- BBC Science/Nature
- 20/11/17 23:51
The PM confirms he is bringing the ban forward as he sets out his "green industrial revolution".
312 articles from TUESDAY 17.11.2020
The PM confirms he is bringing the ban forward as he sets out his "green industrial revolution".
Bags are still on sale despite a phasing out in England for amateur usersGrowing plants, both in houses and gardens, has been hugely popular this year, helping to raise spirits during the coronavirus lockdowns. But gardeners and the horticulture industry often use peat compost from peatlands.Peatlands hold vast amounts of carbon that was absorbed by living sphagnum moss. When the moss dies it does...
Killer whales are suspected to be behind the disappearance of great white sharks off Cape Town's coast over the last few years, according to a report published by South Africa's government on Tuesday.
Arianespace said Tuesday that wrong cabling was likely to blame for the failed launch of a rocket that was meant to lift two European satellites into orbit.
The fossil skeletons of two dinosaurs intertwined in what looks like a final death match have been donated to a North Carolina museum.
In its first round of grants, the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund will award $791 million to 16 environmental organizations largely focused on researching and implementing ways to reduce carbon emissions, build green jobs and restore wildlife.
Too much or too little iron in the body can lead to disease but organisms have developed ways to keep iron levels in balance. Ferroportin, the only known iron exporter that releases iron into the blood stream, is a crucial component of iron-balancing mechanisms.
Despite additional costs, increased restrictions, and issues stemming from compliance directives, government-mandated stress tests are effective in strengthening the overall health of the multi-trillion-dollar American banking industry.
When it wants to promote democracy in other countries, the U.S. has several options, ranging from foreign democracy aid and economic sanctions to military intervention. But, what do North Americans think about these different strategies for promoting democracy? What features of authoritarian countries determine their preferences when wanting one or another form of intervention?
Over the last few decades, conventional electronics has been rapidly reaching its technical limits in computing and information technology, calling for innovative devices that go beyond the mere manipulation of electron current. In this regard, spintronics, the study of devices that exploit the "spin" of electrons to perform functions, is one of the hottest areas in applied physics. But,...
The service life of tunnels today is designed to last at least for one hundred years—in the case of the Brenner basis tunnel it is even 200 years. The problem with this: "The service life is currently calculated on the basis of theoretical key figures and empirical values. Environmental conditions such as chemically aggressive groundwater, for example, can possibly lead to cost-intensive...
The replacement of lost neurons is a holy grail for neuroscience. A new promising approach is the conversion of glial cells into new neurons. Improving the efficiency of this conversion or reprogramming after brain injury is an important step towards developing reliable regenerative medicine therapies. Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (LMU) have...
Rangers are tracking the giraffe in north-east Kenya, after poachers killed his family members.
As engineers increasingly turn to machine learning methods to develop adaptable robots, new work makes progress on safety and performance guarantees for robots operating in novel environments with diverse types of obstacles and constraints.
Researchers using a model of airway tissue created from human stem cells have pinpointed how smoking cigarettes causes more severe infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the airways of the lungs.
Researchers, armed with artificial intelligence tools, can rate a movie's content in a matter of seconds, based on the movie script and before a single scene is shot.
Researchers enrolled 5,000 patients in a remote, cholesterol and blood pressure management program utilizing care navigators and pharmacists, supported by specialists and using specialist-designed algorithms to initiate and adjust medications. Participants who completed the cholesterol program achieved a 52 mg/dl (42%) reduction in LDL cholesterol levels. Participants who completed the blood...
A study has identified certain regions in the retina - the lining found in the back of the eye - that are more affected by Alzheimer's disease than other areas. The findings may help physicians predict changes in the brain as well as cognitive deterioration, even for patients experiencing the earliest signs of mild impairment.
Many diseases, such as COVID-19, have made the jump from animals to people with serious consequences for the human host. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, says that more epidemics resulting from animal hosts are inevitable unless urgent action is taken. In order to protect against future pandemics which might be even more serious, they call...
A conversion to wood biomass (wood chips and pellets) by Danish district heating plants has benefited the climate and is the more climate-friendly option compared to coal and natural gas. These are the findings of a new report from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.
When COVID-19 hit the U.S., many experts warned that America's colleges and universities could be devastated. Some of them predicted enrollment declines of up to 20%.
Researchers have invented a miniature thermometer with big potential applications such as monitoring the temperature of processor chips in superconductor-based quantum computers, which must stay cold to work properly.
