Tech
Philadelphia, July 20, 2020 - Cheese production relies on coagulation of milk proteins into a gel matrix after addition of rennet. Milk that does not coagulate (NC) under optimal conditions affects the manufacturing process, requiring a longer processing time and lowering the cheese yield, which, in turn, has economic impact.
The shape of volcanoes and their craters provide critical information on their formation and eruptive history. Techniques applied to photographs -- photogrammetry -- show promise and utility in correlating shape change to volcanic background and eruption activity.
Changes in volcano shape -- morphology -- that occur with major eruptions are quantifiable, but background volcanic activity, manifesting as small volume explosions and crater wall collapse, can also cause changes in morphology and are not well quantified.
Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century B.C.E., believed that the universe was made of five types of matter: earth, air, fire, water, and cosmos. Each was described with a particular geometry, a platonic shape. For earth, that shape was the cube.
Science has steadily moved beyond Plato's conjectures, looking instead to the atom as the building block of the universe. Yet Plato seems to have been onto something, researchers have found.
Prof. YANG Jinlong and Prof. AN Hong from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), along with domestic collaborators, have realized first-principles computing simulation of the large-scale solid system with tens of thousands of atoms and molecules based on Discontinuous Galerkin Density Functional Theory (DGDFT), a high-precision computation software, with the help of super large-scale millions of cores parallel computation on the supercomputer Sunway TaihuLight. The study was published online on Science Bulletin.
The activity of the solid Earth - for example, volcanoes in Java, earthquakes in Japan, etc - is well understood within the context of the ~50-year-old theory of plate tectonics. This theory posits that Earth's outer shell (Earth's "lithosphere") is subdivided into plates that move relative to each other, concentrating most activity along the boundaries between plates. It may be surprising, then, that the scientific community has no firm concept on how plate tectonics got started. This month, a new answer has been put forward by Dr.
Quantum magnetometry, one of the most important applications in quantum metrology, aims to measure the magnetic field in highest precision. Although estimation of one component of a magnetic field has been well studied over many decades, the highest precision that can be achieved with entangled probe states for the estimation of all three components of a magnetic field remains uncertain.
A new study looks at differences between the brains of Japanese classical musicians, Western classical musicians and nonmusicians. Researchers investigated specific kinds of neural behavior in participants as they were exposed to unfamiliar rhythms and nonrhythmic patterns. Trained musicians showed greater powers of rhythmic prediction compared to nonmusicians, with more subtle differences between those trained in Japanese or Western classical music. This research has implications for studies of cultural impact on learning and brain development.
A recent study just published in Environmental Science & Technology identified the toxicological risks of environmental pollutants to finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis). Man-made chemicals synthesized for human activities threaten the health of marine mammals. These chemicals, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have long been known to accumulate at high levels in many dolphin species.
A research team, led by Dr. Hyung-Suk Oh and Dr. Woong Hee Lee of the Clean Energy Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), working in cooperation with the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), announced that they had developed a nano-sized, coral-shaped silver catalyst electrode and large-area, high-efficiency carbon dioxide conversion system, which can be used to obtain *carbon monoxide.
Many exoplanets known today are "super-Earths", with a radius 1.3 times that of Earth, and "mini-Neptunes", with 2.4 Earth radii. Mini-Neptunes, which are less dense, were long thought to be gas planets, made up of hydrogen and helium. Now, scientists at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université/Cnes)* have examined a new possibility, namely that the low density of mini-Neptunes could be explained simply by the presence of a thick layer of water that experiences an intense greenhouse effect caused by the irradiation from their host star.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- While the majority of parents recognize the importance of sunscreen, they may not always use best practices to protect children from getting burned, a new national poll suggests.
One in 10 parents (11%) say they do not have a specific minimum SPF they use and 3% report they do not use sunscreen for their child, according to the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health at Michigan Medicine.
Head injuries may be worryingly common among police officers, according to a new pilot study led by the University of Exeter.
In a sample of 54 UK officers, 21 (38.9%) reported having suffered a "traumatic brain injury" (TBI) resulting in a loss of consciousness in their lives.
This proportion is far higher than the estimated rate of 8-12% in the general public.
Officers with a history of TBI reported higher levels of ongoing "post-concussion symptoms" such as headaches, memory problems and anxiety.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas have developed a new nano drug candidate that kills triple negative breast cancer cells.
Triple negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive and fatal types of breast cancer. The research will help clinicians target breast cancer cells directly, while avoiding the adverse, toxic side effects of chemotherapy.
Their study was published in June issue of Advanced Therapeutics.
In the first analysis of its kind, US-based doctors have shown that women who take menopausal hormone therapy (MHT, also known as HRT) have a greater variety of beneficial bacteria in their urine, possibly creating conditions that discourage urinary infections. The study also shows that women who suffer from recurrent urine infections have fewer different types of bacteria in urine than women who don't have infections, making them more prone to infections. This work is presented at the European Association of Urology Virtual Congress.
Shell-bearing microgastropods are snails whose size is less than five millimetres. They represent one of the least studied groups of metazoan living organisms in the oceans. Ivan Nekhaev is a senior research associate at the Department of Applied Ecology at St Petersburg University, and Ekaterina Krol is a doctoral student. They have summarised and analysed the currently known information on the species composition and lifestyle of these animals in the eastern sector of the Arctic.