306 articles from WEDNESDAY 7.10.2020

The future of mobile AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to expand to power everything from security and facial recognition software to autonomous vehicles and mobile apps. In “Women leading the future of mobile AI,” a video series sponsored by Qualcomm Technologies, MIT Technology Review CEO Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau explores the latest AI advances on software tools, mobile platforms, and algorithmic...

2 million stillbirths every year, pandemic might worsen toll

The World Health Organization, UNICEF and partners said there are about 2 million stillbirths every year, mostly in the developing world, according to the first-ever global estimates published Thursday. The U.N. health agency said that last year three of every four stillbirths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa or Southern Asia. It defined a stillbirth as a baby born with no signs of life at 28...

Hurricane Delta enters Gulf after lashing Mexico

Hurricane Delta emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and headed toward Louisiana after making landfall just south of the Mexican resort of Cancun, toppling trees and cutting power to residents of the Yucatan peninsula's resort-studded coast.

Boosting chickens' own immune response could curb disease

Broiler chicken producers the world over are all too familiar with coccidiosis, a parasite-borne intestinal disease that stalls growth and winnows flocks. Various approaches, developed over decades, have been used to control coccidiosis, but the disease remains widespread.

First detailed look at how molecular Ferris wheel delivers protons to cellular factories

All cells with nuclei, from yeast to humans, are organized like cities, with a variety of small compartments—organelles—that serve as factories where various types of work are done. Some of those factories, like the ones that break down and recycle molecules, need to continually pump in protons—hydrogen atoms with their electrons stripped off—to maintain the acidic environment they need to...

High-speed photos shine a light on how metals fail

How things deform and break is important for engineers, as it helps them choose and design what materials they're going to use for building things. Researchers at Aalto University and Tampere University have stretched metal alloy samples to their breaking point and filmed it using ultra-fast cameras to study what happens. Their discoveries have the potential to open up a whole new line of research...

The origin of Type Ia supernovae revealed by manganese abundances

A research team at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) consisting of Visiting Scientist Chiaki Kobayashi, Project Researcher at the time Shing-Chi Leung (currently at the California Institute of Technology), and Senior Scientist Ken'ichi Nomoto have used computer simulations to follow the explosion, nuclear reaction, production of elements, and...

Astronomers find evidence planets start to form while infant stars are still growing

Astronomers have found compelling evidence that planets start to form while infant stars are still growing. The high-resolution image obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows a young proto-stellar disk with multiple gaps and rings of dust. This new result, just published in Nature, shows the youngest and most detailed example of dust rings acting as cosmic...

The 2020 Physics Nobel Winners Helped Us Better Understand the Universe’s Most Mysterious Phenomenon

An awful lot of time elapsed between the day Roger Penrose was walking to work in 1964 and the moment his phone rang while he was in the shower on the morning of Oct. 6, 2020. Back then, his walk was interrupted by “some strange feeling of elation,” as he told the Associated Press yesterday, about the moment he had his first glimmers of insight into the equations that would...

Seagrass restoration speeds recovery of ecosystem services

The reintroduction of seagrass into Virginia's coastal bays is one of the great success stories in marine restoration. Now, a long-term monitoring study shows this success extends far beyond a single plant species, rippling out to engender substantial increases in fish and invertebrate abundance, water clarity, and the trapping of pollution-causing carbon and nitrogen.

Well preserved 2,000-year-old brain cells found in Vesuvius victim

Brain of a young man killed in the eruption was found in Herculaneum, ItalyBrain cells have been found in exceptionally preserved form in the remains of a young man killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2,000 years ago, an Italian study has revealed.The preserved neuronal structures in vitrified or frozen form were discovered at the archaeological site of Herculaneum, an ancient Roman...

Trump’s antibody treatment was tested using cells originally derived from an abortion

This week, President Donald Trump extolled the cutting-edge coronavirus treatments he received as “miracles coming down from God.” If that’s true, then God employs cell lines derived from human fetal tissue. The emergency antibody that Trump received last week was developed with the use of a cell line originally derived from abortion tissue, according to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the...

Researchers develop tools to sharpen 3D view of large RNA molecules

Scientists developed a method for generating high resolution 3D images of RNA, overcoming challenges limiting 3D analysis and imaging of RNA to only small molecules and pieces of RNA for the past 50 years. The new method, which expands the scope of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, will enable researchers to understand the shape and structure of RNA molecules and learn how they...

High-speed photos shine a light on how metals fail

How things deform and break is important for engineers, as it helps them choose and design what materials they're going to use for building things. Researchers have stretched metal alloy samples to their breaking point and filmed it using ultra-fast cameras to study what happens. Their discoveries have the potential to open up a whole new line of research in the study of materials deformation.

Boosting chickens' own immune response could curb disease

Broiler chicken producers the world over are all too familiar with coccidiosis, a parasite-borne intestinal disease that stalls growth and winnows flocks. Various approaches, developed over decades, have been used to control coccidiosis, but the disease remains widespread. Recent research supports the use of immunomodulatory and antioxidant feed additives to reduce the effects of coccidiosis.