173 articles from TUESDAY 4.10.2022

Great Salt Lake on path to hyper-salinity, mirroring Iranian lake, new research shows

Starved for freshwater, the Great Salt Lake is getting saltier. The lake is losing sources of freshwater input to agriculture, urban growth and drought, and the drawdown is causing salt concentrations to spike beyond even the tolerance of brine shrimp and brine flies, according to Wayne Wurtsbaugh from Watershed Sciences in the Quinney College of Natural Resources.

15 spectacular photos from the Dark Energy Camera

From high atop a mountain in the Chilean Andes, the Dark Energy Camera has snapped more than one million exposures of the southern sky. The images have captured around 2.5 billion astronomical objects, including galaxies and galaxy clusters, stars, comets, asteroids, dwarf planets and supernovae.

How the covid pop-up window is wreaking havoc on daily life in China

Welcome back! Hope you are not stuck in highway traffic if you are enjoying the National Day holiday in China.  Though maybe it’s still better than staying at home—after all, travel feels like such a luxury in China today. While the rest of the world drops its remaining covid-related travel restrictions, even a short trip in China is plagued by flight cancellations, mandatory...

Microbiologists improve taste of beer

Belgian investigators have improved the flavor of contemporary beer by identifying and engineering a gene that is responsible for much of the flavor of beer and some other alcoholic drinks. The research appears in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Testing: Space-bound US-European water mission passes finals

Before any NASA mission is launched, the spacecraft goes through weeks of harsh treatment. It's strapped to a big table that shakes as hard as the pounding of a rocket launch. It's bombarded with louder noise than a stadium rock concert. It's frozen, baked, and irradiated in a vacuum chamber that simulates the extremes of space. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission (SWOT), a...

Video footage provides first detailed observation of orcas hunting white sharks in South Africa

The first direct evidence of orcas killing white sharks in South Africa has been captured by both a helicopter and drone pilot, and a new open-access paper published today in The Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology presents both sets of video footage, which provide new evidence that orcas are capable of pursuing, capturing and incapacitating white sharks. One predation event was filmed...

Join the NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge 2022: Trees in a Changing Climate

Participate in the NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge from Oct 11-Nov 11, 2022!  Join us on Oct. 11 for a kick-off webinar! (Credit:  Heather Mortimer, NASA GLOBE Observer Team) The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program invites you to take part in our upcoming NASA GLOBE Trees Challenge 2022: Trees in a Changing Climate from Oct 11-Nov 11, 2022.  Using the...

Coral select algae partnerships to ease environmental stress

Corals live symbiotically with a variety of microscopic algae that provide most of the energy corals require, and some algae can make coral more resilient to heat stress. In assessing one of the main reef builders in Hawai'i, Montipora capitata (rice coral), researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa found that the symbiont community in those corals varied significantly in different...

Coral select algae partnerships to ease environmental stress

Corals live symbiotically with a variety of microscopic algae that provide most of the energy corals require, and some algae can make coral more resilient to heat stress. In assessing one of the main reef builders in Hawai'i, Montipora capitata or rice coral, researchers found that the symbiont community in those corals varied significantly in different parts of Kaneohe Bay.

Protein family shows how life adapted to oxygen

Cornell scientists have created an evolutionary model that connects organisms living in today's oxygen-rich atmosphere to a time, billions of years ago, when Earth's atmosphere had little oxygen—by analyzing ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs), a family of proteins used by all free-living organisms and many viruses to repair and replicate DNA.

New genetic variation from old and exotic varieties for environmentally friendly wheat cultivation

Gene banks worldwide make an important contribution to the conservation of biological diversity. In the Federal Ex situ Gene Bank at the IPK Leibniz Institute alone, more than 150,000 old varieties are preserved. In addition to negative traits, old and exotic varieties possess many valuable gene variants that have been lost in modern varieties but may be crucial for plant production in the future....

Multi-organ chip detects dangerous nanoparticles

What happens when we breathe in nanoparticles emitted by, for example, a laser printer? Could these nanoparticles damage the respiratory tract or perhaps even other organs? To answer these questions, Fraunhofer researchers are developing the "NanoCube" exposure device.

Manufacturing microscopic octopuses with a 3D printer

Although just cute little creatures at first glance, the microscopic geckos and octopuses fabricated by 3D laser printing in the molecular engineering labs at Heidelberg University could open up new opportunities in fields such as microrobotics or biomedicine.

'Kipferl': Guiding the defense against jumping genes

A large part of our DNA is made up of selfish repetitive DNA elements, some of which can jump from one site in the genome to another, potentially damaging the genome. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) describe how different types of repetitive DNA elements are controlled by the same silencing mechanism in fruit fly ovaries.

Bad roads reduce trade volumes by 18%

Economists from HSE University and the Vienna University of Economics and Business have figured out why, with all else being equal, trading goods across borders can be more expensive than trading the same goods within state borders. They argue that one of the reasons is underdeveloped infrastructure in border regions. Their study was published in the Journal of Urban Economics.

Ancient chemistry may explain why living things use ATP as the universal energy currency

A simple two-carbon compound may have been a crucial player in the evolution of metabolism before the advent of cells, according to a new study published October 4 in the open access journal PLOS Biology, by Nick Lane and colleagues of University College London, U.K. The finding potentially sheds light on the earliest stages of prebiotic biochemistry, and suggests how ATP came to be the universal...

Study: Black prosecutors are more punitive toward Black and Latinx defendants

Prosecutors exert considerable power in the criminal justice system, and while defendants are predominantly Black and Latinx, prosecutors are overwhelmingly White. Despite calls for addressing racial disparities in this field, we know little about whether recruiting minority prosecutors would yield more equitable outcomes for defendants.

Researchers' flow platform advances water harvesting technology

The researchers' unique platform solves a key problem in water harvesting: Collected water droplets form a thermal barrier that prevents further condensation, so they need to be removed from the surface as rapidly as possible to make room for more harvesting. The team addressed this problem by developing a platform with a unique shape. They cut a series of mushroom-like channels -- smaller in...

'Kipferl': Guiding the defense against jumping genes

Researchers describe how different types of repetitive DNA elements are controlled by the same silencing mechanism in fruit fly ovaries. Central to their findings is an uncharacterized protein that the researchers named 'Kipferl', which ensures the effective control of jumping genes. The findings suggest that different selfish elements compete for the host genome defense system and that Kipferl...

New algorithms help four-legged robots run in the wild

A new system of algorithms enables four-legged robots to walk and run on challenging terrain while avoiding both static and moving obstacles. The work brings researchers a step closer to building robots that can perform search and rescue missions or collect information in places that are too dangerous or difficult for humans.

Clinical trial of phage therapy for cystic fibrosis begins

Enrollment has begun in an early-stage clinical trial evaluating bacteriophage therapy in adults with cystic fibrosis (CF) who carry Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) in their lungs. The trial is evaluating whether the bacteriophage, or 'phage,' therapy is safe and able to reduce the amount of bacteria in the lungs of volunteers.

A quick look at the 2022 Nobel Prizes

The 2022 Nobel Prizes are being announced this week after secret deliberations by the award committees. Here's a look at which prizes have been announced so far, which ones are coming up and what's next for the winners.