125 articles from FRIDAY 9.9.2022
Chemists reveal first pathway for selenium insertion into natural products
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:08
Researchers reveal a novel and widespread pathway for selenium insertion that involves two unusual selenium-carbon forming enzymes. The authors named them selenosugar synthase (SenB) and selenoneine synthase (SenA). Their work expands the known boundaries of selenium metabolism, previously thought to be confined to selenoprotein and selenonucleic acid biopolymers, which consist of primary...
Sport, sleep or screens: New app reveals the 'just right' day for kids
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:08
Not too sport heavy, not too sleep deprived -- finding the 'just right' balance in a child's busy day can be a challenge. But while parents may struggle to squeeze in homework amid extracurricular commitments and downtime, a new app could provide a much-needed solution.
Is climate change disrupting maritime boundaries?
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
Coral reef islands and their reefs -- found across in the Indo-Pacific -- naturally grow and shrink due to complex biological and physical processes that have yet to be fully understood. Now, climate change is disrupting them further, leading to new uncertainties for legal maritime zones and small island states. Rising sea levels, coupled with the natural variability of atoll islands and coral...
New AI system predicts how to prevent wildfires
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
A machine learning model can evaluate the effectiveness of different management strategies.
Longer, hotter and more frequent heat waves in cities
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
Hot days followed by sweltering nights without any temperature relief in between might become a new norm towards the end of the 21st century. Researchers have analyzed the frequency, intensity and length of such extreme events for five Swiss cities. Lugano and Geneva would be most affected.
Newly identified genes may help protect crops against flooding, researchers say
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
Flooding is a global risk, according to the World Bank, with the lives and property of billions of people threatened. Even more people are at risk of starvation as a knock-on effect of floods: the waters can drown crops. Now, researchers are getting closer to identifying the molecular processes underlying how floods deprive plants of oxygen -- and how to engineer hardier crops.
Circalunar clocks: Using the right light
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
How animals are able to interpret natural light sources to adjust their physiology and behavior is poorly understood. Researchers have now revealed that a molecule called L-cryptochrome (L-Cry) has the biochemical properties to discriminate between different moon phases, as well as between sun- and moonlight. Their findings show that L-Cry can interpret moonlight to entrain the monthly...
The origins of donkey domestication
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
The donkey has shaped the history of humankind, both as a source of power for farm work, and of transportation in sometimes hard to reach areas. To understand the origins of it domestication, scientists built and analyzed the most complete panel of genomes ever studied for this animal. The researchers reveal that the donkey was first domesticated in Africa in 5,000 B.C.E.
Climate change is affecting drinking water quality
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
The water stored in reservoirs ensures our supply of drinking water. Good water quality is therefore important -- but is at significant risk due to climate change. In a model study of the Rappbode reservoir in the Harz region, a research team demonstrated how the climate-related disappearance of forests in the catchment area for Germany's largest drinking water reservoir can affect water quality....
Tumors: Not just a backup -- the dual specificity of UBA6
- ScienceDaily
- 22/9/9 18:07
Researchers have unveiled the crystal structures of UBA6 in complex with either ATP or the ubiquitin-like protein FAT10. These results provide the foundation to study the individual roles of UBA6 towards the attachment of either ubiquitin or FAT10 to target proteins and the downstream cellular pathways with possible implications for the etiology of certain tumors.
Two-headed snake a unique find for herpetology lab
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln's herpetology lab is seeing double after securing a two-headed garter snake.
Walking robots could aid research on other planets
Today NASA uses wheeled rovers to navigate the surface of Mars and conduct planetary science, but research involving Texas A&M University scientists will test the feasibility of new surface-exploration technology: walking robots.
What the world can learn from the devastating floods in Pakistan
Born in India and having friends from Pakistan, Auroop Ganguly, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University, has been following the news about the catastrophic floods in Pakistan very closely.
Why experts say lawns should become a thing of the past
Grass is under siege in the western United States.
Dogs have died after licking a common chemotherapy cream, FDA warns
Your dog may like to lick your hand or face, but if you're using a chemotherapy cream that treats certain skin conditions, you should not allow it, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advises.
Newly identified genes may help protect crops against flooding
Researchers at Hiroshima University are closer to identifying the molecular processes underlying how floods deprive plants of oxygen—and how to engineer hardier crops.
Pipeline operators to plead no contest in Orange County oil spill and pay nearly $5 million
The Texas company operating the pipeline that caused a massive oil spill in the waters off Huntington Beach agreed to plead no contest to state environmental charges and pay nearly $5 million in fines and penalties, prosecutors announced Thursday.
South African colonial diaries are helping climate scientists reconstruct weather patterns of the past
The current climate crisis raises many questions. Some are forward-looking: how can this be fixed? Some look to the recent past: how did we get here? And some reach further back into history: are today's extreme heat waves, catastrophic droughts and floods all due to climate change? Was climate and weather this bad 100 or a few hundred years ago?
Why do we always need to wait for 'launch windows' to get a rocket to space?
Earlier this week, the Artemis I moon mission was scrubbed again; now we have to wait for a new launch window.
The long and short of a supergene for efficient pollination
Scientists have solved the century-old mystery of a supergene that causes efficient cross-pollination in flowers. The results show that sequence length variation at the DNA level is important for the evolution of two forms of flowers that differ in the length of their sexual organs. The study is published today in Current Biology.
Machine learning model can evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies for wildfire prevention
Wildfires are a growing threat in a world shaped by climate change. Now, researchers at Aalto University have developed a neural network model that can accurately predict the occurrence of fires in peatlands. They used the new model to assess the effect of different strategies for managing fire risk and identified a suite of interventions that would reduce fire incidence by 50–76%.
Team investigates sex-determination mechanisms in birds
Scientists have known that sex-determination in vertebrates happens in the germ cells, a body's reproductive cells, and the somatic cells, the cells that are not reproductive cells. Yet they have not fully understood the mechanisms by which it happens. To better grasp the process of the germ cell's sex determination, a research team has analyzed germ cells in chickens using RNA-sequencing to...
NASA's AIRS instrument records Typhoon Hinnamnor before landfall
NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard the Aqua satellite captured imagery of Typhoon Hinnamnor in the West Pacific Ocean just before 2 p.m. local time on Sept. 5. Typhoon Hinnamnor was one of the strongest in South Korea's recorded history, dropping some 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain and unleashing record winds.
Key protein relevant for viral infection and hereditary disease discovered
The starting point of the research was the search for host factors, that are necessary for RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 to replicate. For this purpose, genome-wide CRISPR/Cas knock-out screens in human cell cultures were used to investigate which cells survive after infection with certain viruses.