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Researchers from NUS Engineering have developed a new method to increase the rate of an important chemical reaction known as hydrogenation by more than 5 times. Hydrogenation is used in the production of everyday items like plastics, fertilisers, and pharmaceuticals. The NUS team's novel approach is a more direct and effective method that can lead to higher yields for industries and lower environmental impacts.

Researchers from University Jena, the University of California Berkeley and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris use intense laser light in the XUV spectrum to generate second harmonics on a laboratory scale. As the team writes in Science Advances, they were able to achieve this effect for the first time with a laser source on a laboratory scale and thus investigate the surface of a titanium sample down to the atomic level.

South Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has presented the evaporation-driven transport-control of small molecules in gas-permeable and low-aspect-ratio nanoslits, wherein both the diffusive and advective mass transports of solutes are affected by solvent evaporation through the nanoslit walls.

Foehns -- warm, dry, downslope winds descending the lee side of mountain slopes -- cause hazardous hot weather in parts of Japan. A new University of Tsukuba study presents the first comprehensive climatological analysis of Japan's south foehns on the Toyama Plain. Most foehns were caused by a dynamical mechanism and occurred while an extratropical cyclone was over the Sea of Japan, although some occurred with an anticyclone over Japan, and hazardous high-temperature foehns occurred with typhoons near Japan.

Researchers from SMART found that e-scooters provide an important alternative mode of transit in urban areas, with growing utility as a micro-mobility service in Singapore. The researchers' study revealed several implications for more effective harnessing and regulation of e-scooters as a mode of transit, including where to deploy e-scooters to satisfy demand unmet by other modes of transit, and how best to strike a balance between private operators and public welfare.

'Pretty' parrots are more likely to be snatched up for Indonesia's illegal wildlife trade, a new study reveals.The findings not only expose the key drivers behind the country's illegal trade in these birds, but offer lessons for the potential emergence and spread of infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans.

The high-power and long-pulse operation of tokamak will cause excessive particle flux and heat load on the divertor target plate. The surface of the target plate will be subject to intense sputtering, and the thermal load of the target plate will exceed the material/component limit.

n international team, led by researchers from UPF David Andreu and Rafael Maldonado, has developed a peptides family that allows delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main component of Cannabis sativa, to fight pain in mice without side effects.

An international research group has now made significant progress in the further development of compact plasma accelerators, considered a promising technology for the future: With two complementary experiments at HZDR and LMU, the team was able to combine two different plasma technologies for the first time and build a novel hybrid accelerator. The concept could advance accelerator development and, in the long term, become the basis of highly brilliant X-ray sources for research and medicine.

A study led by scientists at the UAB and conducted with mice models reveals how chromosomal reorganizations alter the genome's three-dimensional organisation in germ cells. The study, published in Nature Communications, opens new research paths into the genetic origin of infertility.

Do we have free choice or are our decisions predetermined? Is physical reality local, or does what we do here and now have an immediate influence on events elsewhere? The answers to these questions are sought by physicists in the Bell inequalities. It turns out that free choice and local realism can be skilfully measured and compared. The results obtained reveal surprising relationships of a fundamental and universal nature, going far beyond quantum mechanics itself.

Social learning in orangutans is shaped by their sex. Young males learn their foraging skills from immigrant individuals, while young females get their skills by observing their mothers and other residents in the area. These different sets of ecological knowledge help secure their survival.

The COVID-19 death rate for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) is higher than the general population in several states across the U.S., according to a new study published in Disability and Health Journal.

By meta-analysis, experimentally determined COVID-19 virus T cell epitopes were compared with sequences of common cold coronaviruses (CCCoVs). Only one CCCoV-matching epitope was repeatedly identified as highly immunogenic, namely the CD8+ T cell epitope VYIGDPAQL ("VYI" peptide) if presented by the MHC class I allele HLA-A*24:02. Approximately 60% of Japanese individuals carry this allele, which in combination with previous CCCoV infections might help explain the surprisingly low prevalence of COVID-19 in Japan.

In spite of decades of research, cancer remains an enigma. Conventional wisdom holds that cancer is driven by random mutations that create aberrant cells that run amok in the body. In a new paper published this week in the journal BioEssays, Arizona and Australian researchers challenge this model by proposing that cancer is a type of genetic throwback, that progresses via a series of reversions to ancestral forms of life.

A new analysis conducted by the West Health Policy Center and released by its Council for Informed Drug Spending Analysis (CIDSA) estimates that the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3) could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in lower commercial health insurance costs by 2030.

A study released in STEM CELLS indicates that blocking transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGFβ1) could improve hematopoiesis in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (Nasdaq:ADAP), a leader in cell therapy to treat cancer, will report initial data from its Phase 2 SPEARHEAD-1 trial, with afamitresgene autoleucel (afami-cel, formerly ADP-A2M4), at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) congress.

A new study shows that population and climate change will exacerbate the challenge of meeting nutrition and food needs over the next 30 years, especially in Africa south of the Sahara, but also that increased investment of $25.5 billion annually would more than offset the negative impacts of climate change.

Normally, mountain forests are among the most diverse habitats in alpine regions. Yet, as a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute discovered in the Tibetan Plateau, the higher, treeless areas are home to far more species.