108 articles from FRIDAY 6.1.2023

Study details impact of prairie dog plague die-off on other species

This study, conducted from 2015-19 in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, may be the first to specifically examine the multispecies impacts of a wide-scale plague outbreak, which reduced the area covered by prairie dog colonies from nearly 25,000 acres to only about 125 acres in the study area. The 2017 outbreak was followed by abnormally high precipitation in 2018, which caused vegetation to...

Fathoming the hidden heatwaves that threaten coral reefs

The severity of marine heatwaves (MHWs) that are increasingly impacting ocean ecosystems, including vulnerable coral reefs, has primarily been assessed using remotely sensed sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), without information relevant to heating across ecosystem depths. Here, using a rare combination of SST, high-resolution in-situ temperatures, and sea level anomalies observed over 15 years near...

Decoding mega magnetic explosions outside the solar system

Neutron stars and black holes may be stellar corpses, but they are among the most active celestial objects. They produce some of the highest-energy radiation ever observed, and scientists have long puzzled over the physics that underlies the process powering their energetic emissions.

Researchers reveal how DNA unzipping machine MCM2-7 complex works, with implications for cancer therapy

A research team led by Dr. Yuanliang Zhai from the School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and his collaborators from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Institut Curie, France, has uncovered a new mechanism of the human MCM2-7 complex in regulating replication initiation, which can be used as a novel and effective anticancer strategy with the...

Physicists confirm effective wave growth theory in space

A team from Nagoya University in Japan has observed, for the first time, the energy transferring from resonant electrons to whistler-mode waves in space. Their findings offer direct evidence of previously theorized efficient growth, as predicted by the non-linear growth theory of waves. This should improve our understanding of not only space plasma physics but also space weather, a phenomenon that...

The Download: what’s next for quantum computing, and hacking circadian clocks

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. What’s next for quantum computing For years, quantum’s news cycle was dominated by headlines about record-setting systems. But this year, researchers are getting off the hype train and knuckling down to life in…

Hubble Gazes at Colorful Cluster of Scattered Stars

Portal origin URL: Hubble Gazes at Colorful Cluster of Scattered StarsPortal origin nid: 484914Published: Friday, January 6, 2023 - 08:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.Portal image: Stars fill the view. A dense, spherical...

H-bombs or chicken bones: the race to define the start of the Anthropocene

Humanity is now a ‘geological superpower’ and declaring a new epoch is critical to tackling its impact, scientists sayExactly where and when did the Anthropocene begin? Scientists are attempting to answer this epochal question in the coming months by choosing a place and time to represent the moment when humanity became a “geological superpower”, overwhelming the natural processes that...

How drugs that hack our circadian clocks might one day improve our health

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. We’ve got more than one biological clock. Beyond the one that marches onwards as we age, the circadian clock that sits in our brains keeps our bodies in rhythm. This clock helps control when we wake, eat, and sleep. But there’s more to...

Fathoming the hidden heatwaves that threaten coral reefs

From April to May 2019, the coral reefs near the French Polynesian island of Moorea in the central South Pacific Ocean suffered severe and prolonged thermal bleaching. The catastrophe occurred despite the absence of El Niño conditions that year, intriguing ocean scientists around the world.

What’s next for quantum computing

This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series, where we look across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future In 2023, progress in quantum computing will be defined less by big hardware announcements than by researchers consolidating years of hard work, getting chips to talk to one another, and shifting away from trying to make do...

Study details impact of prairie dog plague die-off on other species

When an outbreak of sylvatic plague decimated black-tailed prairie dog numbers in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in 2017, researchers saw an opportunity for a "natural experiment" to explore the impact of the rodents' die-off on the plants and other wildlife in that area of northeast Wyoming.

Cancer vaccine trials could start in England by autumn

Government deal with BioNTech paves way for early access to trials of personalised mRNA therapiesTrials of personalised cancer vaccines in England are to be speeded up after a government deal with a firm behind one of the major Covid jabs.The UK health secretary, Steve Barclay, is to sign a memorandum of understanding with BioNTech on Friday to “ensure the best possible treatments are available...