119 articles from MONDAY 6.9.2021

New filtering method promises safer drinking water, improved industrial production

A team of scientists at the Tufts University School of Engineering has developed a new filtering technology. Inspired by biology, it could help curb a drinking water-related disease that affects tens of millions of people worldwide and potentially improve environmental remediation, industrial and chemical production, and mining, among other processes.

Ninth-grade ethnic studies helped students for years, researchers find

A ninth-grade ethnic studies class has a remarkably prolonged and strong positive impact on students, increasing their overall engagement in school, probability of graduating and likelihood of enrolling in college, according to a new study of a curriculum offered at the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD).

UK vaccine advisers ‘acted like medical regulators’, over Covid jabs for children

Prof Neil Ferguson says JCVI was conservative in rejecting use of vaccines already approved by MHRACoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe UK’s vaccine advisory group behaved like a medical regulator in rejecting calls for all children aged 12-15 to be offered Covid jabs despite that not being its role, Prof Neil Ferguson has said.Last week the Joint Committee on...

Israel: one-year-old conjoined twin girls see each other for the first time after surgery – video

One-year-old twin girls have looked at each other for the first time after a complex surgery to separate them at Soroka medical centre in Beersheba, Israel. Dozens of experts from Israel and abroad were involved in the preparation and 12-hour procedure. The team used 3D- and virtual-reality models to map the complex operation. This enabled simulations and practice to be undertaken...

Conservation meet mulls moratorium on deep sea mining

The world's top conservation forum will vote this week on whether to recommend a moratorium on deep sea mining, with scientists warning that ecosystems degraded while dredging the ocean floor 5,000 metres below the waves could take decades or longer to heal.

Did you solve it? The magic of the Borromean rings

The solution to today’s puzzleEarlier today I set the following puzzle, inspired by the Borromean rings (left), which are three interlocking loops with the property that when you remove any one of them, the other two are no longer linked. In the puzzle everything falls apart when one element is removed. Continue...

Scientists discover the molecular mechanism of black-streaked dwarf virus in rice

Rice viruses are prevalent in many rice-growing countries and often cause serious damages to rice production. Among them, the rice black-streaked dwarf virus (RBSDV), transmitted by the small brown planthopper Laodelphax striatellus, causes tremendous losses in China's grain yields every year. Therefore, discovering the transmission mechanism of RBSDV is of immense significance for its effective...

Study illuminates origins of lung cancer in never smokers

A genomic analysis of lung cancer in people with no history of smoking has found that a majority of these tumors arise from the accumulation of mutations caused by natural processes in the body. This study describes three molecular subtypes of lung cancer in people who have never smoked. These insights will help unlock the mystery of how lung cancer arises in people who have no history of smoking...

Hydrogen-burning white dwarfs enjoy slow aging

Could dying stars hold the secret to looking younger? New evidence suggests that white dwarfs could continue to burn hydrogen in the final stages of their lives, causing them to appear more youthful than they actually are. This discovery could have consequences for how astronomers measure the ages of star clusters.

Schizophrenia study suggests advanced genetic scorecard cannot predict a patient’s fate

Researchers found that a tool commonly used in research for evaluating a person's genetic risk for a disease, called a polygenic risk score, was no better at predicting the outcome of a schizophrenia patient's disease over time than written reports. The results raise important questions about the use of polygenic risk scores in real-world, clinical situations, and also suggest that a doctor's...

Astronomers explain origin of elusive ultradiffuse galaxies

As their name suggests, ultradiffuse galaxies, or UDGs, are dwarf galaxies whose stars are spread out over a vast region, resulting in extremely low surface brightness, making them very difficult to detect. An international team of astronomers reports it has used sophisticated simulations to detect a few 'quenched' UDGs in low-density environments in the universe. A quenched galaxy is one that...

