Brain
In response to future fossil fuel burning, climate computer models simulate a pronounced warming in the tropical oceans. This warming can influence the El Niño phenomenon and shift weather and rainfall patterns across the globe. Despite being robustly simulated in computer models of the climate system, the origin of this accelerated tropical warming has remained a mystery. A new study published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change concludes that climate change outside the tropics is the main culprit.
Deep below the Earth's surface lies a thick rocky layer called the mantle, which makes up the majority of our planet's volume. While Earth's mantle is too deep for humans to observe directly, certain meteorites can provide clues to this unreachable layer.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Of three possible ways for people to deliver the life-saving antidote naloxone to a person experiencing an opioid overdose, the use of a nasal spray was the quickest and easiest according to research conducted by William Eggleston, clinical assistant professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York, and colleagues at SUNY Upstate Medical University.
Infrared (IR) thermography is used to determine the temperature of humans and objects with high precision and without interfering with the system. A single image taken with an IR camera can capture the same amount of information as hundreds to millions of thermocouples (temperature sensors) at once. Furthermore, modern IR cameras can achieve fast acquisition frequencies of over 50 Hz, which allows the investigation of dynamic phenomena with high resolution.
Uniting structure and function of synapses is challenging: Function is studied in living tissue, measuring electrical signals at millisecond precision with electrophysiology, while the observation of fine structure at nanometer scale requires tissue to be fixed for electron microscopy.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists found benefits of insect leaf-wounding in fruit and vegetable production. Stress responses created in the fruits and vegetables initiated an increase in antioxidant compounds prior to harvest, making them healthier for human consumption.
AMHERST, Mass. - Zeolites crystals, used among other things for refining petroleum to gasoline and biomass into biofuels, are the most-used catalysts by weight on the planet, and discovering mechanisms of how they form has been of intense interest to the chemical industry and related researchers, say chemist Scott Auerbach and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They hope their advance on a new way to understand zeolite structure and vibrations leads to new, tailor-made zeolites for use in sophisticated new applications.
They are small, almost transparent, similar to jellyfish, and they occur in the ocean in huge quantities. Cnidaria, Ctenophora and Urochordata belong to the gelatinous plankton communities that are omnipresent in the ocean and are among the primary food sources for more highly developed marine organisms. Thus, they have a very important function in the marine ecosystem. Another one is their contribution to the marine carbon cycle, as they bind large amounts of carbon which is transported into the deep ocean.
Montreal, January 8 2020 -- About one in ten women in Québec will suffer from depression during pregnancy. Without treatment, the illness carries risks for both mother and child. Yet antidepressants are not without consequences for fetal development. The team of professor Cathy Vaillancourt at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) is studying the effects of these drugs in order to identify the least harmful ones.
A law passed in Japan in 1992 aimed to improve urban air quality by banning vehicles that violated certain emission standards from being registered in designated areas. A new study published in Contemporary Economic Policy provides evidence that the intervention reduced emissions, contributing to air quality improvements in metropolitan regions.
While regular fish have flat scales, shark 'scales' look more like teeth. But their denticles also cover their body and in particular influence their ability to swim. The denticles are made up of a compounds containing calcium.
The increasing amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere due to climate change has also led to a higher concentration of CO2 in the oceans. The CO2 dissolves in the seawater to create carbonic acid that acidifies the oceans.
MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Private well owners should test water quality annually, according to a recent Kansas State University study that revealed nitrate levels in shallow wells above U.S. Environment Protection Act standards.
"The changes we measured in the Great Bend Prairie Aquifer appear to be large relative to changes observed in a national study by the U.S. Geological Survey," said Matthew Kirk, Kansas State University associate professor of geology and the study's principal investigator.
Think of the blade of a wind turbine or a part of an airplane. After a heavy storm, you want to investigate whether it has been hit by hail stones or loaded beyond a certain threshold, even if no clear damage is visible. Researchers from Ghent University in Belgium have developed a pressure-sensitive light-emitting material that can visualize where such a hit occurred, up to three days after the event. To achieve this, they developed a so-called mechanoluminescent material which shows specific sensitivities to pressure (or mechanical action) and infrared radiation.
In 2019, when Wolf Cukier finished his junior year at Scarsdale High School in New York, he joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a summer intern. His job was to examine variations in star brightness captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and uploaded to the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project.
The new year means it's time to set resolutions for 2020 and new research from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggests running a marathon for the first time could have several health benefits. The study found that for first-time marathon runners, training and completion of the marathon was associated with reductions in blood pressure and aortic stiffening in healthy participants that were equivalent to a four-year reduction in vascular age, with the greatest benefits seen in older, slower male marathon runners with higher baseline blood pressure.