Culture
Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved unprecedented success in modifying a microbe to efficiently produce a compound of interest using a computational model and CRISPR-based gene editing.
Their approach could dramatically speed up the research and development phase for new biomanufacturing processes, and get cutting-edge bio-based products such as sustainable fuels and plastic alternatives on the shelves faster.
India's transition to clean cooking fuels may be hampered by users' belief that using firewood is better for their families' wellbeing than switching to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), a new study reveals.
Women are considered primary family cooks in rural India and those featured in the study feel that both fuels support wellbeing. Understanding these viewpoints helps to explain why India's switch from traditional solid fuels is slower than expected.
In Japan, the proportion of the population who are single has increased dramatically in the past three decades. In 2015, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 3 men in their 30s were single, and half of the singles say they are not interested in heterosexual relationships. Public health experts at the University of Tokyo found that those who are disinterested in relationships are more likely to have lower incomes and less education than their romantically minded peers, potentially pointing towards socioeconomic factors behind the stagnation of the Japanese dating market.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Similar to bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, viruses can evolve resistance to vaccines, and the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could undermine the effectiveness of vaccines that are currently under development, according to a paper published November 9 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by David Kennedy and Andrew Read from Pennsylvania State University, USA. The authors also offer recommendations to vaccine developers for minimizing the likelihood of this outcome.
What The Study Did: This randomized trial compares the effects of hydroxychloroquine versus placebo on patients' clinical status at 14 days (home, requiring noninvasive or invasive ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, hospitalized, died) among adults hospitalized with COVID-19.
Authors: Wesley H. Self, M.D., M.P.H., of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, is the corresponding author.
A pre-emptive memory management system developed by KAUST researchers can speed up data-intensive simulations by 2.5 times by eliminating delays due to slow data delivery. The development elegantly and transparently addresses one of the most stubborn bottlenecks in modern supercomputing--delivering data from memory fast enough to keep up with computations.
Nature has inspired engineers at UNSW Sydney to develop a soft fabric robotic gripper which behaves like an elephant's trunk to grasp, pick up and release objects without breaking them.
The researchers say the versatile technology could be widely applied in sectors where fragile objects are handled, such as agriculture, food and the scientific and resource exploration industries - even for human rescue operations or personal assistive devices.
Bionanotechnology Lab of Kazan Federal University works on adapting nematodes to consuming oil waste.
Co-author, Chief Research Associate Rawil Fakhrullin explains, "We've improved existing methods of biological remediation of soils. Our lab experiment was successful, and we have a new way of delivering oil-consuming bacteria into the soil."
The team wanted to find out whether parasitic nematodes can serve as "public transit" for marine bacteria which can consume and break down oil products into fatty acids.
Tokyo, Japan - The development and progression of cancer is a complicated process that occurs when cells in the body grow out of control. Many different mechanisms and pathways that directly affect cell proliferation have been uncovered. Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have made an additional discovery; a unique anti-cancer function for an enzyme previously believed to only influence RNA molecule structure.
Scientists around the world have been working to grow arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi without their host plants because they can be used as organic fertilizer in agriculture and forestry. AM fungi help plants receive nutrients from the soil through a network that is efficient and far more reaching than their own roots can provide. A group led by graduate students Yuta Sugiura, Rei Akiyama and Associate Professor Katsuharu Saito of Shinshu University successfully demonstrated that AM fungi can be grown asymbiotically when given myristate as a carbon and energy source.
Among the most damaging natural hazards, earthquakes are still today one of the least understood phenomena in Earth Sciences. Earthquakes happen when rocks on either side of a tectonic fault slide. The sliding, however, does not occur along the whole fault at once but starts at one point, the hypocenter, and then spreads over the entire fault at a speed known as the "rupture speed" of the earthquake. Geophysicists are particularly interested in rupture speeds because the faster they are, the stronger the seismic waves and therefore the greater the damage caused.
A researcher at University of Limerick in Ireland has played a key role in examining some of the secrets behind Game of Thrones.
What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? How has a story as complex as the one in George R.R. Martin's novels enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives?
Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland - including UL's Dr Padraig MacCarron - came together to unravel 'A Song of Ice and Fire', the books on which the TV series is based.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - African Americans who attend Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs) may be at lower risk for health problems later in adulthood compared to African Americans who attend predominantly white institutions, a new study suggests.
DURHAM, N.C. - Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a new way of modeling how potentially beneficial packages of DNA called plasmids can circulate and accumulate through a complex environment that includes many bacterial species. The work has also allowed the team to develop a new factor dubbed the "persistence potential" that, once measured and computed, can predict whether or not a plasmid will continue to thrive in a given population or gradually fade into oblivion.
When and how did the first animals appear? Science has long sought an answer. Uppsala University researchers and colleagues in Denmark have now jointly found, in Greenland, embryo-like microfossils up to 570 million years old, revealing that organisms of this type were dispersed throughout the world. The study is published in Communications Biology.