Astronomers explain origin of elusive ultradiffuse galaxies

As their name suggests, ultradiffuse galaxies, or UDGs, are dwarf galaxies whose stars are spread out over a vast region, resulting in extremely low surface brightness, making them very difficult to detect. Several questions about UDGs remain unanswered: How did these dwarfs end up so extended? Are their dark matter halos—the halos of invisible matter surrounding the galaxies—special?

Hubble discovers hydrogen-burning white dwarfs enjoying slow aging

The prevalent view of white dwarfs as inert, slowly cooling stars has been challenged by observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. An international group of astronomers have discovered the first evidence that white dwarfs can slow down their rate of aging by burning hydrogen on their surface.

Hubble Discovers Hydrogen-Burning White Dwarfs Enjoying Slow Aging

Portal origin URL: Hubble Discovers Hydrogen-Burning White Dwarfs Enjoying Slow AgingPortal origin nid: 473738Published: Monday, September 6, 2021 - 11:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: New evidence from Hubble suggests that white dwarf stars could continue to burn hydrogen in the final stages of their lives, causing them to appear more youthful than...

Solving key observational issues in tracking fine-scale changes of our planet from space

Our Earth has experienced rapid environmental changes tightly tied to anthropogenic activities. Satellite remote sensing offers a quantitative means to monitor such changes but is often limited to coarse spatial or temporal resolutions. Only very recently, with the arrival of Planet's Dove satellites, a constellation of CubeSats made of 190+ satellite sensors to produce daily and global coverage...

Continuous cover forestry maintains carbon sinks of nutrient-rich drained peatland forests

A recent study by the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Eastern Finland analyzed how different forest management practices affect the timber production, ecosystem net primary production and emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in nutrient-rich peatlands drained for forestry in southern Finland. The examined sites acted as a carbon sink...

Large herbivores can reduce forest fire risks

The use of large herbivores can be an effective means to prevent and mitigate wildfires, especially in places facing land abandonment. They can replace much more costly solutions like firefighting or mechanical vegetation removal. This is the finding of a study led by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. They...

Novel imaging method reveals a surprising arrangement of DNA in the cell's nucleus

If you open a biology textbook and run through the images depicting how DNA is organized in the cell's nucleus, chances are you'll start feeling hungry; the chains of DNA would seem like a bowl of ramen: long strings floating in liquid. However, according to two new studies—one experimental and the other theoretical—that are the outcome of the collaboration between the groups of Prof. Talila...

Heavier stars might not explode as supernovae, just quietly implode into black holes

A supernova is a brilliant end to a giant star. For a brief moment of cosmic time, a star makes one last effort to keep shining, only to fade and collapse on itself. The end result is either a neutron star or a stellar-mass black hole. We've generally thought that all stars above about 10 solar masses will end as a supernova, but a new study suggests that isn't the case.

Fast or slow? Study reveals differences in how humpback whales change tune

Researchers solve mystery of why southern hemisphere whales switch suddenly but in north it is gradualFrom Abba’s Mamma Mia stealing the crown from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to Rihanna’s Diamonds knocking Psy’s Gangnam Style off the top of the charts – even the catchiest song eventually becomes superseded by a new number.But the phenomenon is not unique to humans: male humpback whales...

Leaded petrol is gone – but lead pollution may linger for a very long time

As a scientist studying lead poisoning in children once remarked: "it took two years to put lead into gasoline and 60 years to take it out". The consensus around leaded fuel's unacceptable threat to human health was hard won, entailing a long fight between scientists, regulatory authorities and industry. In a recent ray of good news, it seems the world has finally turned a corner on the use of...

Astronaut geology bound for the moon

Finding and collecting the best lunar samples will be a major task for the next astronauts on the moon. ESA's Pangaea training campaign launches today to equip astronauts with a geologist's eye on the moon—humanity's next space destination to help us understand more about our solar system.

Seven personality and behaviour traits identified in cats

Researchers at the University of Helsinki have developed a new comprehensive questionnaire for surveying feline personality and behavior. A dataset of more than 4,300 cats representing 26 breed groups revealed seven personality and behavior traits, with significant differences observed between breeds.