389 articles from THURSDAY 23.7.2020

China launches unnamed Mars probe – video

China launched an unmanned probe on 23 July to Mars in its first independent mission to visit another planet.China's largest carrier rocket blasted off with the probe at Wenchang Space Launch Centre in the southern island province of Hainan and is expected to reach Mars in February 2021.The Mars-launching season occurs every 26 months when Earth and Mars are at their closest;...

Bee disease spreading via flowers

One in 11 flowers carries disease-causing parasites known to contribute to bee declines, according to a new study that identifies how flowers act as hubs for transmitting diseases to bees and other pollinators.

Preventing the next pandemic

A new article shows that an annual investment of $30 billion should be enough to offset the costs of preventing another global pandemic such as COVID-19.

Young dolphins pick their friends wisely

Strategic networking is key to career success, and not just for humans. A study of bottlenose dolphins reveals that in early life, dolphins devote more time to building connections that could give them an edge later on. Analyzing nearly 30 years of records for some 1700 dolphins in Australia, researchers find that dolphins under age 10 seek out peers and activities that could help them forge bonds...

Boats and ships leave baby reef fish vulnerable to predators

Juvenile fishes have one of the highest mortality rates compared to other life stages. Within two days of settling into a reef almost 60 percent are consumed by predators. Our recent study found noisy boats and ships can also affect the prey response of these young fishes.

Spacewatch: Nasa delays James Webb space telescope to October 2021

Delay is result of coronavirus pandemic and technical challenges as troubled project is set to cost £6.8bnNasa has announced that the often delayed James Webb space telescope (JWST) is to be delayed once more. Instead of a launch on 30 March 2021, the mission has now slipped to 31 October 2021.The seven-month delay is the result of impacts from the coronavirus pandemic, as well as technical...

Researchers develop a method for predicting unprecedented events

A black swan event is a highly unlikely but massively consequential incident, such as the 2008 global recession and the loss of one-third of the world's saiga antelope in a matter of days in 2015. Challenging the quintessentially unpredictable nature of black swan events, bioengineers at Stanford University are suggesting a method for forecasting these supposedly unforeseeable fluctuations.

Silicon core fishbone waveguide extends frequency comb

Frequency combs are becoming one of the great enabling technologies of the 21st century. High-precision atomic clocks, and high-precision spectroscopy are just two technologies that have benefited from the development of highly precise frequency combs. However, the original frequency comb sources required a room full of equipment. And it turns out that if you suggest that a room full of delicate...

Hubble Space Telescope captures summertime on Saturn

Saturn is truly the lord of the rings in this latest snapshot from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, taken on July 4, 2020, when the opulent giant world was 839 million miles from Earth. This new Saturn image was taken during summer in the planet's northern hemisphere.

U.S. Congress approves conservation bill

Congress has passed sweeping legislation allocating $900 million a year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), and an additional $9.5 billion over five years to address an urgent backlog of maintenance projects at the nation's parks and other public lands.

Near-field light research advances particle manipulation, high resolution microscopy, and more

There are many types of light—some visible and some invisible to the human eye. For example, our eyes and brain don't have the tools to process ultraviolet light when it hits our eyes, making it invisible. But there is another type of light that is invisible simply because it never reaches our eyes. When light hits certain surfaces, part of it sticks and remains behind rather than being...

New CRISPR DNA base editor expands the landscape of precision genome editing

New genome-editing technologies developed by researchers in J. Keith Joung's laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have the potential to help understand disease-associated genetic mutations that are based on C-to-G (cytosine to guanine) single base changes. The new base editors are also designed to minimize unintended ("off-target") mutations that could potentially cause...

Highly stable amyloid protein aggregates may help plant seeds last longer

Highly stable polymeric "amyloid" proteins, best known for their role in Alzheimer's disease, have been mostly studied in animals. But a new study on the garden pea publishing July 23, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, by Anton Nizhnikov of All-Russia Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology (ARRIAM) and colleagues, shows that they also occur in plants, and they may be an...

Teen museum educators increase engagement, learning, in tween visitors

Do you want to get the most out of a museum and encourage your child's interest in STEM? Try interacting with a teenaged museum docent. Research led by investigators from North Carolina State University and the University of Exeter in the U.K. has found that youth docents have an overall positive effect on visitors' experiences, learning and information retention at informal learning sites. The...

Where are arctic mosquitoes most abundant in Greenland and why?

Bzz! It's mosquito season in Greenland. June and July marks the period when Arctic mosquitoes (Aedes nigripes) are in peak abundance, buzzing about the tundra. While Arctic mosquitoes serve as an important food source to other animals, they are notorious for their role as pests to humans and wildlife, including caribou, whose populations can be affected by their attacks. Yet, these mosquitoes...

Learning how to battle harmful algae blooms

Throughout the world's oceans in global nutrient cycles, food chains, and climate, as well as increasingly in human-made industrial processes, a diverse set of planktonic microbes, such as algae, play an integral role. For nearly all of these planktonic microbes, however, little is known about them genetically beyond a few marker sequences, while their morphology, biological interactions,...

Two distinct circuits drive inhibition in the sensory thalamus of the brain

The thalamus is a 'Grand Central Station' for sensory information coming to our brains. Almost every sight, sound, taste and touch travels to our brain's cortex via the thalamus. Researchers now report that the somatosensory part of the thalamic reticular nucleus is divided into two functionally distinct sub-circuits that have their own types of genetically defined neurons that are topographically...

Hubble sees summertime on Saturn

Saturn is truly the lord of the rings in this latest snapshot from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, taken on July 4, 2020, when the opulent giant world was 839 million miles from Earth. A new Saturn image was taken during summer in the planet's northern hemisphere.

Vikings had smallpox and may have helped spread the world's deadliest virus

Scientists have discovered extinct strains of smallpox in the teeth of Viking skeletons - proving for the first time that the killer disease plagued humanity for at least 1400 years. Smallpox spread via infectious droplets, killed around a third of sufferers and left another third permanently scarred or blind. Around 300 million people died from it in the 20th century alone before it was...

New technique to capture carbon dioxide could greatly reduce power plant greenhouse gases

Removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions is ever more urgent to limit the damage from climate change. Chemists have come up with an efficient and less expensive technique for removing CO2 from natural gas plant emissions. The technique could be tweaked for more polluting plants that use coal. The chemists took a magnesium-based metal-organic framework and added a tetraamine that...