Culture
In a new study, published in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists provide the first conclusive evidence directly linking deep Earth's water cycle and its expressions with magmatic productivity and earthquake activity.
Water (H2O) and other volatiles (e.g. CO2 and sulphur) that are cycled through the deep Earth have played a key role in the evolution of our planet, including in the formation of continents, the onset of life, the concentration of mineral resources, and the distribution of volcanoes and earthquakes.
An exoplanet the size of Neptune has been discovered around the young star AU Microscopii, thanks in part to the work of Jonathan Gagné, a former iREx Banting postdoctoral researcher who is now a scientific advisor at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium.
Astrophysicists have been searching for exoplanets in this system, a unique laboratory for studying planetary formation, for more than a decade. The breakthrough, announced today in Nature, was made possible in part by NASA's TESS and Spitzer space telescopes.
New research published today in Nature reports the discovery of a planet about the size of Neptune orbiting an especially young, nearby star. The planet, named AU Mic b, is orbiting AU Microscopii, which is relatively close to the Milky Way at 31.9 light years away. AU Microscopii is also "only" 20 or 30 million years old--at least 150 times younger than our Sun.
Cannabidiol, a type of medicinal cannabis, may reduce severe behavioural problems in children and adolescents with an intellectual disability a new study has found.
The pilot study, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, recorded a clinically significant change in participants' irritability, aggression, self-injury, and yelling. The intervention was also found to be safe and well-tolerated by most study participants.
A team of engineers and physicians at the University of California San Diego has developed a low-cost, easy-to-use emergency ventilator for COVID-19 patients that is built around a ventilator bag usually found in ambulances.
Understanding how planets form is one of the main challenges scientists face when placing our own and other planetary systems in context. Planets are thought to form from the disk-shaped clouds of gas and dust that surround newborn stars, but this process has never been observed. Astronomers normally only observe planets after they have already formed and have to deduce the pathways that that led to their final states.
The magnetic structures resulting from a plasma instability predicted by the physicist Erich Weibel about 50 years ago has been evidenced at surprisingly large scales in a laser-driven plasma in the prestigious journal Nature Physics. This instability is also expected to operate in astrophysical settings where it is held responsible for the acceleration of cosmic rays and the emission of gamma photons in the famous “gamma-ray bursts”.
We humans have unique cooperative systems allowing us to cooperate in large numbers. Furthermore, we provide help to others, even outside the family unit. How we developed these cooperative abilities and helping behaviour during our evolutionary past remains highly debated. According to one prominent theory, the interdependence hypothesis, the cognitive skills underlying unique human cooperative abilities evolved when several individuals needed to coordinate their actions to achieve a common goal, for example when hunting large prey or during conflict with other groups.
They contain no carbohydrates. No fats. No proteins. Not much else but water. Still, the moon jelly (Aurelia aurita) are eaten by predators in the sea; fish, crustaceans, sea anemones and even corals and turtles.
Now a new study may explain why these predators bother to eat the gelatinous creatures. The study is based on moon jelly samples from a German Fjord.
The photosynthetic systems of green plants have developed a dual function of efficient light collection under low light intensity and photoprotection under intense sunshine to prevent the oxidative damage of reaction centers.
Astronomers study stars and planets much younger than the Sun to learn about past events that shaped the Solar System and Earth. Most of these stars are far enough away to make observations challenging, even with the largest telescopes. But now this is changing.
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa astronomers are part of an international team that recently discovered an infant planet around a nearby young star. The discovery was reported Wednesday in the international journal Nature.
A persistent cough and fever have been confirmed as the most prevalent symptoms associated with COVID-19, according to a major review of the scientific literature.
Other major symptoms include fatigue, losing the ability to smell and difficulty in breathing.
The study ratifies the list of symptoms listed by the World Health Organisation at the start of the pandemic.
Humans have cultivated plants outside their native ranges for thousands of years. But as the world became increasingly interconnected over the past five hundred years, the scale of cultivation of non-native plants for economic value - for example as food, ornamentation or for medicinal purposes - has intensified. For the first time, a team of researchers led by University of Konstanz ecologist Mark van Kleunen has carried out scientific analyses to assess how economic use of non-native plants relates to their naturalization success (i.e.
In the current issue of Communications Biology, Professor Jindrich Cinatl from the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University and Professor Martin Michaelis from the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent report on their investigations with nelarabine on different cell lines. "Nelarabine is the precursor of the drug, a prodrug, that does not become effective until it is combined with three phosphate groups in the leukaemia cell," explains Professor Cinatl.
Cambridge UK, 24 June 2020: A research programme pioneering the use of whole genome sequencing in the NHS has diagnosed hundreds of patients and discovered new genetic causes of disease. Whole genome sequencing is the technology used by the 100,000 Genomes Project, a service set up by the government which aims to introduce routine genetic diagnostic testing in the NHS.