321 articles from TUESDAY 9.2.2021

Deep Jet Streams in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

Portal origin URL: Deep Jet Streams in Jupiter’s AtmospherePortal origin nid: 468219Published: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 - 16:59Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: This view of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet’s southern jet streams.Portal...

Can super-Earth interior dynamics set the table for habitability?

New research led by Carnegie's Yingwei Fei provides a framework for understanding the interiors of super-Earths—rocky exoplanets between 1.5 and 2 times the size of our home planet—which is a prerequisite to assess their potential for habitability. Planets of this size are among the most abundant in exoplanetary systems. The paper is published in Nature Communications.

Why does love of bargain hunting run in families?

Headlines like "Black Friday Shoppers Trampled in New York" and popular television shows such as "Extreme Couponing" remind us how crazy consumers can get about retail sales promotions. This enthusiasm for getting bargains has been termed "deal proneness."

Scientists create flexible biocompatible cilia that can be controlled by a magnet

Researchers at the University of Campinas's Chemistry Institute (IQ-UNICAMP) in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, have developed a template-free technique to fabricate cilia of different sizes that mimic biological functions and have multiple applications, from directing fluids in microchannels to loading material into a cell, for example. The highly flexible cilia are based on polymer-coated iron...

Not a living fossil: How the Coelacanth recently evolved dozens of new genes

The capture of the first living Coelacanth, a mighty ocean predator, off the coast of South Africa caused quite a stir in 1938, 65 million years after its supposed extinction. It became known as a "living fossil" owing to its anatomy looking almost identical to the fossil record. But while the Coelacanth's body may have changed little, its genome tells another story.

Drug is promising against pancreatic and breast cancers

The drug is effective at treating pancreatic cancer and prolonging survival in mice, according to a new study. A second study shows the drug is also effective against triple-negative breast cancer, a fast-growing and hard-to-treat type of breast cancer that carries a poor prognosis. Clinical trials are set to begin in 2021.

New CRISPR tech targets human genome's complex code

Rice bioengineers harness the CRISPR/Cas9 system to program histones, the support proteins that wrap up and control human DNA, to manipulate gene activation and phosphorylation. The new technology enables innovative ways to find and manipulate genes and pathways responsible for diseases.

The pandemic lockdown leads to cleaner city air across Canada, paper reveals

Researchers found that emission levels dropped dramatically over the course of the pandemic. They measured downtown air quality monitoring station data from eight Canadian cities and compared their concentration levels of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide between February and August 2020 to the figures recorded over the same period in 2018 and 2019. They also used satellite...

Genetic evolution doesn't always take millions of years

Love them or hate them, there's no doubt the European Starling is a wildly successful bird. A new study examines this non-native species from the inside out to learn what exactly happened at the genetic level as the starling population exploded across North America?

Researchers uncover hidden hunting tactics of wolves in Minnesota's Northwoods

Researchers show that wolves have evolved ambush hunting tactics specifically tailored for catching and killing beavers. The study challenges the classic concept that wolves are solely cursorial predators. Instead, wolf-hunting strategies appear highly flexible, and they are able to switch between hunting modes (cursorial and ambush hunting) depending on their prey.