Culture
Water is split into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis, but if CO2 is also added to the mixture, compounds can be generated to make textiles, diapers and even spirits. American scientists, led by a Spaniard, have developed a catalyst that accelerates this reaction, while also removing a greenhouse gas.
A team of researchers from Canada and the U.S. has developed a catalyst that quickly and efficiently converts carbon dioxide into simple chemicals. In this way, they transform the most important greenhouse gas into useful products for industry.
Most people are familiar with the historical Silk Road, but fewer people realize that the exchange of items, ideas, technology, and human genes through the mountain valleys of Central Asia started almost three millennia before organized trade networks formed. These pre-Silk Road exchange routes played an important role in shaping human cultural developments across Europe and Asia, and facilitated the dispersal of technologies such as horse breeding and metal smelting into East Asia.
Contrary to theoretical predictions, oxygen inactivates biocatalysts for energy conversion within a short time, even under a protective film. A research team of the Resolv Cluster of Excellence at Ruhr Universität Bochum (RUB) has found out why: Hydrogen peroxide forms on the protective film. The addition of iodide salts to the electrolyte can prevent this from happening and considerably extend the life of the catalysts. The team around Professor Nicolas Plumeré from Resolv, Dr.
Neural oscillations - also known as brainwaves - are important carriers of information in the brain. Researchers are increasingly coming to view them less as sustained oscillations and more as transient bursts. Until now, there has been no method for measuring such short-lived bursts in real time or for examining how they influence the behavior of living things. In cooperation with her working group, Prof. Dr. Ilka Diester of the University of Freiburg's Institute of Biology III and excellence cluster BrainLinks-BrainTools has developed a new method for analyzing data in the brain.
Despite the large number of existing reagents, research is ongoing in the world to obtain universal catalysts that are distinguished by their efficiency, low cost and neutral impact on the environment. After conducting laboratory studies, KFU scientists were able to create a new type of reagent based on nickel and cobalt carboxylates, which are highly effective catalysts for the refinement of heavy oil.
The use of catalysts injected into a reservoir intensifies the destruction of asphaltene-resinous compounds, those which most affect the viscosity of oil.
Most Tennessee infants exposed to hepatitis C at birth are not later tested to see if they acquired the virus, according to a study by researchers at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy.
Over the past few years, hepatitis C virus rates among pregnant women, likely a consequence of the country's opioid crisis, have grown substantially.
Dr Rebecca Monk and Professor Derek Heim carried out a computer-based study in bars and pubs local to the University's Ormskirk campus, by asking participants to respond to stimuli while ignoring photos of attractive and unattractive faces.
The findings of the study - published this week in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors - showed that while sober participants were distracted more by attractive faces, the attention of those who were intoxicated was diverted equally by both attractive and unattractive faces.
WASHINGTON D.C. -- Average employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) spending rose to $5,892 per person in 2018, according to the Health Care Cost Institute's annual Health Care Cost and Utilization Report, which analyzes 2.5 billion medical claims to inform the public about trends affecting approximately 160 million U.S. individuals with employer-sponsored insurance. This spending growth outpaced 2017's growth due to continued price growth combined with an uptick in utilization.
The cost of smoking in the UK has risen since the advent of 'plain packs' for cigarettes in 2017, countering claims made by the tobacco industry at the time that the public health measure would lead to discount pricing.
Authors of the new study from the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG), argue their findings provide important evidence to policymakers in the UK and around the world of the effectiveness of standardised packaging.
For the first time, researchers managed to make intact human organs transparent. Using microscopic imaging they could revealed underlying complex structures of the see-through organs at the cellular level. Resulting organ maps can serve as templates for 3D-bioprinting technologies. In the future, this could lead to the creation of on demand artificial organs for many patients in need. The findings published in Cell joined forces from Helmholtz Zentrum München, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (LMU), and Technical University of Munich (TUM).
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered that endothelial cells -- those that create the inner lining of blood vessels -- have unique genetic signatures based on their location in the body.
ITHACA, N.Y. - After times of major conflict, such as the civil wars in Liberia from 1980 to 2003, peace often leaves a power vacuum, especially in remote areas not yet reached by a developing government.
"In areas of limited statehood, a country's central authority lacks the ability to implement and enforce rules and decisions," Sabrina Karim, assistant professor of government, wrote in new research published in the American Political Science Review.
Ichthyosaurs were fish-like reptiles that first appeared about 250 million years ago and quickly diversified into highly capable swimmers, filling a broad range of sizes and ecologies in the early Mesozoic oceans. However, this rapid pace didn't last long and an evolutionary bottleneck 200 million years ago, through which only one lineage of ichthyosaurs survived, led to much slower evolution in much of their long history.
Scientists have discovered hundreds of unusually large, bacteria-killing viruses with capabilities normally associated with living organisms.
The huge phages were found by scouring a large database of DNA generated from nearly 30 different environments, ranging from the guts of premature infants and pregnant women to a Tibetan hot spring, a South African bioreactor, hospital rooms, oceans, lakes and deep underground.
The joint research project of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that had previously demonstrated the use of new spin structures for future magnetic storage devices has yet achieved another milestone. The international team is working on structures that could serve as magnetic shift registers, so called racetrack memory devices. This type of storage promises low access times, high information density, and low energy consumption.