276 articles from MONDAY 22.6.2020

Evidence supports 'hot start' scenario and early ocean formation on Pluto

The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day. This 'hot start' scenario contrasts with the traditional view of Pluto's origins as a ball of frozen ice and rock in which radioactive decay could have eventually generated enough heat to melt the ice and form a subsurface ocean....

Washing away stubborn biofilms using fungal cleaning products

Growing inside pipes and on the surfaces of medical devices, bacterial biofilms cause major headaches for the food processing industry and healthcare professionals alike. Within biofilms, bacteria are protected from chemicals and antibiotics and can be almost impossible to eliminate. But researchers have shown that enzymes produced by yeasts, called biosurfactants, can dissolve stubborn biofilms...

A fresh twist in chiral topology

Electrons in ''chiral crystals'', solid-state materials with definite ''handedness'', can behave in unexpected ways. An interdisciplinary team has realized now a theoretically predicted peculiar electronic state in a chiral compound, PtGa, from the class of topological materials. The study allows a fundamental understanding of the electronic properties of this novel semimetal.

Ice core research in Antarctica sheds new light on role of sea ice in carbon balance

New research findings underline the crucial role that sea ice throughout the Southern Ocean played for atmospheric CO2 in times of rapid climate change in the past. An international team has shown that the seasonal growth and destruction of sea ice in a warming world increases the biological productivity of the seas around Antarctica by extracting carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the...

Parallel evolution in three-spined sticklebacks

A group of researchers used novel and powerful methods to disentangle the patterns of parallel evolution of freshwater three-spined sticklebacks at different geographic scales across their distribution range. The group concludes that the conditions under which striking genome-wide patterns of genetic parallelism can occur may in fact be far from common - perhaps even exceptional.

New research deepens mystery of particle generation in proton collisions

A group of researchers including scientists from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, University of Tokyo, Nagoya University, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) used the spin-polarized Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States to show that, in polarized proton-proton collisions, neutral pions emitted in the very forward area of...

Red Sea climate forecasts: Handle with care

"Extrapolating future climate trends from historical data is more challenging for enclosed seas than it is for open oceans and should be done with extreme caution," according to KAUST ocean modeling expert Ibrahim Hoteit. The finding follows detailed data reanalyses and computer simulations on wind and wave conditions over the Red Sea.

A new symmetry-broken parent state discovered in twisted bilayer graphene

In 2018 it was discovered that two layers of graphene twisted one with respect to the other by a "magic" angle show a variety of interesting quantum phases, including superconductivity, magnetism and insulating behaviors. Now, a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Prof. Shahal Ilani of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, in collaboration with Prof. Pablo...

Click... Resistant bacteria caught in the act

As humanity fights against the coronavirus, the battle against antibiotic-resistant bacteria continues. Scientists at UCLouvain have succeeded in capturing unique images of protein soldiers that help bacteria resist drugs. This discovery is published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology. The image recordings will make it possible to develop new attacks on bacteria and thus...

A Metal-like quantum gas: A pathbreaking platform for quantum simulation

Electronic properties of condensed matter are often determined by an intricate competition between kinetic energy that aims to overlap and delocalize electronic wave functions across the crystal lattice, and localizing electron-electron interactions. In contrast, the gaseous phase is characterized by valence electrons tightly localized around the ionic atom cores in discrete quantum states with...

Extremely low thermal conductivity in 1-D soft chain structure

Researchers have reported a new type of simple one-dimensional (1-D) crystal structured bismuth selenohalides (BiSeX, X = Br, I) with extremely low thermal conductivity. Investigations on crystal structure reveal that the ultralow thermal conductivity is due to the weakened chemical bonding in the low-dimensional structure, showing a quasi-0-D crystal structure. These findings provide a novel...

Future space travelers may follow cosmic lighthouses

For centuries, lighthouses helped sailors navigate safely into harbor. Their lights swept across the water, cutting through fog and darkness, guiding mariners around dangerous obstacles and keeping them on the right path. In the future, space explorers may receive similar guidance from the steady signals created by pulsars.

Super-resolution microscopy reveals a twist inside of cells

If you want to understand the underlying mechanisms of cellular motility and division, then the centriole is the organelle of interest. Each cell has a pair of centrioles which help to segregate chromosomes during cell division. These special organelles are multi-molecular machines composed of hundreds of proteins and have a hidden code of post-translational modifications (PTMs), that contribute...

Pioneering research reveals certain human genes relate to gut bacteria

The role genetics and gut bacteria play in human health has long been a fruitful source of scientific enquiry, but new research marks a significant step forward in unraveling this complex relationship. Its findings could transform our understanding and treatment of all manner of common diseases, including obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, and Alzheimer's disease.

Asian-Americans are using Slack groups to explain racism to their parents

Jess Fong was feeling restless. Black Lives Matter protests stemming from the death of George Floyd were spreading, and she wanted to help. So she started scrolling through the plethora of lists that appeared online in the days after Floyd’s death of resources on how to fight racism. She found the advice limiting, particularly for the Asian-American community. “We’re not Black and we’re...

The pandemic is not over – we need to push now for a zero-coronavirus Britain | Devi Sridhar

The summer gives us a chance to eliminate the virus and reopen the economy without pointless debates about 1 or 2 metre distancing measuresCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageAs we see the return of the sunshine this week, and as the number of confirmed cases and deaths in the UK continues to fall, it can feel as if the worst of the pandemic is over.Far from relaxing, the...

Cloud and complexity in IT

It’s an old story by now—cloud is the computing of the future. What has become evident in recent years, however, is cloud has established itself as the computing of the present—and the agile IT architecture it has enabled is critical to any organization’s efforts to increase efficiency and business resilience. In other words, transitioning IT capabilities to the cloud is seen as a (if not...