Globe Conservation Horizon Scanning, which involves collaboration of the worldwide conservation community, focuses on identifying potential environmental problems across the planet that have not yet been noticed by society as a whole. This scanning of the environmental horizons has been conducted every year since 2010.
Tech
New discoveries are being made on an annual basis by researchers flying their instruments on a high-altitude balloon platform. Ease of access to ballooning, relatively low cost and the potential for quick turn-around response times create a large appeal for using this platform to perform novel science and to train new scientists. This appeal is reinforced by the availability of a range of balloon sizes to accommodate various payload types, multiple launch sites (for shorter and longer duration flights), and more sophisticated gondolas.
A new breast cancer risk prediction model combining histologic features of biopsied breast tissue from women with benign breast disease and individual patient demographic information more accurately classified breast cancer risk than the current screening standard. Results of a Mayo Clinic study comparing the new model to the current standard, the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool (BCRAT), are published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.
The night before the Israel Defense Forces' 1976 mission rescuing over 200 hostages from hijackers in Entebbe, Uganda, Tel Aviv University's Prof. Pinhas Alpert, then head of an Israel Air Force base forecasting unit, provided intelligence that was critical to the success of the operation -- the weather conditions commandos were likely to encounter en route and on the ground. Had his information been incorrect, the mission might have ended quite differently.
Scientists using ice-penetrating radar data collected by NASA's Operation IceBridge and earlier airborne campaigns have built the first comprehensive map of layers deep inside the Greenland Ice Sheet, opening a window on past climate conditions and the ice sheet's potentially perilous future.
This new map allows scientists to determine the age of large swaths of the second largest mass of ice on Earth, an area containing enough water to raise ocean levels by about 20 feet.
The process of converting the sun's energy into liquid fuels requires a sophisticated, interrelated series of choices but a solar refinery is especially tricky to map out because the designs involve newly developed or experimental technologies. This makes it difficult to develop realistic plans that are economically viable and energy efficient.
A revolutionary device has been shown to significantly lower blood pressure among patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure, compared to those treated with usual drug measures - according to research from Queen Mary University of London and published in The Lancet.
The device - developed by ROX Medical and named the 'Coupler' - is a paper clip sized implant which is inserted between the artery and vein in the upper thigh, in a procedure lasting around 40 minutes under local anaesthetic.
Scientists have proved a fundamental relationship between energy and time that sets a "quantum speed limit" on processes ranging from quantum computing and tunneling to optical switching.
The energy-time uncertainty relationship is the flip side of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which sets limits on how precisely you can measure position and speed, and has been the bedrock of quantum mechanics for nearly 100 years. It has become so well-known that it has infected literature and popular culture with the idea that the act of observing affects what we observe.
A new preservation system that pumps cooled, oxygen-rich fluid into donor livers not only keeps the organs in excellent condition for as long as nine hours before transplantation, but also leads to dramatically better liver function and increases survival of recipients, according to a series of animal studies by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The system could be tested with transplant patients at UPMC later this year.
Researchers have identified a promising new target for developing new therapies for kids with high-risk neuroblastoma, according to a new study.
Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer infants and the most common solid tumor outside of the brain in all children, in which malignant cancer cells form in primitive nerve tissue called "ganglions" or in the adrenal glands.
Prolonged use of a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) by patients with heart failure may induce regeneration of heart muscle by preventing oxidative damage to a cell-regulator mechanism, UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators have found.
LVADs are mechanical pumps that are sometimes implanted in patients who are awaiting heart transplants. LVADs substitute for the damaged heart by pumping blood throughout the body.
With the goal of making it easier for surgeons to detect malignant tissue during surgery and hopefully reduce the rate of cancer recurrence, scientists have invented a new imaging system that causes tumors to "light up" when a hand-held laser is directed at them.
After reviewing almost 200 publications, researchers have concluded that previously conducted controlled studies investigating whether differences exist between organic and conventionally produced milk have been largely ambiguous, due principally to the complexity of the research question and the number of factors and variables that can influence milk composition.
The key to understanding the geologic history of the Solar System is knowing the ages of planetary rocks. Researchers have developed an instrument that is not only capable of dating rocks, but also is composed entirely of technology that can be miniaturized for spaceflight.
As detailed in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, they validated the instrument—a laser ablation resonance ionization mass spectrometer—by dating a rock from Mars: the meteorite Zagami, which formed about 180 million years ago, and fell to Earth in 1962.
Living systems have the ability to produce collective molecular motions that have an effect at the macroscale, such as a muscle that contracts via the concerted action of protein motors. In order to reproduce this phenomenon, a team at CNRS's Institut Charles Sadron led by Nicolas Giuseppone, professor at the Université de Strasbourg, has made a polymer gel that is able to contract through the action of artificial molecular motors. When activated by light, these nanoscale motors twist the polymer chains in the gel, which as a result contracts by several centimeters.