305 articles from THURSDAY 10.6.2021

RUDN University chemist proposed eco-friendly synthesis of fluorescent compounds for medicine

RUDN and Shahid Beheshti University(SBU) chemist proposed an eco-friendly method for the synthesis of pyrrole and pyrazole derivatives with a wide range of applications in medicine: from antidepressants to anticancer. Moreover, the synthesized compounds possess interesting fluorescence features, and the bioactive scaffolds might attract great interest in the fields of clinical diagnostics and...

Saliva can be more effective than nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 testing

Saliva samples are easier to collect than nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 testing but can be mixed with mucus or blood, and some studies have found they produce less accurate results. A team of researchers has found that an innovative protocol that processes saliva samples with a bead mill homogenizer before real-time PCR (RT-PCR) testing results in higher sensitivity compared to NPS samples....

Say goodbye to your camera bump: uOttawa researchers miniaturize optics by discovering counterpart to lens

Can you imagine one day using a telescope as thin as a sheet of paper, or a much smaller and lighter high-performance camera? Or no longer having that camera bump behind your smartphone? In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers from the University of Ottawa have proposed a new optical element that could turn these ideas into reality by dramatically miniaturizing optical devices,...

Sealed, signed and delivered

A team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) made a rare discovery when they unearthed a small clay seal impression dating back some 7,000 years. The impression, with two different geometric stamps imprinted on it, was discovered in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village located in Israel's Beit She'an Valley up north.

Soot from heaters and traffic is not just a local problem

Soot particles from oil and wood heating systems as well as road traffic can pollute the air in Europe on a much larger scale than previously assumed. The evaluation of the sources during a measuring campaign in Germany showed that about half of the soot particles came from the surrounding area and the other half from long distances. This underlines the need to further reduce emissions of soot...

Study of harvey flooding aids in quantifying climate change

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Fathom Bristol used a hydraulic model to consider the degree to which human-caused climate change may have affected flooding in Houston in 2017 during Hurricane Harvey. Resources at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center were used to quantify the increase in Houston flood area and depth and to host a portal where other...

Study on plant roots challenges nature of ecological trade-offs

Plant species with thick and dense roots are more likely to occur in warm climates, while species with thin and low density roots are more likely to occur in cold climates -- a classic trade-off. By contrast, forest species with large-diameter roots and high root tissue density were more commonly associated with dry climates, but species with the opposite trait values were not associated with wet...

Study sheds light on treatment options for devastating childhood brain cancer

Research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that children with average risk medulloblastoma can receive radiation to a smaller volume of the brain at the end of a six-week course of treatment and still maintain the same disease control as those receiving radiation to a larger area. But the dose of preventive radiation treatments given to the whole brain and spine...

Study shows how permafrost releases methane in the warming Arctic

Researchers from Skoltech have designed and conducted experiments measuring gas permeability under various conditions for ice-containing sediments mimicking permafrost. Their results can be useful both in tracing methane emission in high latitudes and in modeling and testing techniques for gas production from Arctic reservoirs.The study also showed that the dissociation of gas hydrates can lead...

The rocky road to accurate sea-level predictions

The type of material present under glaciers has a big impact on how fast they slide towards the ocean. Scientists face a challenging task to acquire data of this under-ice landscape. Choosing the wrong equations for the under-ice landscape can have the same effect on the predicted contribution to sea-level rise as a warming of several degrees, says Henning Åkesson, who led a new published study...

Trapping DNA damage

The delicate strands that carry life's genetic code take a beating as they jumble about in the course of their work. If left untreated, errors accumulate, with fatal consequences for the organism. This is where two key proteins come to the rescue: PARP acts as a marker for a trouble spot, allowing XRCC1 to zoom in and begin a repair.

Tuning the energy gap: A novel approach for organic semiconductors

What is already established for inorganic semiconductors stays a challenge for their organic counterparts: Tuning the energy gap by blending different semiconducting molecules to optimize device performance. Now, scientists from TU Dresden, in cooperation with researchers at TU Munich, as well as University of Würzburg, HU Berlin, and Ulm University demonstrated how to reach this goal.

What happens in the brain when people make music together?

Inspired by people around the world who made music together while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from Bar-Ilan University and the University of Chicago fused the latest advances in social neuroscience and the field of music to highlight five key functions and mechanisms of the brain that contribute to social connection through music. The findings illustrate that music...

When physics meets financial networks

Financial institutions are linked together in a global web of interactions whose structure can be analyzed quantitatively by means of network theory. Today, 15 years after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the role of networks for monitoring financial stability is widely recognized. Both policymakers and researchers agree that systemic risk has to be studied and managed by adopting a network...