101 articles from MONDAY 20.6.2022

BepiColombo lines up for second Mercury flyby

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission is gearing up for its second close flyby of Mercury on 23 June. ESA's spacecraft operation team is guiding BepiColombo through six gravity assists of the planet before entering orbit around it in 2025.

Almost 200 unique butterflies live only in Colombia and could be at risk of being lost forever

Almost 200 unique species of butterflies live only in Colombia, accounting for 20% of all butterfly species, and they might be at risk. This means that one in five of the world's known butterfly species could be protected in Colombia's territory. The first ever list and identification guide for the endemic species has been just published after almost two centuries of butterfly studies in the...

Expanding RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics from the lab to the clinic

It is now possible to deliver therapeutics based on short interfering RNAs to hepatocytes; however, new delivery solutions are necessary to target additional organs. In a new report now published in Nature Biotechnology, a team of researchers including Kirk M. Brown, Jayaprakash K. Nair, and Maja M. Manas, led by Vasant Jadhav at Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Cambridge MA, U.S., discussed the safe...

Novel way to detect microbial contamination in cell cultures

Researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicines (CAMP), an Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, have developed a new method of detecting adventitious microbial contamination in mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) cultures, ensuring the rapid and accurate testing...

Carbon cycle in microbial ecosystems of biological soil crusts

As greenhouse effects become increasingly prominent, soil carbon has been a major focus of research on climate change. Soil microorganisms are the key groups that drive soil carbon transformation. Due to the complexity of factors such as microbial physiology, the composition of organic compounds in soils, and variation among redox forms, the pattern and process of the soil carbon cycle at the...

From price shock to independence from fossil fuels

Oil and gas prices are currently on the rise, raising questions about the security of Switzerland's energy supply. In a policy brief, researchers from the Energy Science Center at ETH Zurich have now shown what Switzerland can do to make its energy system independent of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas.

Monday briefing: What ‘living with Covid’ might look like

In today’s newsletter: With case numbers on the rise in the UK, Nimo Omer looks at what shape our future relationship with the virus could takeSign up here for our new daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. At this point, most of us – 7 in 10 in the UK – have had Covid-19. Many have had it multiple times. And there’s a reason everyone seems to be catching it again in the UK: since...

Starwatch: look to the east at dawn for a sight of gibbous moon

On successive days, before the sun rises, the visible planets will be visited in turn by the waning moonAwake with the dawn chorus this week? Take a look to the east. On successive days, before the sun rises, the visible planets will be visited in turn by the waning gibbous moon.Start looking at about 0400BST on the morning of 21 June, when the moon will be close to Jupiter. The chart shows the...

Only a tiny minority of rural Britons are farmers – so why do they hold such sway? | George Monbiot

The government pretends that farming and the countryside are synonymous – and our environment suffers as a resultWe have a problem. The environment secretary, George Eustice – the highest green authority in the land – is, in a crucial respect, a climate denier. In an interview with the Telegraph, he claimed that “livestock, particularly if you do it with the right pastoral system, has a...

China carries out anti-missile tests amid opposition to US systems in South Korea

Beijing says test was not aimed aimed at any country, though it has objected to US THAAD system positioned in South KoreaChina carried out a test of “ground-based midcourse anti-missile intercept technology” that “achieved its expected purpose”, the defence ministry in Beijing has said, describing it as defensive and not aimed at any country.Beijing has tested missile interceptors before;...

Spirals of blue light in New Zealand night sky leave stargazers ‘kind of freaking out’

Social media abuzz with pictures and theories about formations thought to be from exhaust plume of SpaceX rocketNew Zealand stargazers were left puzzled and awed by strange, spiralling light formations in the night sky on Sunday night.Around 7.25pm Alasdair Burns, a stargazing guide on Stewart Island/Rakiura, received a text from a friend: go outside and look at the sky. “As soon as we actually...