Culture
The world is waking up to the fact that human-driven carbon emissions are responsible for warming our climate, driving unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and placing us on course for the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history.
However, new research publishing this week in leading international journal PNAS, sheds fresh light on the complicated interplay of factors affecting global climate and the carbon cycle - and on what transpired millions of years ago to spark two of the most devastating extinction events in Earth's history.
Rutgers biomedical engineers have developed a "bio-ink" for 3D printed materials that could serve as scaffolds for growing human tissues to repair or replace damaged ones in the body.
The study was published in the journal Biointerphases.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A material from a rare earth element, tellurium, could produce the world's smallest transistor, thanks to an Army-funded project.
Computer chips use billions of tiny switches called transistors to process information. The more transistors on a chip, the faster the computer.
Hemp is technically legal in Texas, but proving that hemp is not marijuana can be a hurdle, requiring testing in a licensed laboratory. So, when a truck carrying thousands of pounds of hemp was recently detained by law enforcement near Amarillo, the driver spent weeks in jail awaiting confirmation that the cargo was legal.
It's no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years -- SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus -- originated in bats.
A new University of California, Berkeley, study finds that bats' fierce immune response to viruses could drive viruses to replicate faster, so that when they jump to mammals with average immune systems, such as humans, the viruses wreak deadly havoc.
Your good deed for the day--whether lending a hand to a stranger or giving up your seat on the subway--may prompt others to see you as a good and trustworthy person, but not always. In certain circumstances, it may do just the opposite.
Having genetically higher testosterone levels increases the risk of metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes in women, while reducing the risk in men. Higher testosterone levels also increase the risks of breast and endometrial cancers in women, and prostate cancer in men.
Most memories fade in a matter of days or weeks, while some persist for months, years, or even for life. What allows certain experiences to leave such a long-lasting imprint in our neural circuits? This is an age-old question in neurobiology that has never been resolved, but new evidence is pointing to a surprising new answer.
Scientists at the University of Groningen turned a non-enzymatic protein into a new, artificial enzyme by adding two abiological catalytic components: an unnatural amino acid and a catalytic copper complex. This is the first time that an enzyme has been created using two non-biological components to create an active site. The study demonstrates that such a synergistic combination is a powerful approach to achieving catalysis that is normally outside the realm of artificial enzymes. The study was published in Nature Catalysis on 10 February.
Researchers at the Center for Nanoparticle Research, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) in collaboration with collaborators at Zhejiang University, China, have reported a highly sensitive and specific nanosensor that can monitor dynamic changes of potassium ion in mice undergoing epileptic seizures, indicating their intensity and origin in the brain.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Like breathing or blinking, behaviors regulated by our circadian rhythms, such as digestion and sleep-wake cycles, go unnoticed by most people. But when circadian rhythms malfunction, the result can be any one of a broad range of serious, chronic disorders, from insomnia and depression to obesity, diabetes and bipolar disorder.
A key piece to the puzzle of circadian rhythms and the disorders they're involved in is the hormone melatonin, which the brain produces in the evening, to facilitate falling asleep and fine-tune circadian adjustments.
Rapid climate change is putting increasing pressure on marine organisms. Warming, acidification and oxygen deprivation of seawater are already causing massive changes in marine ecosystems and are likely to lead to massive species extinction by the end of the century. So which groups of animals are particularly at risk? To assess this, biology and paleontology go different ways. Biologists extrapolate from experimental studies and especially predict a gloomy future for those species that are particularly sensitive to warming or oxygen deprivation in the laboratory.
Women's educational attainment has increased tremendously and even exceeded men's all over the world in the late 20th century. China's One-Child Policy had a beneficial effect on women's education and explains about half of the increase in educational attainment for women born between 1960-1980, according to a review published in Contemporary Economic Policy.
Cancer research using experimental models--everything from cancer cells in a dish to patient tumors transplanted in mice--has been extremely useful for learning more about the disease and how we might treat it. For some cancers, however, these models have failed to provide sufficient insight for medical progress. Diffuse glioma, the most common malignant brain tumor, is a prominent example, and it continues to have near-universal rates of recurrence and poor patient prognoses.
Boulder, Colo., USA: In Australia, the onset of human occupation (about 65,000 years?) and dispersion across the continent are the subjects of intense debate and are critical to understanding global human migration routes. A lack of ceramic artifacts and permanent structures has resulted in a scarcity of dateable archaeological sites older than about 10,000 years.