231 articles from MONDAY 6.7.2020

How does Earth sustain its magnetic field?

Life as we know it could not exist without Earth's magnetic field and its ability to deflect dangerous ionizing particles. It is continuously generated by the motion of liquid iron in Earth's outer core, a phenomenon called the geodynamo. Despite its fundamental importance, many questions remain unanswered about the geodynamo's origin. New work examines how the presence of lighter elements in the...

Biological factories: How do bacteria build up natural products?

The active agents of many drugs are natural products, so called because often only microorganisms are able to produce the complex structures. Similar to the production line in a factory, large enzyme complexes put these active agent molecules together. Biologists have now succeeded in investigating the basic mechanisms of one of these molecular factories.

Consumers prefer round numbers even when the specific number is better news

Consider this scenario: A vaccine for the novel coronavirus has been developed that is 91.27% effective. If public health officials present this information using the specific number, people are likely to think the vaccine is actually less effective than if it is presented as being 90% effective. This concept is a real-life application of recent findings from Gaurav Jain, an assistant professor of...

The 1066 diet: Normans passed on their love of pork, study suggests

Pork and possibly chicken became more popular in England after arrival of William the ConquerorThe Norman conquest led to far-reaching and long-lasting political change across England – and new research suggests it also led to the English eating more pork and chicken.Before 1066, beef, lamb, mutton and goat were among the meats most likely to be served in England, but a study of human and animal...

Coronavirus: India's big city outbreaks lead to record rise in cases

Country has third highest number of cases in world after 25,000 new infections recorded a dayCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageIndia has overtaken Russia to claim the third highest number of coronavirus cases in the world after recording almost 25,000 new infections a day, mainly clustered in the megacities of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.The total number of cases of...

Register for our Panel on Broadening Participation in Citizen Science

Citizen science projects have demonstrated promise for engaging new audiences in the practice of science. Sometimes this is accomplished by engaging new audiences in existing investigations, sometimes by developing new investigations based on questions arising from communities typically underrepresented in science. This panel will showcase projects that have made an effort to engage those...

Beyond the AI hype cycle: Trust and the future of AI

There’s no shortage of promises when it comes to AI. Some say it will solve all problems while others warn it will bring about the end of the world as we know it. Both positions regularly play out in Hollywood plotlines like Westworld, Carbon Black, Minority Report, Her, and Ex Machina. Those stories are compelling because they require us as creators and consumers of AI technology to decide...

Coronavirus: world treating symptoms, not cause of pandemics, says UN

Ongoing destruction of nature will result in stream of animal diseases jumping to humans, says report Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe world is treating the health and economic symptoms of the coronavirus pandemic but not the environmental cause, according to the authors of a UN report. As a result, a steady stream of diseases can be expected to jump from animals...

Dick Jefferies obituary

My friend Dick Jefferies, who has died aged 88, was an authority on fossils that are too strange to identify and which are sometimes referred to as “problematica”. Central to his work, which he pursued as principal scientific officer in the natural history section of the British Museum, were extinct animals called carpoids.Dick was something of a contrarian in the field of evolutionary...

Heatwave trends accelerate worldwide

The first comprehensive worldwide assessment of heatwaves down to regional levels has revealed that in nearly every part of the world heatwaves have been increasing in frequency and duration since the 1950's. The research has also produced a new metric, cumulative heat, which reveals exactly how much heat is packed into individual heatwaves and heatwave seasons. As expected, that number is also on...

Order from noise: How randomness and collective dynamics define a stem cell

Without stem cells, human life would not exist. Due to them, a lump of cells becomes an organ, and a fertilized egg develops into a baby. But what actually makes a stem cell? Are these a stable population of specially gifted cells? Scientists discovered that instead, stem cells might emerge due to the collective behavior of cells within the organs.

Epigenetics: What the embryo can teach us about cell reprogramming

Cell reprogramming provides an outstanding opportunity for the artificial generation of stem cells for regenerative medicine approaches in the clinic. As current cell reprogramming methods are low in efficiency, researchers around the globe aim to learn lessons from the early embryo which might lead them to a more efficient and faster generation of high-quality, fully reprogrammed stem cells.