Culture
The leaf vasculature of plants plays a key role in transporting solutes from where they are made - for example from the plant cells driving photosynthesis - to where they are stored or used. Sugars and amino acids are transported from the leaves to the roots and the seeds via the conductive pathways of the phloem.
A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found a 25% increase in food insufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food insufficiency, the most extreme form of food insecurity, occurs when families do not have enough food to eat. Among the nationally representative sample of 63,674 adults in the US, Black and Latino Americans had over twice the risk of food insufficiency compared to White Americans.
Through the centuries, scientists and non-scientists alike have looked at the night sky and felt excitement, intrigue, and overwhelming mystery while pondering questions about how our universe came to be, and how humanity developed and thrived in this exact place and time. Early astronomers painstakingly studied stars' subtle movements in the night sky to try and determine how our planet moves in relation to other celestial bodies. As technology has increased, so too has our understanding of how the universe works and our relative position within it.
A shadow over the promising inhaled interferon beta COVID-19 therapy has been cleared with the discovery that although it appears to increase levels of ACE2 protein - coronavirus' key entry point into nose and lung cells - it predominantly increases levels of a short version of that protein, which the virus cannot bind to.
The virus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2, enters nose and lung cells through binding of its spike protein to the cell surface protein angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2).
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Engineers at MIT and Imperial College London have developed a new way to generate tough, functional materials using a mixture of bacteria and yeast similar to the "kombucha mother" used to ferment tea.
Many Sub-Saharan countries have a desperate shortage of surgeons, and to ensure that as many patients as possible can be treated, some operations are carried out by medical professionals who are not specialists in surgery.
New York, NY--January 11, 2021--Like a longtime couple who can predict each other's every move, a Columbia Engineering robot has learned to predict its partner robot's future actions and goals based on just a few initial video frames.
The Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau is home to headwaters of over 10 major Asian rivers. These glacier-based water systems, also known as the Asian Water Towers, will have to struggle to quench the thirst of downstream communities despite more river runoff brought on by a warmer climate, according to a recent study published in Nature Climate Change.
We are fascinated by machines that can control cars, compose symphonies, or defeat people at chess, Go, or Jeopardy! While more progress is being made all the time in Artificial Intelligence (AI), some scientists and philosophers warn of the dangers of an uncontrollable superintelligent AI. Using theoretical calculations, an international team of researchers, including scientists from the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, shows that it would not be possible to control a superintelligent AI.
When an accident occurs, the reactions of bystanders are important. Researchers have studied whether laypeople realise the severity of the situation when someone in their proximity begins to bleed, and whether they can estimate how much the person is bleeding. The results show a discrepancy related to the victim's gender: for a woman losing blood, both blood loss and life-threatening injuries were underestimated. The study has been published in the scientific journal PLoS One.
During April 2020, while the UK was in full lockdown, there was a drop of more than a third in the number of people seeking help for mental illness or self-harm according to research involving 14 million people registered at general practices across the four nations of the UK which was published today in The Lancet Public Health*.
To perform calculations, quantum computers need qubits to act as elementary building blocks that process and store information. Now, physicists have produced a new type of qubit that can be switched from a stable idle mode to a fast calculation mode. The concept would also allow a large number of qubits to be combined into a powerful quantum computer, as researchers from the University of Basel and TU Eindhoven have reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Leading research at Newcastle University has been used to shape how dentistry can be carried out safely during the Covid-19 pandemic by mitigating the risks of dental aerosols.
It is well known that coronavirus can spread in airborne particles, moving around rooms to infect people, and this has been a major consideration when looking into patient and clinician safety.
Research, published in the Journal of Dentistry, has led the way in helping shape national clinical guidance for the profession to work effectively under extremely challenging circumstances.
Heidelberg/Germany, 11 January 2021 - Development of an in vitro human-derived tissue model for studying virus infection and disease progression in the alveolar cells of the lungs responsible for oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange with the blood might enable the study of possible therapies for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) triggered by SARS-CoV-2.
Two billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was still very young. However, thousands of huge galaxies, rich in stars and dust, were already formed. An international study, led by SISSA - Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, now explains how this was possible. Scientists combined observational and theoretical methods to identify the physical processes behind their evolution and, for the first time, found evidence for a rapid growth of dust due to a high concentration of metals in the distant Universe.