Tech
Scientists have conducted a 'molecular dissection' of a part of the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, to try and understand why the pathogen is so infectious.
Foot-and-mouth disease is a highly contagious infection of cloven-hoofed animals, which impacts on agricultural production and herd fertility. Global economic losses due to the disease have been estimated at between $6.5 billion and $22.5 billion each year, with the world's poorest farmers hit the hardest.
Anew study from the UPF and WEHI (the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research) in Melbourne, Australia, has described the role of p53 target gene Zmat3 in lymphoma and lung cancer development. The study, conducted in pre-clinical mice models, has been led by Ana Janic, laboratory head of the Cancer Biology group at UPF and Kate Sutherland, laboratory head in the Cancer Biology and Stem Cells Division at WEHI. The findings have been published in the journal Cell Death & Disease.
Most studies on transportation noise and cardiovascular mortality have focused on long-term exposure to noise. These studies demonstrated that chronic noise exposure is a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. Across Europe, 48,000 cases of ischemic heart disease per year can be attributed to noise exposure, in particular to road traffic noise.
Durham, NC - Cellular reprogramming can reverse the aging that leads to a decline in the activities and functions of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs). This is something that scientists have known for a while. But what they had not figured out is which molecular mechanisms are responsible for this reversal. A study released today in STEM CELLS appears to have solved this mystery. It not only enhances the knowledge of MSC aging and associated diseases, but also provides insight into developing pharmacological strategies to reduce or reverse the aging process.
A new QUT-led study has found wild jaguars in the Amazon can cope with climate extremes in the short-term, but numbers will rapidly decline if weather events increase in frequency, diminishing sources of food.
Distinguished Professor Kerrie Mengersen and Professor Kevin Burrage led a team of researchers in a world-first investigation of the big cat's chances of survival.
The new research results have been published in Ecology and Evolution.
Automobile exhaust emitted by fossil-fuel-based vehicles, especially those operating on diesel, is known to be a major source of fine dust and greenhouse gases . Using biodiesel instead of diesel is an effective way of coping with climate change caused by greenhouse gases while reducing fine dust emission. However, the current method of producing biodiesel by chemically processing vegetable oil or waste cooking oil-such as palm or soybean oil-is limited because of the unreliable availability of raw materials.
How people work out the meanings of new words has been revealed by Lancaster University researchers, who say this is similar to the way in which young children learn language.
The research published in Cognition is by Professor Patrick Rebuschat and Professor Padraic Monaghan, who said: "Have you ever caught yourself saying long burbly streams of words to babies? A lot of what infants hear is "who's a lovely baby yes you are now where's teddy gone oh look here is teddy". How do babies begin to make sense of this burbling to figure out the language?"
Scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) with international collaborators propose direct magnetic writing of skyrmions, i.e. magnetic quasiparticles, and skyrmion lattices, within which it is possible to encode, transmit, process information, and produce topological patterns with a resolution of less than 100 nanometers. This brings closer miniaturized post-silicon electronics, new topological cryptography techniques, and green data centers, reducing the load on the Earth's ecosystem significantly. A related article appears in ACS Nano.
Holography is best known for its ability to produce 3D images (holograms) by recording an interference pattern of light scattered by an object with some reference wave. This simple optical experiment records the amplitude as well as the normally invisible phase of the underlying electric field. Once known, this information can be used to simultaneously localize many individual particles in all 3 dimensions.
Raman spectroscopy is widely used in analytical sciences to identify molecules via their structural fingerprint. In the biological context the Raman response provides a valuable label-free specific contrast that allows distinguishing different cellular and tissue contents. Unfortunately, spontaneous Raman scattering is very weak, over ten orders of magnitude weaker than fluorescence. Unsurprisingly, fluorescence microscopy is often the preferred choice for applications such as live cell imaging.
A material that mimics human skin in strength, stretchability and sensitivity could be used to collect biological data in real time. Electronic skin, or e-skin, may play an important role in next-generation prosthetics, personalized medicine, soft robotics and artificial intelligence.
For decades, scientists have expected that the shedding of leaves from temperate trees will get later and later under ongoing climate change. And early observations supported that idea, as warming caused leaves to stay on the trees later over recent decades, driving increased growing season length that could help to slow the rate of climate change. However, a large-scale study of European trees now suggests that this trend is beginning to change, and in fact, tree leaves may start to fall earlier as the productivity of those trees increases.
Legal scholars, computer scientists and economists must work together to prevent unlawful price-surging behaviors from artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms used by rivals in a competitive market, argue Emilio Calvano and colleagues in this Policy Forum.
Laser powder bed fusion is a dominant additive manufacturing technology that has yet to reach its potential. The problem facing industry is that tiny bubbles or pores sometimes form during the printing process, and these pores create weak spots in finished products.
Leipzig could mean for the future of plant taxonomy what Greenwich meant for world time until 1972: it could become the reference city for correct scientific plant names. In an outstanding feat of research, the curator of the Botanical Garden of Leipzig University, Dr Martin Freiberg, and colleagues from iDiv and UL have compiled what is now the largest and most complete list of scientific names of all known plant species in the world.