264 articles from TUESDAY 15.6.2021

Study: Half of US cosmetics contain toxic chemicals

More than half the cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of a toxic industrial compound linked to serious health conditions, including cancer and reduced birth weight, according to a new study.

Investigating carbonate mineral chemical variations to improve oil recovery

Dr. Igor Ivanishin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, has firsthand experience with the frustrations of oil production. He spent nine years as a hydraulic fracturing engineer with operating and service companies in Russia. A few years ago, he came to Texas A&M to get his doctoral degree while delving into a recurring recovery...

The electron merry-go-round: Researchers find new mechanism for classical behavior of many-particle quantum systems

Photoemission is a property of metals and other materials that emit electrons when struck by light. Electron emission after light absorption was already explained by Albert Einstein. But since this effect is a highly complex process, scientists have still not been able to fully elucidate its details. Prof. Dr. Bernd von Issendorff and his team at the University of Freiburg's Institute of Physics...

The long view: Studying kelp forests and coral reefs to understand and predict the effects of climate change

What will the Earth be like for our children and grandchildren, as temperatures continue to rise? We can be fairly certain of some things: Some regions will become inhospitable, as heat drives their inhabitants away or causes massive declines and changes in their ecosystems. Many other physical, chemical and biological processes will also be affected by rising temperatures that threaten critical...

A third of Covid patients in UK hospitals had ‘do not resuscitate’ order

Study found increase in people with DNACPR decisions compared with before pandemicCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageAlmost a third of patients admitted to hospital with suspected Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic had a “do not resuscitate” decision recorded before or on their day of admission, research suggests.This is higher than the rates reported in...

Analysis: Chile's transition to democracy slow, incomplete, fueled by social movements

A new article analyzes Chile's transition in 1990 from dictatorship to democracy, the nature of democracy between 1990 and 2019, and the appearance of several social movements geared to expanding this democracy. The article, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), appears in The Latin Americanist, a publication of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies.

Scientists explain the crucial role of motor proteins in cell division

Proper chromosome segregation into two future daughter cells requires the mitotic spindle to elongate in anaphase. However, although some candidate proteins are implicated in this process, the molecular mechanism that drives spindle elongation in human cells has been unknown until now. Researchers at the Croatian Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) have discovered the exact molecular mechanism of...

New web tool fights antibacterial resistance

In 1943, two scientists named Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria conducted an experiment to show that bacteria can mutate randomly, independent of external stimulus, such as an antibiotic that threatens a bacterial cells' survival. Today the Luria-Delbrück experiment is widely used in laboratories for a different purpose—scientists use this classic experiment to determine microbial mutation...

Climate change: The long view

What will the Earth be like for our children and grandchildren, as temperatures continue to rise? We can be fairly certain of some things: Some regions will become inhospitable, as heat drives their inhabitants away or causes massive declines and changes in their ecosystems. Many other physical, chemical and biological processes will also be affected by rising temperatures that threaten critical...

A push for a shift in the value system that defines 'impact' and 'success'

Discussions of a broken value system are ubiquitous in science, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic served to expose inequality globally. However, according to the authors of an article publishing 15th June 2021 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, science itself is not "broken," but it was built on deeply-entrenched, systemic sexist and racist values, which perpetuate biases through the...

Research papers that omit 'mice' from titles receive misleading media coverage

There is increasing scrutiny around how science is communicated to the public, but what is the relationship between how scientists report their findings and how media reports it to the public? A study published in PLOS Biology by Marcia Triunfol at Humane Society International, in Washington, DC and Fabio Gouveia at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil suggests that when authors of...

Every workplace can be a place of continual learning

While businesses in every sector have been working toward a digital transformation for the past several years, covid-19 accelerated this shift across industries. New technologies are advancing at a pace that requires employers to continuously retrain their workforce to stay current. Organizations must become places of learning if they are to prepare workers for jobs of the future. Joe Schaefer...

Ultra-thin film could one day turn regular glasses into night vision goggles, researchers say

Developed by Australian and European researchers, the film works by converting infrared light into light visible to the human eyeA transparent metallic film allowing a viewer to see in the dark could one day turn regular spectacles into night vision googles.The ultra-thin film, made of a semiconductor called gallium arsenide, could also be used to develop compact and flexible infrared sensors,...

Soaking up the sun: Artificial photosynthesis promises clean, sustainable source of energy

Humans can do lots of things that plants can't do. But plants have one major advantage over humans: They can make energy directly from the sun. That process of turning sunlight directly into usable energy - called photosynthesis - may soon be a feat humans are able to mimic to harness the sun's energy for clean, storable, efficient fuel. If so, it could open a whole new frontier of clean energy.

Hippos and anthrax

Hippopotamus aren't the first thing that come to mind when considering epidemiology and disease ecology. And yet these amphibious megafauna offered ecologists a window into the progression of an anthrax outbreak that struck Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, in the dry season of 2017.