94 articles from FRIDAY 4.11.2022

As Musk reshapes Twitter, academics ponder taking flight

Mark McCaughrean has been moving his online home in steps. McCaughrean, an astronomer at the European Space Agency, has had a profile on Twitter for many years. In spring, when Elon Musk first suggested buying the social media platform used by nearly 240 million worldwide, many were concerned that such a purchase would increase the nastiness of Twitter and allow misinformation to drown...

Fecal microbial transplants show lack of predictability when no prior antibiotic treatment is given to recipient

Fecal microbial transplants have been given to alter a recipient's metabolism to reduce obesity or alter immunity to fight cancer, and in those transplants recipients are not given suppressive antibiotics to eliminate the microbial community prior to the transplant. Researchers now report there is a lack of predictability for fecal microbial transplants to change the gut microbial community to...

Team adds powerful new dimension to phenotyping next-gen bioenergy crop

Miscanthus is one of the most promising perennial crops for bioenergy production since it is able to produce high yields with a small environmental footprint. This versatile grass has great potential to perform even better, as much less effort has been put into improving it through breeding relative to established commodity crops such as maize or soybean.

Third Time’s a Charm? NASA Sets a New Date to Launch Its Mega-Moon Rocket

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket has been in development for more than 18 years and has never flown so much as an inch. But that might change on Nov. 14 at 12:07 a.m. ET, when the massive 32-story machine blasts off for a 25-day mission around the moon. That mission, known as Artemis 1, will be preparatory to a similar crewed mission that could be flown as early as 2024. Twice...

China Sends Yet Another Rocket Stage Hurtling Uncontrollably Toward Earth

There’s a lot that China would like you to pay attention to when it comes to its just completed Tiangong (“Palace in the Sky”) space station—and there’s one thing the country would very much like you to ignore. On the upside, there’s the thousand or more scientific studies that crew members hope to carry out over the decade or so the station will be in...

Great leaps forward in vaccine history | Letter

Lucy Ward on the roles played by Edward Jenner and Thomas Dimsdale in the development of inoculation against diseaseYour article on challenge trials raises fascinating questions, as the world seeks to address the risk of new pandemics (Should we give people diseases in order to learn how to cure them?, 31 October). It refers to Edward Jenner, who did indeed “challenge” his patient James...

Fluorescence achieved in light-driven molecular motors

Rotary molecular motors were first created in 1999, in the laboratory of Ben Feringa, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Groningen. These motors are driven by light. For many reasons, it would be good to be able to make these motor molecules visible. The best way to do this is to make them fluoresce. However, combining two light-mediated functions in a single molecule is quite...

Examining why parties in conflict cease fighting

The path to peace usually leads through a ceasefire. In an international project, ETH Zurich researchers have shown the conditions under which parties to civil wars are willing to stop fighting—and why they decide to do so.

Parallel alignment of dressing fibers accelerates wound healing

A team of researchers from Singapore has reported the development of a skin-mimicking scaffold by parallelly aligning nanofibers made up of a mixture of polycaprolactone (PCL) and gelatin that enhances wound healing. Their research has recently been published in Advanced Fiber Materials.

Europe is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world

Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years—the highest of any continent in the world. As the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate change impacts will affect society, economies and ecosystems, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Fire in the Amazon is associated more with agricultural burning and deforestation than with drought

A Brazilian study shows that the number of fires detected in the entire Amazon region between 2003 and 2020 was influenced more by uncontrolled human use of fire than by drought. According to the researchers, burning of vegetation to prepare areas for pasture and deforestation rather than extreme water deficits were the main cause of fire in most years with large numbers of fires.

'Click' chemistry may help treat dogs with bone cancer, study finds

In September, researchers from California and Denmark were awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of "click" chemistry, a process in which molecules snap together like LEGO, making them a potentially more efficient transportation device in delivering pharmaceuticals to cancer tumors.

Spin photonics to move forward with new anapole probe

Topological nontrivial spin textures are intriguing in various physical systems, ranging from high energy to condensed matter physics. The magnetic Skyrmions formed by a swirling magnetization in magnetic materials have potential applications in high-density magnetic information storage and transfer.

Common path principle improves shape metrology of complex precision optics

In order to push the performance of optical systems, aspheric- and freeform surfaces are used in state-of-the-art optic design for correcting aberrations. The production of these complex-shaped surfaces requires measuring the surface deviation from the nominal design. There are a lot of optical measurement methods, such as pointwise and stitching methods.

Zero deforestation in the Amazon is now possible—here's what needs to happen

Jair Bolsonaro has been defeated in the Brazilian election against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ("Lula") to the rejoicing of scientists, environmentalists, and human rights activists in Brazil and beyond. What happens in South America's largest country is globally significant since, among other reasons, the country contains most of the world's largest tropical forest.

Why a chain of tiny Pacific islands wants an international court opinion on responsibility for the climate crisis

Small island states are losing their patience with big polluting nations as they suffer the devastating impacts of climate change. Without significant movement at the forthcoming COP27 climate talks in Egypt, a pivotal vote at the next UN general assembly meeting, brought by the tiny Pacific islands of Vanuatu, could open the floodgates to international climate litigation.

Gaining structural insight into the influenza virus

A team of scientists at University of Oxford have worked with multiple techniques at Diamond Light Source, to solve the structure of the influenza replication machinery and to determine how it interacts with cellular proteins. This research furthers our understanding of influenza replication and how the virus adapts to different hosts.