Earth
The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the world into turmoil and disrupted the status quo, but it is also providing opportunities for innovation in the way we live and work. According to the latest report released by The World in 2050 (TWI2050) initiative, the crisis can provide an opportunity to create sustainable societies with higher levels of wellbeing for all.
The latest tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean formed one day ago and was already being battered by wind shear. NASA's Aqua satellite imagery revealed Tropical Storm Edouard's strongest storms were being displaced by strong southwesterly winds.
Born on the fourth of July, the fifth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season strengthened into a tropical storm and was renamed. At 11 p.m. EDT on July 5 (0300 UTC, July 6), Tropical Depression 5 strengthened into Tropical Storm Edouard.
Washington, DC-- How did the chemical makeup of our planet's core shape its geologic history and habitability?
Life as we know it could not exist without Earth's magnetic field and its ability to deflect dangerous ionizing particles from the solar wind and more far-flung cosmic rays. It is continuously generated by the motion of liquid iron in Earth's outer core, a phenomenon called the geodynamo.
Despite its fundamental importance, many questions remain unanswered about the geodynamo's origin and the energy sources that have sustained it over the millennia.
Survey results from 27 countries suggest that, despite their increased risk of severe illness due to COVID-19, elderly people are not more willing to isolate when asked to, and are not more compliant with several COVID-19 preventive measures. Jean-François Daoust of the University of Edinburgh, U.K., presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 2, 2020.
A recent study by Monash University has looked at the role plasma cells and their longevity play in the effectiveness of vaccines in the body and suggests that components within vaccine design are the key.
To testify the "iron hypothesis" in the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) ice core, Cunde Xiao and his colleagues firstly reconstructed the bioavailable Fe data in this deep ice core from the northern Hemisphere over the past 110 kyr B.P., which suggested that the dissolved Fe (DFe) records in NEEM ice core were significantly anti-correlated with the carbon oxide (CO2) concentrations during the cold periods. The pattern of Fe concentration was extremely similar to that of the number of dust particles.
Optogenetics is a recently developed technique that can control cellular functions by illuminating lights to the cells in which light-sensitive proteins are expressed by gene transfer. Optogenetics enabled us to activate or inhibit a specific population of neuronal cells and revolutionized stimulation methods. It has now become an indispensable tool for investigating brain functions. So far, most studies using this technique have been performed in rodents, whereas trials to modify behaviors in monkeys have ended up in failure, except for a few studies targeting eye movements.
A raster expression of a region or one of its eco-environmental properties can be abstracted to a mathematical surface. The mathematical surface is uniquely defined by the intrinsic and extrinsic properties in terms of the fundamental theorem of surfaces. The intrinsic properties can be gathered from local information, which might come from detailed ground observations and spatial sampling. The extrinsic properties can be gathered from satellite observations and the simulation results of spatial models on large scales.
In higher organisms, cells and organelles are surrounded by a membrane, which plays a crucial role in not just creating a barrier from the external environment but also mediating exchange of fluids, electrolytes, proteins, and other useful material. Usually, these membranes are composed of water-repelling layers formed by lipid molecules, with various "transmembrane" proteins embedded in this double-layered sheet. These proteins are assembled in a way such that they create unique "gates" or "channels" that open and close in response to selective molecules or ions under specific conditions.
Skoltech researchers together with their industrial colleagues and academic partners have cracked a 1960s puzzle about the crystal structure of a superhard tungsten boride that can be extremely useful in various industrial applications, including drilling technology.
The human brain has evolved over eons of time to develop the most complex and unique network to support the strong brain functions. So far, it is well known that the brain network has characteristic features such as small world, scale-free, community, and rich-club etc. However, we know little about how these features ensure strong brain functions or what are the mechanisms of brain functions. Recently, a team from East China Normal University and Hong Kong Baptist University (S. Huo, C. Tian, M. Zheng, S. Guan, C.S. Zhou, and Z.
Humans have manipulated and managed rivers with dams for millennia. The number of river dam projects is predicted to rise sharply in the future, especially in the tropics where demand for hydroelectricity and water is accelerating. What are the long-term impacts of dams on highly biodiverse tropical forests? Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and collaborating institutions turned to one of the oldest tropical dams in the world to answer this question: The Panama Canal.
Some of the most fundamental questions in evolution remain unanswered, such as when and how extremely diverse groups of animals - for example reptiles - first evolved. For 75 years, adaptive radiations - the relatively fast evolution of many species from a single common ancestor - have been considered as the major cause of biological diversity, including the origins of major body plans (structural and developmental characteristics that identify a group of animals) and new lineages.
Toxic metallic air pollution nanoparticles are getting inside the crucial, energy-producing structures within the hearts of people living in polluted cities, causing cardiac stress - a new study confirms.
Using state-of-the-art electron microscopy, scientists are now able to show for the first time that tiny metal nanoparticles are getting inside the mitochondria of heart tissue - damaging these crucial 'powerhouses' that provide energy for the heart to pump.
Even today, nobody can reliably predict when and where an earthquake will occur. However, eyewitnesses have repeatedly reported that animals behave unusually before an earthquake. In an international cooperation project, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz/Radolfzell and the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz, have investigated whether cows, sheep, and dogs can actually detect early signs of earthquakes.