- BBC Science/Nature
- 20/11/30 23:33
Destruction of the rainforest increased by 9.5% compared to the previous 12 months, new data shows.
6,373 articles from NOVEMBER 2020
Destruction of the rainforest increased by 9.5% compared to the previous 12 months, new data shows.
Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have investigated more than 1000 planetary systems orbiting stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and have discovered a series of connections between planetary orbits, number of planets, occurrence and the distance to their stars. It turns out that our own solar system in some ways is very rare, and in others very ordinary.
The COVID-19 pandemic could result in net losses from $3.2 trillion and up to $4.8 trillion in U.S. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the course of two years, a new USC study finds.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, but when emitted into the atmosphere it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, seafloor methane contained in frozen formations along the continental margins may equal or exceed the total amount of coal, oil, and gas in all other reservoirs worldwide. Yet, the way...
Magnets often harbor hidden beauty. Take a simple fridge magnet: Somewhat counterintuitively, it is 'sticky' on one side but not the other. The secret lies in the way the magnetisation is arranged in a well-defined pattern within the material. More intricate magnetization textures are at the heart of many modern technologies, such as hard disk drives. Now, an international team of scientists at...
Research findings by a KAIST team provide insight into the complex mechanism of cellular senescence and present a potential therapeutic strategy for reducing age-related diseases associated with the accumulation of senescent cells.
Researchers created a new astronomical instrument that has successfully aided in estimating the abundance of metals in the early universe. The WINERED instrument allows for better observations of astronomical bodies like quasars in the early universe, billions of years ago. Researchers hope this deeper level of exploration could help answer questions about the origins not only of metals in the...
To develop effective therapeutics against pathogens, scientists need to first uncover how they attack host cells. An efficient way to conduct these investigations on an extensive scale is through high-speed screening tests called assays.
Portland State University researchers and their collaborators at the Quinault Indian Nation and Oregon State University found microplastics in Pacific razor clams on Washington's sparsely populated Olympic Coast—proof, they say, that even in more remote regions, coastal organisms can't escape plastic contamination.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Monday the first steps in a multi-year strategy to build a Canada-wide child care system to cut costs for families and encourage more women with kids to join the workforce. She also unveiled a plan to levy a digital sales tax to raise revenue for the cash-strapped federal...
As a complement to silicon-based photonic chips, lithium niobate thin film (LNOI) has become a research hotspot in the field of optoelectronic integration due to its outstanding nonlinear, electro-optic, acousto-optic, piezoelectric and other physical properties. On-chip integrated frequency multipliers, modulators, and filters based on lithium niobate thin films have been developed, but the...
Scientists examining the effects of a megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest say tall buildings across Metro Vancouver will experience greater shaking than currently accounted for by Canada's national seismic hazard model.
As covid-19 cases spiral out of control in the US, states are scrambling to fight the virus with an increasingly stretched arsenal. Many of them have the same weapons at their disposal: restrictions on public gatherings and enforcement of mask wearing, plus testing, tracing, and exposure notifications. But while many states struggle to get their systems to work together, Guam—a tiny US...
Octopuses have the most flexible appendages known in nature, according to a new study in Scientific Reports. In addition to being soft and strong, each of the animal's eight arms can bend, twist, elongate and shorten in many combinations to produce diverse movements. But to what extent can they do so, and is each arm equally capable? Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) filmed 10...
Early populations shifted from quasi-egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies to communities governed by a centralized authority in the middle to late Holocene, but how the transition occurred still puzzles anthropologists. A University of Maine-led group of researchers contend that population size and density served as crucial drivers.
The alarming rate at which COVID-19 has killed Black Americans has highlighted the deeply embedded racial disparities in the U.S. health care system.
Researchers from the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) working with Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) have located the 'sweet spot' for positioning qubits in silicon to scale up atom-based quantum processors.
Scientists use powerful new instrument in outback WA to map three million galaxies in 300 hours, unlocking deepest secrets of the universe A powerful new telescope developed by Australian scientists has mapped three million galaxies in record speed, unlocking the universe’s deepest secrets.The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (Askap) broke records as it conducted its first survey of...
To develop effective therapeutics against pathogens, scientists need to first uncover how they attack host cells. An efficient way to conduct these investigations on an extensive scale is through high-speed screening tests called assays.
A group of researchers developed Power Theory, a model emphasizing the role of demography in political centralization, and applied it to the shift in power dynamics in prehistoric northern coastal societies in Peru. To test the theory, the team created a summed probability distribution (SPD) from 755 radiocarbon dates from 10,000-1,000 B.P. Researchers found a correlation between the tenets of...
A study has solved the mystery of how and why columns of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, can stream out of solid sea-floor formations known as methane hydrates.
Portal origin URL: Solar Superstorms of the Past Help NASA Scientists Understand Risks for SatellitesPortal origin nid: 466575Published: Monday, November 30, 2020 - 15:49Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: NASA scientists investigated how extreme solar superstorms could endanger low-Earth orbit satellites.Portal image: A image colored in red shows a...
Music educator Martin J. Bergee thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might have influenced previous ones—race, income, education, etc.—he could disprove the notion of a link between students' musical and mathematical achievement.
Human activity endangers coral health around the world. A new algal threat is taking advantage of coral's already precarious situation in the Caribbean and making it even harder for reef ecosystems to grow.
