of this green house gas in the Arctic atmosphere. The results of their study were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Learning from the bears

Grizzly bears spend many months in hibernation, but their muscles do not suffer from the lack of movement. In the journal Scientific Reports, a team led by Michael Gotthardt reports on how they manage to do this. The grizzly bears' strategy could help prevent muscle atrophy in humans as well.

Correlation between the level of happiness and the Arab Spring

Researchers from HSE University have shown that the 2010 happiness level of citizens from Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and other Arab countries could provide a much more accurate forecast of the Arab Spring events than purely economic indices, such as GDP per capita and unemployment rate.

Long-dormant disease becomes most dominant foliar disease in New York onion crops

New York is the fifth largest producer of onion bulbs in the United States, producing over 110,000 metric tons from over 2,800 hectares. Most of these onions are grown on high organic matter soils, where foliar disease management is crucial to productivity and profitability. These foliar diseases include Botrytis leaf blight, purple blotch, downy mildew, and Stemphylium leaf blight.