Tech
The virus that causes COVID-19 was present in New York City long before the city's first case of the disease was confirmed on March 1, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report. Their study found that more than 1.7 million New Yorkers--about 20 percent of the city's population--have already been infected with the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, and that the infection fatality rate of the virus is close to 1 percent, ten times deadlier than the flu.
The aim of the EU Nitrates Directive is to reduce nitrates leaking into the environment in order to prevent pollution of water supplies. The widely accepted view is that this will also help protect threatened plant species which can be damaged by high levels of nutrients like nitrates in the soil and water. However, an international team of researchers including the Universities of Göttingen, Utrecht and Zurich, has discovered that many threatened plant species will actually suffer because of this policy. The results were published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Scientists have developed an AI tool to analyse how proteins move and interact which is faster and more accurate than humans, according to a study published today in eLife.
The software, which is freely available, dramatically speeds up the study of protein dynamics and makes it accessible to research teams across the world, rather than limited to a few laboratories with specialist expertise.
A team of chemists from RUDN University synthesized new organosilicon compounds containing terbium and europium ions. These complexes have an unusual cage-like crystal structure that contains four metal ions. The team was the first to study the magnetic and photophysical properties of such compounds and to observe their magnetic phase transition and luminescence properties. The results of the work were published in Chemistry - A European Journal.
Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity. As they can withstand heavy storms, they offer many species a safe home, and at the same time, they protect densely populated coastal regions as they level out storm-driven waves. However, how can these reefs that are made up of often very fragile coral be so stable?
Pacemakers and other implantable cardiac devices used to monitor and treat arrhythmias and other heart problems have generally had one of two drawbacks - they are made with rigid materials that can't move to accommodate a beating heart, or they are made from soft materials that can collect only a limited amount of information.
What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? How has a story as complex as "Game of Thrones" enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives?
Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland came together to unravel "A Song of Ice and Fire", the books on which the TV series is based.
When you are faced with a choice -- say, whether to have ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert -- sets of brain cells just above your eyes fire as you weigh your options. Animal studies have shown that each option activates a distinct set of neurons in the brain. The more enticing the offer, the faster the corresponding neurons fire.
Research led by the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) has found that Indonesian communities living near oil palm plantations are impacted in different ways, both positive and negative, during plantation development and certification.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have demonstrated a room-temperature method that could significantly reduce carbon dioxide levels in fossil-fuel power plant exhaust, one of the main sources of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
Although the researchers demonstrated this method in a small-scale, highly controlled environment with dimensions of just nanometers (billionths of a meter), they have already come up with concepts for scaling up the method and making it practical for real-world applications.
GPS isn't waterproof. The navigation system depends on radio waves, which break down rapidly in liquids, including seawater. To track undersea objects like drones or whales, researchers rely on acoustic signaling. But devices that generate and send sound usually require batteries -- bulky, short-lived batteries that need regular changing. Could we do without them?
Age may cause identical cancer cells with the same mutations to behave differently. In animal and laboratory models of melanoma cells, age was a primary factor in treatment response.
Real-time health monitoring and sensing abilities of robots require soft electronics, but a challenge of using such materials lie in their reliability. Unlike rigid devices, being elastic and pliable makes their performance less repeatable. The variation in reliability is known as hysteresis.
Guided by the theory of contact mechanics, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) came up with a new sensor material that has significantly less hysteresis. This ability enables more accurate wearable health technology and robotic sensing.
New research from UBC Okanagan indicates what's most important for overall happiness is how a person uses social media.
Derrick Wirtz, an associate professor of teaching in psychology at the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, took a close look at how people use three major social platforms--Facebook, Twitter and Instagram--and how that use can impact a person's overall well-being.
An innovative nanoparticle vaccine candidate for the pandemic coronavirus produces virus-neutralizing antibodies in mice at levels ten-times greater than is seen in people who have recovered from COVID-19 infections. Designed by scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, the vaccine candidate has been transferred to two companies for clinical development.