Mercury exposure is common in communities in Canada's north, especially in indigenous peoples who consume fish and other wild food with high mercury content, yet current clinical guidelines are not adequate for this population. A review in CMAJ Canadian Medical Association Journal provides guidance for health care providers on the effects of mercury exposure and how to manage it in patients who consume diets high in fish and marine animals.
Heavens
Two key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.
A project led by archaeologists from the British Museum and the University of Leicester has discovered remarkable evidence which shows how the first generations of Europeans to arrive in the Americas engaged with indigenous peoples and their spiritual beliefs deep inside the caves of a remote Caribbean island.
Recent fieldwork by a collaborative Anglo-Puerto Rican* team has uncovered new evidence in the Caribbean of an early religious dialogue between Europeans and Native Americans.
An international team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona has discovered and confirmed a treasure trove of new worlds using NASA's Kepler spacecraft on its K2 mission. Among the findings tallying 197 initial planet candidates, scientists have confirmed 104 planets outside our solar system. Among the confirmed is a planetary system comprising four promising planets that could be rocky.
In a recent work published in Nature Communications, the research group led by ICREA Professor at ICFO Frank Koppens demonstrate a novel way to detect low-energy photons using vertical heterostructures made by stacking graphene and other 2D semiconducting materials. By studying the photoresponse of these atomically thin sandwiches, the researchers have shown that it is possible to generate a current by heating electrons in graphene with infrared light and extracting the hottest electrons over a vertical energy barrier.
For the first time, researchers have successfully measured in detail the flow of solar energy, in and between different parts of a photosynthetic organism. The result is a first step in research that could ultimately contribute to the development of technologies that use solar energy far more efficiently than what is currently possible.
Nanoparticles are being studied as drug delivery systems to treat a wide variety of diseases. New research delves into the physical properties of nanoparticles that are important for successfully delivering therapeutics within the body, with a primary focus on size. This is especially important as relatively subtle differences in size can affect cell uptake and determine the fate of nanoparticles once within cells.
New York -- July 18, 2016 -- Columbia Engineering researchers, working with colleagues at Disney Research and MIT, have developed a new method to control sound waves, using a computational approach to inversely design acoustic filters that can fit within an arbitrary 3D shape while achieving target sound filtering properties. Led by Computer Science Professor Changxi Zheng, the team designed acoustic voxels, small, hollow, cube-shaped chambers through which sound enters and exits, as a modular system.
PITTSBURGH--Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering researchers have concluded that the public could derive economic and social benefits today if safety-oriented, partially automated vehicle technologies were deployed in all cars. The researchers examined forward collision warning, lane departure warning and blind spot monitoring systems. These technologies can include partially autonomous braking or controls to help vehicles avoid crashes.
NASA satellite imagery revealed a cloud-filled eye in a weaker Hurricane Darby. Although obscured by clouds in previous days, the eye was apparent in wind data from NASA's RapidScat instrument.
On July 16, NASA's RapidScat instrument measured the surface winds around Hurricane Darby and found the strongest winds all around the storm with the exception of the southwestern quadrant. Sustained winds were greater than 30 meters per second (67 mph/108 kph).
NASA satellite imagery shows that Tropical Cyclone Abela's center has become tightly wrapped.
On July 16 the first Tropical Cyclone of the year formed in the Southern Indian Ocean. Tropical cyclone 01S, now known as Abela, developed about 320 nautical miles west-southwest of Diego Garcia.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., July 18, 2016 - Environmental scientists can more efficiently detect genes required to convert mercury in the environment into more toxic methylmercury with molecular probes developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The Suomi NPP satellite passed over Hurricane Darby and saw clouds in its eye as the storm continued tracking west in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
On July 14 at 21:05 UTC (5:05 p.m. EDT the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the NASA-NOAA-DOD Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible light image of Hurricane Darby in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The VIIRS image revealed an eye with bands of powerful thunderstorms wrapping into the low level center of circulation.
Tropical Storm Celia has crossed 140 degrees west longitude line, which means the storm has moved from the Eastern into the Central Pacific Ocean. Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed Celia had lost most of its punch.
Enhanced infrared imagery from the MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite on July 14 at 22:15 UTC (6:15 p.m. EDT) and microwave imagery showed all that remains of Celia's thunderstorms was a fragmented curved band storms about 60 nautical miles north-northeast of the exposed circulation center.
Astronomers announced this week the sharpest results yet on the properties of dark energy. Hundreds of scientists, among them Marcos Pellejero Ibañez and Jose Alberto Rubiño from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and other Spanish institutions as the Instituto de Ciencias del Cosmos from the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Instituto de Física Teórica (UAM-CSIC) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), collaborated to make the largest-ever, three-dimensional map of distant galaxies.