Tech
Tracking emissions of anthropogenic greenhouse gases by atmospheric observations is a major challenge for policymaking, such as the Paris Agreement. Huge atmospheric observation networks comprised of a variety of platforms including satellites have been developed to monitor regional/country-scale changes in the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The outbreak of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) has been affecting the global socio-economic activity, leading to a significant reduction in fossil-fuel-derived CO2 (FFCO2) emissions and other anthropogenic air pollutants in the world.
For forty-seven years, the Endangered Species Act has stood as the nation's strongest and most effective law for protecting animals and plants threatened with extinction--from the bald eagle to the American burying beetle, the Alabama leather flower to the Aleutian shield fern.
During the first two months of the pandemic lockdown, Americans dramatically reduced their use of preventive and elective health care, while increasing use of telemedicine -- but the switch was not enough to offset reductions in in-person care, according to a new study.
What The Study Did: Researchers examined whether the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in non-COVID health care use among a large population of individuals with employer-sponsored insurance, specifically preventive services (e.g., pediatric vaccinations), elective services (e.g., orthopedic surgery) and nonelective services (e.g., labor and delivery care) in March and April 2020 compared with the same months in 2018 and 2019.
What The Study Did: Changes in rates and risk factors over more than a decade in the U.S. for hospitalizations for a vision-threatening eye infection related to intravenous (IV) drug use were investigated in this study.
Authors: David M. Hinkle, M.D., of the West Virginia University School of Medicine in Morgantown, 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/jamaophthalmol.2020.4741)
A joint-study led by a team of marine ecologists from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has found that the eco-engineered tiles can increase habitat complexity on seawalls in Hong Kong, thereby effectively enhancing the marine biodiversity. The Hong Kong study is part of a global research project on the relationship between habitat complexity and marine biodiversity on human-built marine structures.
When a frightful creature startles you, your brain may activate its fear-processing circuitry, sending your heart racing to help you escape the threat. It's also the job of the brain's fear-processing circuits to help you learn from experience to recognize which situations are truly dangerous and to respond appropriately--so if the scare comes from a costumed goblin, you'll probably recover quickly.
Dr Liam Harper has co-authored a new paper on fixture congestion and performance with colleagues Dr Richard Page of Edge Hill University and Ross Julian from the University of Münster in Germany.
Published in the journal Sports Medicine, the findings of their systematic review and meta-analysis include that while modern players can still cover great distances in games, they are conserving energy for the kind of intense bursts that occur around a key moment.
Three days between games testing players and coaches to the limit
The results of these investigations were published as highlight article in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
The chemical element phosphorus is considered one of the most essential elements for life. Phosphorus compounds are deeply involved in the structure and function of organisms. Every human carries about one kilogram of it in the body. But even outside our bodies we are surrounded by phosphates and phosphonates every day: in our food, in detergents, fertilizers or in medicines.
The U.S. backs out of the Paris climate agreement even as carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continue to rise. Through photosynthesis, plants are able to turn CO2 into yield. Logic tells us that more CO2 should boost crop production, but a new review from the University of Illinois shows that some crops, including corn, are adapted to a pre-industrial environment and cannot distribute their resources effectively to take advantage of extra CO2.
You probably do not find it surprising that humans, dogs or cats, can adjust their behavior based on the experience. For instance, we all move more slowly after we slide and fall on the ice when we learn ice-skating. A new study shows that water striders can do that too.
Reducing fossil fuel use is essential to stopping climate change, but that goal will remain out of reach unless global agriculture and eating habits are also transformed, according to new research from the University of Minnesota and University of Oxford.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Earth's most arid desert may hold a key to finding life on Mars.
Diverse microbes discovered in the clay-rich, shallow soil layers in Chile's dry Atacama Desert suggest that similar deposits below the Martian surface may contain microorganisms, which could be easily found by future rover missions or landing craft.
Led by Cornell University and Spain's Centro de Astrobiología, scientists now offer a planetary primer to identifying microbial markers on shallow rover digs in Martian clay, in their work published Nov. 5 in Nature Scientific Reports.
Neoleukin Therapeutics, Inc., "Neoleukin" (NASDAQ:NLTX), a biopharmaceutical company utilizing sophisticated computational methods to design de novo protein therapeutics, today announced the publication in Science of research describing novel molecules designed to treat or prevent infection by the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2. This report details the creation of de novo protein decoys that were specifically designed to bind the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with high affinity, preventing its association with the viral receptor hACE2, which is required for infection.
Two separate studies have identified nanobodies - which could be produced less expensively than monoclonal antibodies - that bind tightly to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and efficiently neutralize SARS-CoV-2 in cells. "The combined stability, potency, and diverse epitope engagement of our ... nanobodies ...