Earth
Researchers have mapped in fine detail the genetic changes malaria parasites go through as they prepare to infect people.
The atlas maps the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in unprecedented cellular detail as it develops inside a mosquito and prepares to infect humans through a bite. This detailed investigation could lead to new ways to block key stages in the parasite's development and prevent transmission through future drugs or vaccines.
If a ban were introduced on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, and they were replaced by electric cars, the result would be a great reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. That is the finding of new research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, looking at emissions from the entire life cycle - from manufacture of electric cars and batteries, to electricity used for operation. However, the total effect of a phasing out of fossil-fuelled cars will not be felt until the middle of the century - and how the batteries are manufactured will affect the extent of the benefit.
Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV) - which is associated with kidney and liver damage in Chinook salmon - is continually being transmitted between open-net salmon farms and wild juvenile Chinook salmon in British Columbia waters, according to a new genomics analysis published today in Science Advances.
What is happening deep beneath the surface of ice planets? Is there liquid water, and if so, how does it interact with the planetary rocky "seafloor"? New experiments show that on water-ice planets between the size of our Earth and up to six times this size, water selectively leaches magnesium from typical rock minerals. The conditions with pressures of hundred thousand atmospheres and temperatures above one thousand degrees Celsius were recreated in a lab and mimicked planets similar, but smaller than Neptune and Uranus.
Seeing, hearing, thinking, daydreaming -- doing anything at all, in fact -- activates neurons in the brain. But for people predisposed to developing brain tumors, the ordinary buzzing of their brains could be a problem. A study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Stanford University School of Medicine shows that the normal day-to-day activity of neurons can drive the formation and growth of brain tumors.
What The Study Did: Researchers quantified the added burden of fatal opioid overdoses occurring in Ontario, Canada, during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Authors: Tara Gomes, Ph.D., of the Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.12865)
Researchers at McGill University have gained new insight into the workings of perovskites, a semiconductor material that shows great promise for making high-efficiency, low-cost solar cells and a range of other optical and electronic devices.
Plants contain several types of specialized light-sensitive proteins that measure light by changing shape upon light absorption. Chief among these are the phytochromes.
Phytochromes help plants detect light direction, intensity and duration; the time of day; whether it is the beginning, middle or end of a season; and even the color of light, which is important for avoiding shade from other plants. Remarkably, phytochromes also help plants detect temperature.
Invasive alien plants are plant species that grow in an environment outside their native habitat. If they successfully establish self-sustaining populations in these new environments - an event called "naturalization" - they can have considerable negative impacts on local ecosystems, economies, and societies. But not all alien plant species are equally effective in invading new habitats.
A mathematical model which can predict landslides that occur unexpectantly has been developed by two University of Melbourne scientists, with colleagues from GroundProbe-Orica and the University of Florence.
Professors Antoinette Tordesillas and Robin Batterham led the work over five years to develop and test the model SSSAFE (Spatiotemporal Slope Stability Analytics for Failure Estimation), which analyses slope stability over time to predict where and when a landslide or avalanche is likely to occur.
A newly released scientific paper in Nature Publishing's Scientific Reports Journal has revealed unprecedented amounts of highly toxic mercury are deposited in the deepest trenches of the Pacific Ocean.
The study, a multi-national effort involving scientists from Denmark, Canada, Germany and Japan, reports the first-ever direct measurements of mercury deposition into one of the logistically most challenging environments to sample on Earth, and the deepest at eight to 10 kilometers under the sea.
The farming of livestock to feed the global appetite for animal products greatly contributes to global warming. A new study however shows that emission intensity per unit of animal protein produced from the sector has decreased globally over the past two decades due to greater production efficiency, raising questions around the extent to which methane emissions will change in the future and how we can better manage their negative impacts.
The biological clock is present in almost all cells of an organism. As more and more evidence emerges that clocks in certain organs could be out of sync, there is a need to investigate and reset these clocks locally. Scientists from the Netherlands and Japan introduced a light-controlled on/off switch to a kinase inhibitor, which affects clock function. This gives them control of the biological clock in cultured cells and explanted tissue. They published their results on 26 May in Nature Communications.
Oncotarget published "Creation of a new class of radiosensitizers for glioblastoma based on the mibefradil pharmacophore" which reported that this group previously identified a calcium channel blocker, mibefradil, as a potential GBM radiosensitizer. They discovered that mibefradil selectively inhibits a key DNA repair pathway, alternative non-homologous end joining.
Metasurface holograms (meta-holograms) are ultra-thin artificial surfaces designed to shape incident light and project it to extremely wide angles. Meta-holograms have opened up numerous possibilities such as light multiplexing, information processing, 3D display, high-density data storage, and optical encoding.