106 articles from FRIDAY 1.7.2022

Keeping the energy in the room

It may seem like technology advances year after year, as if by magic. But behind every incremental improvement and breakthrough revolution is a team of scientists and engineers hard at work.

Study: How placentas evolved in mammals

The fossil record tells us about ancient life through the preserved remains of body parts like bones, teeth and turtle shells. But how to study the history of soft tissues and organs, which can decay quickly, leaving little evidence behind?

Montana bio station researchers discuss mine risks to salmon rivers

Recently, a group of 23 science and policy experts from the U.S. and Canada published a review of mining risks to watersheds ranging from Montana to British Columbia and Alaska. The paper brought together experts in salmon ecology, watershed science, mining impacts and mining policy to integrate knowledge across research fields that often work independently from one another.

Keeping the energy in the room

Researchers are developing precision optical sensors for telescopes and observatories. The team has now improved the spectra resolution of their superconducting sensor, a major step in their ultimate goal: analyzing the composition of exoplanets.

How placentas evolved in mammals

The fossil record tells us about ancient life through the preserved remains of body parts like bones, teeth and turtle shells. But how to study the history of soft tissues and organs, which can decay quickly, leaving little evidence behind? In a new study, scientists use gene expression patterns, called transcriptomics, to investigate the ancient origins of one organ: the placenta, which is vital...

New method boosts the study of regulation of gene activity

One way cells can control the activities of their genes is by adding small chemical modifications to the DNA that determine which genes are turned on or off. Methyl groups are one of these chemical modifications or tags. Researchers have found that in bacteria DNA methylation plays a role in regulating virulence, reproduction and gene expression. In other organisms, including humans, DNA...

New method boosts the study of regulation of gene activity

Researchers report the development of a chemical-based sequencing method to quantify different epigenetic markers simultaneously. Their method, called NT-seq, short for nitrite treatment followed by next-generation sequencing, is a sequencing method for detecting multiple types of DNA methylation genome-wide.

'Soft' CRISPR may offer a new fix for genetic defects

Scientists have developed a new CRISPR-based technology that could offer a safer approach to correcting genetic defects. The new 'soft' CRISPR approach makes use of natural DNA repair machinery, providing a foundation for novel gene therapy strategies with the potential to cure a large spectrum of genetic diseases.

There’s a shortage of monkeypox vaccine. Could one dose instead of two suffice?

As the monkeypox outbreak grows, the preferred vaccine to combat it is in short supply—a problem that’s only getting worse now that countries are expanding access to the vaccine. But there is a strategy that could double overnight the number of people who can be vaccinated: use a single shot instead of the recommended two. Compelling data from monkey and human studies suggest...

Rise of the dinosaurs traced back to their adaptation to cold

Covering of feathers left them able to cope when other creatures died off in mass extinction event, scientists sayFossil hunters have traced the rise of the dinosaurs back to the freezing winters the beasts endured while roaming around the far north.Footprints of the animals and stone deposits from north-west China suggest dinosaurs became adapted to the cold in polar regions before a mass...

Hidden in genetics: The evolutionary relationships of two groups of ancient invertebrates revealed

Kamptozoa and Bryozoa are two phyla of small aquatic invertebrates. They are related to snails and clams (collectively called mollusks), bristleworms, earthworms, and leeches (collectively called annelids), and ribbon worms (nemertea). But their precise position on the tree of life, and how closely related they are to these other animals, has always puzzled evolutionary biologists. Previous...

'Soft' CRISPR may offer a new fix for genetic defects

Curing debilitating genetic diseases is one of the great challenges of modern medicine. During the past decade, development of CRISPR technologies and advancements in genetics research brought new hope for patients and their families, although the safety of these new methods is still of significant concern.

Dinosaurs took over amid ice, not warmth, says a new study of ancient mass extinction

Many of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth's fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere. But there was a previous extinction, far more mysterious and less discussed: the one 202 million years ago, which killed off the big reptiles who up until then ruled the planet, and apparently...

Did fuzzy coats help dinosaurs survive one of Earth’s worst extinctions?

Dinosaurs lived in an endless summer, surrounded by steaming jungles and lush swamps—at least if movies such as Fantasia and Jurassic World are to be believed. But that classic image is changing. Paleontologists now know some dinosaurs lived in comparatively chilly habitats with months of darkness and occasional snow on the ground. Frigid conditions like...

