177 articles from FRIDAY 31.7.2020

Study examines stay-at-home worker productivity potential

Working from home has become part of the so-called "new normal" for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there has been a move underway towards increased telecommuting for many years. Writing in the Global Business and Economics Review a research team from Portugal has set out to explore the potential of telecommuting in terms of productivity and quality of life gains, cost savings...

Ocean research in a time of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it especially challenging for marine scientists to make observations and carry out experiments at sea. Research cruises have been cut back or canceled because it is difficult to keep a safe distance between scientists and crew in the tight spaces on a research vessel. In this current situation, MBARI's robotic vehicles and instruments have proven to be very useful.

3-D nanometer-thin membrane borrows from biology

Mimicking the structure of the kidney, a team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have created a three-dimensional nanometer (nm)-thin membrane that breaks the permeance-selectivity trade-off of artificial membranes.

We urgently need new tools to measure economic recovery after coronavirus

Economies across the world are on course to face the worst fall in GDP figures since 2008. In the UK, GDP fell by 10.4% in the first three months of 2020, and a whopping 20.4% in the month of April, the largest fall since records began in 1997. The Bank of England predicts that GDP will fall by 14% this year, probably more. The IMF has revised downward its forecast for global economic growth from...

Boris Johnson postpones latest coronavirus lockdown easing in England

Reversing decision to relax controls on Saturday, PM says it is time to ‘squeeze brake pedal’ UK coronavirus news – live updates Covid-19 around the world – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageBoris Johnson has reversed a decision to relax a range of lockdown restrictions due to come into force in England on Saturday, which would have included the reopening of leisure businesses...

Study shows devastating cost of failure to coordinate economic reopenings

New, peer-reviewed research published today by the Social Analytics Lab at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the devastating cost of the current chaotic and uncoordinated reopening of states and cities across the US. The study, which used data from mobile phones, network connections through social media and census...

How to improve climate modeling and prediction

We are changing the Earth system at a unprecedented speed without knowing the consequences in detail. Increasingly detailed, physics-based models are improving steadily, but an in-depth understanding of persisting uncertainties is still lacking. The two main challenges have been to obtain the necessary amount of detail in the models and to accurately predict how anthropogenic carbon dioxide...

The northern lockdown represents government failure on a massive scale | Devi Sridhar

Had Britain devised clear, tough outbreak control measures, the latest Covid-19 restrictions wouldn’t have been necessaryCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageMore than 4 million people in the north of England woke up on Friday morning to the news that coronavirus restrictions were being reimposed. This follows the local lockdown in Leicester. Such measures are entirely...

Cell competition in the thymus is crucial in a healthy organism

T lymphocyte cells develop in the thymus. They are essential for fighting infections and preventing cancer. The thymus is located just above the heart. It is large in children and gradually reduces in size with age. In the thymus, T lymphocytes develop from progenitor cells, which originate in the bone marrow and travel to the thymus through the bloodstream. This is a continuous process in which...

Nano-sponges of solid acid transform carbon dioxide to fuel and plastic waste to chemicals

The primary cause of climate change is atmospheric CO2, and levels are rising every day. There is, therefore, a great need to find ways to reduce CO2 levels. On other hand, an excessive amount of plastic waste has become a serious environmental problem. In this work, published in Nature Communications, researchers dealt with both problems at one stroke, by developing nano solid acids that...

Reduced coral reef fish biodiversity under temperatures that mirror climate predictions

As global warming continues to escalate, there are lasting implications to consider, including the changes to biological communities in vital habitats such as coral reefs. A team of researchers, led by Simon Brandl (currently at the Center de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l'Environnement, CRIOBE, France) and Jacob Johansen, an assistant research professor at Hawai'i Institute of Marine...

North Atlantic climate far more predictable following major scientific breakthrough

A team of scientists led by UK Met Office has achieved a scientific breakthrough allowing the longer-term prediction of North Atlantic pressure patterns, the key driving force behind winter weather in Europe and eastern North America. CMCC scientists Panos Athanasiadis, Alessio Bellucci, Dario Nicolì and Paolo Ruggieri from CSP—Climate Simulation and Prediction Division were also involved in...

Beat the heat with a walrus retreat

Much of western Europe was sweltering in a heatwave on Friday, but visitors to one Belgian safari park could at least seek shelter in an igloo with a cool view.

The problems AI has today go back centuries

In March of 2015, protests broke out at the University of Cape Town in South Africa over the campus statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, a mining magnate who had gifted the land on which the university was built, had committed genocide against Africans and laid the foundations for apartheid. Under the rallying banner of “Rhodes Must Fall,” students demanded that the statue be...

Nasa launches Perseverance rover in mission to find evidence of life on Mars – video

Nasa has successfully launched its next-generation Perseverance rover on a seven-month journey to Mars in search of evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. The car-sized robot will attempt to land on the Jezero crater – which may have been a lake more than 3.5bn years ago – where it will gather information about Mars’s geology, atmosphere and environmental...