Brain
At least twice in Earth's history, nearly the entire planet was encased in a sheet of snow and ice. These dramatic "Snowball Earth" events occurred in quick succession, somewhere around 700 million years ago, and evidence suggests that the consecutive global ice ages set the stage for the subsequent explosion of complex, multicellular life on Earth.
The composition of Antarctic micrometeorites and other tiny but precious rocks such as those from space missions--is really hard to analyze without some sample loss. But a new technique should make it easier, cheaper and faster to characterize them while preserving more of the sample. The findings were published on the peer reviewed journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science on May 21.
Despite the fact that global immunisation programmes are now reaching more people than ever, about 1.5 million children still die every year from diseases that vaccination could have prevented. Vaccination is also less effective in low-?income countries than in high-?income countries, although it is not yet clear why.
Babies have smaller iron reserves
Researchers have for the first time measured a fundamental property of magnets called magnon polarisation -- and in the process, are making progress towards building low-energy devices.
The existence of magnon polarisation has been a theoretical idea in physics for almost 100 years but no one has proved its existence.
BINGHAMTON, NY -- Teenagers who tend to pay more attention to sad faces are more likely to develop depression, but specifically within the context of stress, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Researchers at Binghamton University, led by graduate student Cope Feurer and Professor of Psychology Brandon Gibb, aimed to examine whether attentional biases to emotional stimuli, assessed via eye tracking, serve as a marker of risk for depression for teenagers.
In the U.S., it is estimated that approximately 19 percent of all adults have a diagnosable mental illness. Clinic-based services for mental health may fall short of meeting patient needs for many reasons including limited hours, difficulty accessing care and cost. In the first randomized controlled trial of its kind, a research team investigated the impact of a texting intervention as an add-on to a mental health treatment program versus one without texting.
Governments urgently need to understand public priorities before they roll out track and trace, according to new research.
Base editors, which enable production of highly efficient targeted point mutations in genomic DNA without causing double-stranded DNA breaks, hold great promise for gene therapy in human disease and trait improvement in crop plants.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Is there an unbreakable code?
The question has been central to cryptography for thousands of years, and lies at the heart of efforts to secure private information on the internet. In a new paper, Cornell Tech researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken - as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness.
PULLMAN, Wash. - An endangered aquatic insect that lives in icy streams fed by glaciers might not mind if the water grows warmer due to climate change.
A study published in Global Change Biology on July 22 found that mountain stoneflies can tolerate warmer water temperatures at least temporarily. In fact, they might even be stressed in their current extremely cold environments.
Washington, DC - July 24, 2020 - Research presented at ASM Microbe Online found that 43% of Staphylococcus bacteria found on exercise equipment in university gyms were ampicillin-resistant, with 73% of those isolates being resistant to multiple additional drugs. The late Xin Fan, Ph.D., and her student Chase A. Weikel of West Chester University (WCU) conducted the research in cooperation with WCU's John M. Pisciotta, Ph.D., associate professor of Biology.
Cell division is a fundamental process that organisms need to reproduce, grow, and make repairs. But when an error disrupts this complex biological process, cellular abnormalities can lead to diseases, such as cancer, where cells are enabled to grow and divide out of control.
WASHINGTON, July 23, 2020--A new analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ finds that without immediate and sustained action, the annual flow of plastic into the ocean could nearly triple by 2040. But the study also identifies solutions that could cut this volume by more than 80 per cent using technologies that are available today, if key decision-makers are willing to make system-wide changes.
BOSTON - New genome-editing technologies developed by researchers in J. Keith Joung's laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have the potential to help understand disease-associated genetic mutations that are based on C-to-G (cytosine to guanine) single base changes. The new base editors are also designed to minimize unintended ("off-target") mutations that could potentially cause undesirable side effects.
Chestnut Hill, Mass. (7/24/2020) - Converting carbon dioxide to methanol, a potentially renewable alternative fuel, offers an opportunity to simultaneously form an alternative fuel and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.
Inspired by naturally occurring processes, a team of Boston College chemists used a multi-catalyst system to convert carbon dioxide to methanol at the lowest temperatures reported with high activity and selectivity, the researchers reported in a recent online edition of the journal Chem.