422 articles from THURSDAY 25.3.2021

Mark Zuckerberg still won’t address the root cause of Facebook’s misinformation problem

In a congressional hearing about disinformation on Thursday, Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to respond to a claim he once made about his own company: that the more likely content posted to Facebook is to violate the company’s community standards, the more engagement it will receive.  Is this, she asked, still accurate?  ...

Turning wood into plastic

Efforts to shift from petrochemical plastics to renewable and biodegradable plastics have proven tricky—the production process can require toxic chemicals and is expensive, and the mechanical strength and water stability is often insufficient. But researchers have made a breakthrough, using wood byproducts, that shows promise for producing more durable and sustainable bioplastics.

The 'great leveler' revisited: Why the COVID pandemic might boost inequality in society

A study by prof. Bas van Bavel and prof. Marten Scheffer shows that throughout history, most disasters and pandemics have boosted inequality instead of leveling it. Whether such disastrous events function as levelers or not, depends on the distribution of economic wealth and political leverage within a society at the moment of crisis. Their findings on the historical effects of crises on equality...

Fast-acting, color-changing molecular probe senses when a material is about to fail

Materials that contain special polymer molecules may someday be able to warn us when they are about to fail, researchers said. Engineers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have improved their previously developed force-sensitive molecules, called mechanophores, to produce reversible, rapid and vibrant color change when a force is applied.

Rural Alaskans struggle to access and afford water

Water scarcity in rural Alaska is not a new problem, but the situation is getting worse with climate change. Lasting solutions must encourage the use of alternative water supplies like rainwater catchment and gray water recycling. They must also address the affordability of water related to household income, say researchers from McGill University.

New technology enables ultrafast identification of COVID-19 biomarkers

Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Francis Crick Institute have developed a mass spectrometry-based technique capable of measuring samples containing thousands of proteins within just a few minutes. It is faster and cheaper than a conventional blood count. To demonstrate the technique's potential, the researchers used blood plasma collected from COVID-19 patients. Using the new technology, they...

New study maps wildlife microbiota

Wild Biotech, a preclinical stage drug discovery & development company emerging out of stealth mode, today announces the publication of its first major paper, which appears in the journal Science. The study mapped the gut microbiota of animals in the wild on an unprecedented scale, adding millions of potentially novel microbiome-based therapeutics for human diseases to the company's already...

Tired of video conferencing? Research suggests you're right to question its effectiveness

In the year since the coronavirus pandemic upended how just about every person on the planet interacts with one another, video conferencing has become the de facto tool for group collaboration within many organizations. The prevalent assumption is that technology that helps to mimic face-to-face interactions via a video camera will be most effective in achieving the same results, yet there's...