Researchers say that more epidemics resulting from animal hosts are inevitable unless urgent action is taken. To protect against future pandemics, they call for governments to establish effective legislation addressing wildlife trade, protection of habitats and reduction of interaction between people, wildlife and livestock.
Urban planners may soon have a new way to measure traffic congestion. By capturing the different routes by which vehicles can travel between locations, researchers have developed a new computer algorithm that helps quantify regions of congestion in urban areas and suggests ways around them.
Researchers found that Black and Hispanic people made up 58 percent of all patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and 53 percent of those who died from the disease.
March through May saw a significant increase in deaths over previous years -- and not just from COVID-19, says a new study. When deaths attributed to COVID-19 were removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention totals, the death rate in several demographics outpaced the same period in 2019, the study found.
People are increasingly aware of the harm plastic waste causes to wildlife, and many would avoid buying single-use plastics if they could help it. But are the alternatives to plastic much better?
What is the exact path of light inside a highly scattering material like white paint? This is a question that is impossible to answer, as the particles inside the paint are distributed randomly. This, at the same time, is a very attractive property for applying photonics in non-hackable security applications. Still, you would like to have a look inside to see what is happening. For this reason,...
In parts of Ghana there are still persistently high rates of acute malnutrition. This is despite the fact that there has been significant progress in reducing these at the national level.
Across America, hazardous waste sites pose an ongoing threat to human and environmental health. The most severe cases are known as Superfund sites, of which over a thousand currently exist. Some 50 million Americans live within three miles of one of these zones, potentially placing them at increased risk for cancer and other serious diseases.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have invented a miniature thermometer with big potential applications such as monitoring the temperature of processor chips in superconductor-based quantum computers, which must stay cold to work properly.
Which photophysical properties does carbyne have? This was the subject of research carried out by scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the University of Alberta, Canada, and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which has led to a greater understanding of the properties of this unusual form of carbon. Their findings have now been...
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, space- and ground-based observations have shown that Earth's atmosphere has seen significant reductions in some air pollutants. However, scientists wanted to know how much of that decline can be attributed to changes in human activity during pandemic-related shutdowns, versus how much would have occurred in a pandemic-free 2020.
Across the world, many new mathematics and science curricula have been implemented in the last decade, according to results released today from TIMSS, the longest running large-scale international assessment of mathematics and science education in the world. IEA's TIMSS assessment, directed by the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College, was conducted in 64 countries as well as...
A team of scientists from the University of Leeds have developed a new hydrogel that has significant potential for oral care products that can help with dry mouth relief.
New research finds that student exposure to violent crime in urban elementary schools is linked to higher transfer rates, with students ineligible for free- or reduced-price meals and students from safer neighborhoods more likely to leave than their less advantaged peers. The study was published today in the American Educational Research Journal, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational...
Improperly installed wiring caused the rocket, with its satellite payloads, to veer off course.
Decades of technological change have polarized the earnings of the American workforce, helping highly educated white-collar workers thrive, while hollowing out the middle class. Yet present-day advances like robots and artificial intelligence do not spell doom for middle-tier or lower-wage workers, since innovations create jobs as well. With better policies in place, more people could enjoy good...
Until now, scientists typically studied the changes of proteins and their roles in the cell by using a fluorescent tag to label and follow one protein at a time. This approach limited the number of proteins that could be studied and precluded unbiased discovery approaches. Researchers at CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have now developed a...
Scientists have shown that sex-specific differences in variability depend on individual physical and physiological features in mice, debunking competing theories that either males or females are more variable.
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from Germany and the US have studied the properties and behavior of a palladium-copper alloy under changing temperatures and hydrogen concentrations, with highly relevant implications of this research for catalyst design. The paper was published in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Many applications, including carbon dioxide storage and oil recovery, involve the simultaneous flow of two or more phases of matter (solid, liquid, gas, etc.) through porous materials. Pore-scale modeling of such multiphase flow has struggled to capture important phenomena referred to as viscous coupling effects. But now, a research team has developed a method that overcomes this limitation with...
Clean drinking water is considered to be one of the Earth's most precious and threatened resources. Recent studies show that increasing concentrations of pharmaceuticals can be found in surface waters, which can end up in drinking water. TalTech environmental scientists are looking for ways to treat drinking water from hazardous pharmaceutical residues.
Fossil skeletons found in what looks to be fight to the deathT rex and Triceratops horridus buried together 67m years agoThe fossil skeletons of two dinosaurs intertwined in what looks like a fight to the death have been donated to a North Carolina museum. Related: Perhaps the best dinosaur fossil ever discovered. So why has hardly anyone seen it? Continue...