Earth

Much as yeast serves in bakeries as single-celled helper, the bacterium Escherischia coli is a must in every biotechnology lab. A team led by Prof. Dr. Barbara Di Ventura, professor of biological signaling research at the University of Freiburg, has developed a new so-called optogenetic tool that simplifies a standard method in biotechnology: Instead of feeding the bacteria with sugar as commonly done, the researchers can now simply shine light on them. Di Ventura, Prof. Dr. Mustafa Hani Khammash from ETH Zurich/Switzerland and their teams, foremost first authors Edoardo Romano and Dr.

Ecologists at the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology have for the first time demonstrated the enormously high and also very specific species diversity of the deep sea in a comparison of 20 deep-sea basins in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Over a period of 20 years, a research team led by Professor Dr Hartmut Arndt at the Institute of Zoology has compiled a body of data that for the first time allows for a comparison of the diversity of existing eukaryotes - organisms with a cell nucleus.

Patients receiving an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) should be regularly screened for anxiety and depression, according to research presented at EHRA 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1

Study author Professor Susanne Pedersen of Odense University Hospital, Denmark said: "Most patients adapt well to living with an ICD. For others it completely changes their life, with worries about shocks from the device, body image, and livelihood as some need to change their job."

Researchers led by Katsunori Tanaka and Kenward Vong at the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research (CPR) in Japan have demonstrated that tumor growth can be reduced by therapy that tags cancer cells with different therapeutic molecules. In one case, the group was able to prevent tumors from forming in mice by targeting cancer cells with a compound that makes it difficult for the cells to clump together and form tumors. For tumors that already existed, they targeted cancer cells with toxic compounds that destroyed them. This study was published on April 23 in Science Advances.

What The Study Did: Baseline corrected QT interval (QTc) on 12-lead electrocardiograms and ensuing changes among patients with and without COVID-19 are evaluated in this study.

Authors: Marc P. Waase, M.D., Ph.D., and Elaine Y. Wan, M.D., of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, 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.2021.6842)

DURHAM, N.H.-- Corals and sponges are important foundations in ocean ecosystems providing structure and habitats that shelter a high number of species like fish, crabs and other creatures, particularly in the seamounts and canyons of the deep sea. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have discovered that when it comes to climate change not all deep-sea corals and sponges are affected the same and some could be threatened if average ocean temperatures continue to increase in the deep sea of the Northwest Atlantic.

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have discovered that some skeletal defects associated with a lack of movement in the womb during early development may still be ameliorated after such periods of immobility if movement resumes.

The researchers' discovery was made using chicken embryos, which develop similarly to their human equivalents and which can be easily viewed as development takes place - raising hopes that the finding may also apply to humans and thus have important implications for therapeutic interventions.

"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." It's a silly rhyme, but one that highlights a simple fact: Humans have long relied on wells -- such as the one on the hill visited by Jack and Jill -- for their primary drinking water supply.

Although the number of people who draw their water by pail is declining as pumps become ever more widespread, groundwater wells still supply drinking water to more than half of the world's population and sustain over 40% of irrigated agriculture. But this vital resource underfoot often gets overlooked.

A Southern California high school junior has built a low-cost seismometer device that delivers earthquake early warnings for homes and businesses. Costing less than $100 for her to make today, the seismometer could someday be a regular household safety device akin to a smart smoke detector, says its inventor Vivien He.

At the Seismological Society of America's 2021 Annual Meeting, researchers shared how they are using fiber optic cable to detect the small earthquakes that occur in ice in Antarctica.

The results could be used to better understand the movement and deformation of the ice under changing climate conditions, as well as improve future monitoring of carbon capture and storage projects, said Anna Stork, a geophysicist at Silixa Ltd.

Anastasia Malashina, a doctoral student at HSE University, has proposed a new method to assess vulnerabilities in encryption systems, which is based on a brute-force search of possible options of symbol deciphering. The algorithm was also implemented in a programme, which can be used to find vulnerabilities in ciphers.

As an indicator and "amplifier" of global climate change, the Arctic's health and stability is the cornerstone of the stability of our climate system. It has far-reaching impacts on ecosystems, coastal resilience, and human settlements in the middle and high latitudes.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--April 22, 2021--In their effort to understand the very earliest stages of life and how they can go wrong, scientists are confronted with ethical issues surrounding the use of human embryos. The use of animal embryos is also subject to restrictions rooted in ethical considerations. To overcome these limitations, scientists have been trying to recreate early embryos using stem cells.

A new research paper examining the relationship between the Omega-3 Index and risk for death from any and all causes has been published in Nature Communications. It showed that those people with higher omega-3 EPA and DHA blood levels (i.e., Omega-3 Index) lived longer than those with lower levels. In other words, those people who died with relatively low omega-3 levels died prematurely, i.e., all else being equal, they might have lived longer had their levels been higher.

WASHINGTON-- Glacial melting due to global warming is likely the cause of a shift in the movement of the poles that occurred in the 1990s.

The locations of the North and South poles aren't static, unchanging spots on our planet. The axis Earth spins around--or more specifically the surface that invisible line emerges from--is always moving due to processes scientists don't completely understand. The way water is distributed on Earth's surface is one factor that drives the drift.