An experimental vaccine developed in Europe to prevent infection by Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) has protected cynomolgus macaques in a new collaborative study from National Institutes of Health scientists. The animals received the DNA-based candidate vaccine through intramuscular injection immediately followed by electroporation—a process in development for human vaccines that...
Most of the money for protecting and conserving wildlife and habitat comes from government programs, philanthropic organizations, or the public. But conserving Earth's ecosystems and species requires hundreds of billions dollars more than what is currently spent. Fortunately, there might be another way. A new report called Innovative Finance for Conservation: Roles for Ecologists and...
Swansea University research has provided a new insight into the behavior of nature's own UV sunscreens when they are exposed to other parts of the light spectrum.
A music educator thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might have influenced previous ones - race, income, education, etc. -- he could disprove the notion of a link between students' musical and mathematical achievement. Nope. His new study showed statistically significant associations between the two at both the individual and the school-district levels.
A study conducted in the southern Great Barrier Reef reveals the chemical diversity of emissions from healthy corals. The researchers found that across the reef-building coral species studied on Heron Island, the abundance and chemical diversity of their gas emissions fell significantly during heat stress experiments. With the increasing frequency of heat stress events, understanding coral...
Results of a new five-year study of recycled concrete show that it performs as well, and in several cases even better, than conventional concrete. Researchers conducted side-by-side comparisons of recycled and conventional concrete within two common applications -- a building foundation and a municipal sidewalk. They found that the recycled concrete had comparable strength and durability after...
Researchers report that low-income Black households experienced greater job loss, more food and medicine insecurity, and higher indebtedness in the early months of COVID-19 compared to white or Latinx low-income households.
Octopuses have the most flexible appendages known in nature, according to a new study. In addition to being soft and strong, each of the animal's eight arms can bend, twist, elongate and shorten in many combinations to produce diverse movements. Researchers filmed 10 octopuses over many months while presenting them with a variety of challenges, and recorded 16,563 examples of these arm movements.
When humans have low iron levels, they tend to feel weak, fatigued and dizzy. This fatigue prevents patients with iron-deficient anemia from exercising or exerting themselves in order to conserve energy.
Bees and humans are about as different organisms as one can imagine. Yet despite their many differences, surprising similarities in the ways that they interact socially have begun to be recognized in the last few years. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, building on their earlier studies, have experimentally measured the social networks of honey bees and how...
Human fingerprints have a self-regulating moisture mechanism that not only helps us to avoid dropping our smartphone, but could help scientists to develop better prosthetic limbs, robotic equipment and virtual reality environments, a new study reveals.
Hydrothermally-active submarine volcanoes account for much of Earth's volcanism and are mineral-rich biological hotspots, yet very little is known about the dynamics of microbial diversity in these systems. This week in PNAS, Reysenbach and colleagues, show that at one such volcano, Brothers submarine arc volcano, NE of New Zealand, the geological history and subsurface hydrothermal fluid paths...
The moon’s Ocean of Storms was once a busy place. Back in 1967, the U.S. successfully landed its Surveyor 3 spacecraft in the vast plain in the northern lunar hemisphere; little more than two years later, the Apollo 12 crew returned, touching down within 200 meters (656 ft.) of the Surveyor and collecting more than 34 kg (75 lbs.) of lunar rock and soil to bring back to Earth. But things...
In a major scientific advance, the latest version of DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold has been recognized as a solution to the 50-year-old grand challenge of protein structure prediction, often referred to as the 'protein folding problem', according to a rigorous independent assessment. This breakthrough could significantly accelerate biological research over the long term, unlocking new...
You might not normally think about what corals smell like—or how the smell changes during heat stress. However, that is what researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the University of Sydney and Southern Cross University set out to investigate on the Great Barrier Reef.
Police won't be opening a major investigation into the disappearance of a mysterious silver-colored monolith that generated international attention and a mess when curious visitors made their way to the site of the discovery in the Utah desert.
Scientists, lawyers, investors and economists explore how privately financed conservation projects can generate both financial returns and positive conservation outcomes.
A new survey of 1400 participants from 65 countries has found esports players are up to 21 per cent healthier weight than the general population, hardly smoke and also drink less.
Researchers have made reported some exciting findings relating to metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of porous materials, which could benefit a wide range of important gas separation processes.
Plastics in the ocean can release chemicals that cause deformities in sea urchin larvae, new research shows.
Smell loss is a prominent symptom of Covid-19 and the pandemic is leaving many people with long-term smell loss or smell distortions such as parosmia. Parosmia happens when people experience strange and often unpleasant smell distortions. Instead of smelling lemon you may smell petrol. New research shows that parosmia is associated with a recovery of smell performance among patients who undergo...
Researchers have studied the mechanisms by which the novel coronavirus can reach the brains of patients with COVID-19. The results show that SARS-CoV-2 enters the brain via nerve cells in the olfactory mucosa.
A mass screening program of 10 million Wuhan residents identified 300 asymptomatic cases in May, but none were infectious, according to a new study. Researchers found no 'viable' virus in the asymptomatic cases and the close contacts of these positive asymptomatic cases did not test positive. But these findings do not show that the virus can't be passed on by asymptomatic carriers. Rather,...
Researchers have discovered a molecular mechanism that plays a central role in intact long-term memory. This mechanism is also involved in physiological memory loss in old age.
New research shows how conservation polices can avoid having unintended consequences for local ecosystems and people. The research shows that the PNMS policies which restrict industrial offshore fishing could drive up offshore fish prices and, in turn, increase tourists' consumption of reef fish.