270 articles from MONDAY 20.7.2020

Cellular signaling cascade balances information transmission against energy consumption, study says

Cellular signal transmission is not only optimized for precision—it also includes a cost cap. The relationship between information and energy, a concept well established in physics and engineering, is likely to fundamentally shape cellular signaling networks. One of the questions addressed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, headed by biophysicist Victor...

Could mini-Neptunes be irradiated ocean planets?

Many exoplanets known today are 'super-Earths,' with a radius 1.3 times that of Earth, and 'mini-Neptunes,' with 2.4 Earth radii. Mini-Neptunes, which are less dense, were long thought to be gas planets, made up of hydrogen and helium. Now, scientists at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/Cnes) have examined a new possibility, namely that the low density...

Buried GitHub archival storage to last 1,000 years

If civilization ever succumbs to global warming, nuclear annihilation, an unrelenting pandemic or a martian invasion, some future civilization—or alien life form—might well still be able to reconstruct today's computers and compose advanced machine learning algorithms … and perhaps even play a round of Doom while they're at it.

Chinese phase 2 trial finds COVID-19 vaccine is safe and induces an immune response

A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of a recombinant adenovirus type-5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine (Ad5-vectored COVID-19 vaccine) was conducted in China in April 2020 and involved more than 500 people. The primary objective of the study was to evaluate the immune response and safety of the vaccine, and to determine the most suitable dose for a phase 3 trial. Phase 3 trials are needed to confirm...

How governments resist World Heritage 'in Danger' listings

A study published today found national governments repeatedly resisted the placement of 41 UNESCO World Heritage sites—including the Great Barrier Reef—on the World Heritage in Danger list. This resistance is despite the sites being just as threatened, or more threatened, than those already on the in Danger list.

Geoscientists provide data suggesting global climate changes increase river erosion

Scientists have long debated the idea that global climate changes have forced river erosion rates to increase over the past five million years. New field data gleaned from a multi-institution, collaborative study of North America's rugged Yukon River basin, near storied Klondike goldfields, reveal profound increases in river erosion during abrupt global intensification of climate fluctuations...

High-performance large area electrode system developed for artificial photosynthesis

A research team, led by Dr. Hyung-Suk Oh and Dr. Woong Hee Lee of the Clean Energy Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), working in cooperation with the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), announced that they had developed a nano-sized, coral-shaped silver catalyst electrode and large-area, high-efficiency carbon dioxide conversion system, which can be used to...

A coronavirus vaccine would be a triumph, but the worst human impulses threaten its success | Polly Toynbee

The combination of anti-vaxxers on the march and a government with woeful health messaging could be lethal for BritainCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe world has moved a step closer to ending the Covid-19 horror as researchers from Oxford University, among the 200 global teams working on vaccines, published promising results in The Lancet. The UK has already ordered...

Quantum exciton found in magnetic van der Waals material

Things can always be done faster, but can anything beat light? Computing with light instead of electricity is seen as a breakthrough to boost computer speeds. Transistors, the building blocks of data circuits, are required to switch electrical signals into light in order to transmit the information via a fiber-optic cable. Optical computing could potentially save the time and energy used for such...

Neanderthals of the Western Mediterranean did not become extinct because of changes in climate

Homo Neanderthaliensis did not become extinct because of changes in climate. At least, this did not happen to the several Neanderthal groups that lived in the western Mediterranean 42,000 years ago. A research group of the University of Bologna came to this conclusion after a detailed paleoclimatic reconstruction of the last ice age through the analysis of stalagmites sampled from some caves in...

European sea bass absorb virtually no microplastic in their muscle tissue

In a new laboratory study, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) investigated how many microplastic particles would be absorbed in the muscle tissue of young European sea bass after being given feed with extremely high microplastic particle content for a period of four months. At least with regard to this particular food fish, their...

Cheese making relies on milk proteins to form structure

Cheese production relies on coagulation of milk proteins into a gel matrix after addition of rennet. Milk that does not coagulate (NC) under optimal conditions affects the manufacturing process, requiring a longer processing time and lowering the cheese yield, which, in turn, has economic impact. In an article appearing in the Journal of Dairy Science, scientists from Lund University studied the...

Plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells can create jobs, reduce pollution

New research released by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and Resources for the Future (RFF) examines the environmental and job creation benefits of plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. The report authors estimate that a federal program to plug roughly half a million abandoned and so-called "orphaned" oil and gas wells—those where the owner is unknown or...

Ultracold mystery solved: Researchers crack a molecular disappearing act

In a famous parable, three blind men encounter an elephant for the first time. Each touches a part—the trunk, ear, or side—and concludes the creature is a thick snake, fan, or wall. This elephant, said Kang-Kuen Ni, is like the quantum world. Scientists can only explore a cell of this vast, unknown creature at a time. Now, Ni has revealed a few more to explore.