Tech

If you've ever watched Planet Earth, you know the ocean is a wild place to live. The water is teaming with different ecosystems and organisms varying in complexity from an erudite octopus to a sea star. Unexpectedly, it is the sea star, a simple organism characterized by a decentralized nervous system, that offers insights into advanced adaptation to hydrodynamic forces--the forces created by water pressure and flow.

A new study shows that a widespread decline in abundance of emergent insects - whose immature stages develop in lakes and streams while the adults live on land - can help to explain the alarming decline in abundance and diversity of aerial insectivorous birds (i.e. preying on flying insects) across the USA. In turn, the decline in emergent insects appears to be driven by human disturbance and pollution of water bodies, especially in streams.

Converting both nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into value-added urea molecules via C-N coupling reaction is a promising method to solve the problem of excessive CO2 emissions.

Compared with huge energy consumption industrial processes, the electrochemical urea synthesis provides an appealing route under mild conditions. However, it still faces challenges of low catalytic activity and selectivity.

The latest developments in fluorescence microscopy make it possible to image individual molecules in cells or molecular complexes with a spatial resolution of up to 20 nanometres. However, under certain circumstances, an effect occurs that falsifies the results: the laser light used can cause very reactive oxygen molecules to form in the sample. These can then damage the fluorescent dyes used to such an extent that they no longer fluoresce. Among microscopy experts, this effect is known as photobleaching.

A Mason Engineering researcher has discovered that artificial microswimmers accumulate where their speed is minimized, an idea that could have implications for improving the efficacy of targeted cancer therapy.

Jeff Moran, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Volgenau School of Engineering, and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle studied self-propelled half-platinum/half-gold rods that "swim" in water using hydrogen peroxide as a fuel. The more peroxide there is, the faster the swimming; without peroxide in pure water, the rods don't swim.

HOUSTON - (Feb. 26, 2021) - Tracking the origin of synthetic genetic code has never been simple, but it can be done through bioinformatic or, increasingly, deep learning computational approaches.

Though the latter gets the lion's share of attention, new research by computer scientist Todd Treangen of Rice University's Brown School of Engineering is focused on whether sequence alignment and pan-genome-based methods can outperform recent deep learning approaches in this area.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Marilyn Rantz still remembers the day she got the call that her mother, whose health had been declining, had fallen and fractured her shoulder. After rushing to the hospital, her mother told her she didn't understand how she ended up on a helicopter pad after the traumatic incident. A nearby nurse told Rantz the noise from the MRI scanning tube had caused her frightened mother to mistakenly believe she had been airlifted to the hospital on a helicopter.