153 articles from THURSDAY 13.10.2022

Can shifting social norms help mitigate climate change?

Climate change is the result of many human activities, from carbon emissions to deforestation, and it will take multiple and varied interventions to mitigate it, including legislation, regulation, and market-based solutions implemented at local, national, and global levels. Demand-side factors, such as changes in social norms, can also help by creating political pressure for increased climate...

NASA's Lucy spacecraft prepares to swing by Earth

On Oct. 16, at 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA's Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the Earth's atmosphere, passing a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface. By swinging past Earth on the first anniversary of its launch, Lucy will gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.

Machine learning takes hold in nuclear physics

Scientists have begun turning to new tools offered by machine learning to help save time and money. In the past several years, nuclear physics has seen a flurry of machine learning projects come online, with many papers published on the subject. Now, 18 authors from 11 institutions summarize this explosion of artificial intelligence-aided work in "Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics," a paper...

NASA's Swift and Fermi missions detect exceptional cosmic blast

Astronomers around the world are captivated by an unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation that swept over Earth on Sunday, Oct. 9. The emission came from a gamma-ray burst (GRB)—the most powerful class of explosions in the universe—that ranks among the most luminous events known.

Investigating gender equity: Researchers analyze gender distribution of institutional leadership roles

To accelerate gender parity in the field of wilderness medicine, in which women are significantly underrepresented, a team of researchers analyzed the gender distribution of key leadership roles at the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) and among authors and reviewers of content published in WMS's official journal, Wilderness & Environmental Medicine (WEM). Their findings, which document past and...

Research team develops a theory to improve the energy efficiency of electronic devices

The University of Alicante Quantum Chemistry group has predicted and published the existence of a new natural phenomenon in matter-radiation interaction, which has recently been experimentally confirmed. This finding is the subject of the review that the group's researcher Juan Carlos Sancho García has submitted to the journal Nature, having been invited to publish in its "News & Views" section.

Mathematical model could bring us closer to effective stem cell therapies

Stem cells are the very definition of potential: they have contained in their DNA the potential to become virtually any cell in the body. Scientists have been working for decades to harness this power to use as medicine—think replacing damaged cells with brand new ones—that could treat or even cure everything from diabetes to heart disease.

The missing link: Fatty acid metabolism impacts plant immunity

That healthy salad you ate for lunch contains fatty acids—surprised? Fatty acids, lipids, and fats in our food may sound undesirable, but they are foundational to human life and to the plants we consume. Their interaction with certain proteins helps regulate plant growth.

A molecular multi-qubit model system for quantum computing

Molecules could make useful systems for quantum computers, but they must contain individually addressable, interacting quantum bit centers. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of researchers has now presented a molecular model with three different coupled qubit centers. As each center is spectroscopically addressable, quantum information processing (QIP) algorithms could be developed for this...

Improved adaptation: Bacteria can profit from the genetic material of other bacteria

Bacteria can exchange genetic material among themselves—even across species. Rather than being passed on from ancestor to offspring, genetic information is exchanged among organisms living at the same time. By systematically characterizing the fitness effects of this so-called horizontal gene transfer, researchers at the University of Cologne's Institute of Biological Physics have found that...

Flatworm-inspired medical adhesives stop blood loss

Every year around 2 million people die worldwide from hemorrhaging or blood loss. Uncontrolled hemorrhaging accounts for more than 30% of trauma deaths. To stop the bleeding, doctors often apply pressure to the wound and seal the site with medical glue. But what happens when applying pressure is difficult or could make things worse? Or the surface of the wound is too bloody for glue? Drawing...

Seismic sensing reveals flood damage potential

Rapidly evolving floods are a major and growing hazard worldwide. Currently, their onset and evolution is hard to identify using existing systems. However, seismic sensors already in place to detect earthquakes could be a solution to this problem. Researchers show that a seismometer can sense a flood, such as the devastating one that hit Germany in July 2021, up to 1.5 km away. This could act as...

Distinct brain networks associated with risk and resilience in depression

A new study that links the location of brain injury to levels of depression in patients following the injury has identified two distinct brain networks; one associated with increased depression symptoms and one associated with decreased depression symptoms. The large-scale study expands on previous findings and suggests that these brain networks might be potential targets for neuromodulation...

Developing self-complementary macrocycles with ingenious molecules

Virus capsids can be formed through the self-complementary assembly of a single class of protein molecules. However, mimicking nature by making higher-ordered structures from artificial molecules has proven difficult to achieve. A new assembly method can produce stable and controllable supramolecular structures, from hexamers to cuboctahedrons that include 6 and 108 monomer units, respectively,...