Advocating a new paradigm for electron simulations

Although most fundamental mathematical equations that describe electronic structures are long known, they are too complex to be solved in practice. This has hampered progress in physics, chemistry and the material sciences. Thanks to modern high-performance computing clusters and the establishment of the simulation method density functional theory (DFT), researchers were able to change this...

Exploring how adding UV treatment to water chlorination can actually increase toxic trihalomethane production

Halobenzoquinones (HBQs), as new emerging disinfection by-products (DBPs), are frequently detected in potable and swimming pool waters. In fact, HBQs are also precursors of other DBPs such as currently regulated trihalomethanes (THMs), which pose a high risk to the public health and the environment. When UV is applied during the chlorination process, the DBPs formation may be quite different from...

Highly-sensitive SERS probes developed to detect the PD-L1 biomarker

Recently, a team led by Prof. Huang Qing at the Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has reported the fabrication of ultrasensitive biosensors based on Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) to detect the cancer metastasis related programmed death ligand (PD-L1) biomarker.

Scientists are still fleshing out Darwin’s theory of evolution | Letters

There can be no one unifying theory, writes Prof Jonathan Bard, while Nicholas Maxwell looks to the role of purposive actions and Pete Bibby says the fittest theory will surviveStephen Buranyi misses some key points in his article (Do we need a new theory of evolution?, 28 June). Darwin saw novel speciation as resulting from natural selection acting on anatomical variants, but that simple skeleton...

The case is building that colliding neutron stars create magnetars

Magnetars are some of the most fascinating astronomical objects. One teaspoon of the stuff they are made out of would weigh almost one billion tons, and they have magnetic fields that are hundreds of millions of times more powerful than any magnetic field that exists today on Earth. But we don't know much about how they form. A new paper points to one possible source—mergers of neutron stars.

Study reveals an unprecedented change in Europe's fire regime

A study reveals an unprecedented change in the fire regime in Europe which is related to climate change. The affected areas are in Southern, Central and Northern Europe but this historical change in Europe's fire regime is more intense in the Mediterranean area. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is led by Jofre Carnicer, lecturer of Ecology at the Faculty of Biology, and...

Triply eclipsing stellar systems

Stars with the mass of the sun or larger are typically accompanied by one or more orbiting companion stars. The system forms when gravity contracts the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud until clumps develop that are dense enough to coalesce into stars. Multiple stellar systems develop, according to one model, when the cloud has a slight spin. That generates a disk that then fragments to...

A step on the way to better therapies against viruses

Most cells can defend themselves against viruses after they have been activated by the body's own messenger substances (interferons). This happens with the help of proteins that recognize invading virus components and interfere with virus replication. One of these proteins is the myxovirus resistance protein B (MxB). It can inhibit many viruses, for example HIV and herpes viruses. But until now it...

Scientists investigate temperature effect on semiconductor optical amplifiers

The effect of temperature on the performance of the semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) is an important research point. Amer Kotb and his colleagues from the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have for the first time investigated the effect of high temperatures on the performance of various SOAs, including conventional SOAs, carrier...

Tidal heating could make exomoons much more habitable (and detectable)

Within the solar system, most of our astrobiological research is aimed at Mars, which is considered to be the next-most habitable body beyond Earth. However, future efforts are aimed at exploring icy satellites in the outer solar system that could also be habitable (like Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and more). This dichotomy between terrestrial (rocky) planets that orbit within their a system's...

What the end of Roe v. Wade means for reproductive rights and privacy

On June 24, the Supreme Court released a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, upholding the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court also ruled 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that protects pregnant people's right to privacy without excessive government restriction.

Historical irrigation leaves long-lasting legacies on the prairie

A hallmark of environmental science is understanding how ecosystems respond to global change. Much of this research focuses on short-term ecosystem responses, such as how an ecosystem responds to a sudden onset of drought. But previous conditions can modify that response. In the same way a formative childhood experience might change how an adult responds to stress, legacy effects can change the...

It takes three: The genetic mutations that made rice cultivation possible

Rice has a long history as a staple food in Japan and other parts of Asia. The results of a new study by an international research collaboration suggest that the emergence of cultivated rice from wild rice plants is the result of three gene mutations that make the seeds (i.e. the grains of rice) fall from the plant less easily.