Tech
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Microbial communities in the intestine -- also known as the gut microbiome -- are vital for human digestion, metabolism and resistance to colonization by pathogens. The gut microbiome composition in infants and toddlers changes extensively in the first three years of life. But where do those microbes come from in the first place?
A new study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists investigates the impact of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), the largest international cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions in the world, on power plant fuel efficiency.
Lithium-ion batteries lose their juice over time, causing scientists and engineer to work hard to understand that process in detail. Now, scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have combined sophisticated machine learning algorithms with X-ray tomography data to produce a detailed picture of how one battery component, the cathode, degrades with use.
A pioneering study into the description of the architecture of a new standard for telecommunications
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a United Nations Organization agency commissioned to regulate international telecommunications between different operating administrations and businesses. Pursuant to specific recommendations by this organization, on 1 July, standard Y.3172, an architecture for machine learning in future networks (5G and beyond), was approved for telecommunications networks. This new standard defines a logical network architecture that has been designed to include machine learning mechanisms intrinsically.
Oxides of different metals often serve as photocatalysts in various systems such as air purification, reactions of water decomposition and even in the production of self-cleaning surfaces for glass and mirrors. The physical-chemical properties of such materials can be improved by adding nanoparticles, which turn an ordinary oxide into a nanomaterial with new capabilities. To successfully perform this, however, it is necessary to understand the processes going on as a nanocomposite is being formed, and to be able to control them.
Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive cancer of the blood-forming system. It affects the hematopoietic stem cells, or blood stem cells, of various white blood cells and of the red blood cells and platelets. The leukemic stem cells propagate quickly, spread in the bone marrow and blood, and can attack other organs. Patients are usually treated with intensive chemotherapy and sometimes radiotherapy. After that they require a transplant of hematopoietic stem cells from a healthy donor.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a green way to create chitin, by using two forms of food waste - prawn shells and discarded fruit - and fermenting them.
Chitin serves a wide variety of uses in the food industry, such as food thickeners and stabilisers, and as anti-microbial food packaging.
More lives could be saved in intensive care units around the world if new antibiotic guidelines designed by The University of Queensland are adopted.
Researchers have launched universal Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) guidelines to optimise the concentrations of antibiotic and antifungal medications given to severely ill patients in hospital.
UQ Centre for Clinical Research Professor Jason Roberts said the guidelines could speed up recovery times or even save a critically ill patient from dying.
It has been known for many decades that synthetic polymers subjected to mechanical stress generate mechanoradicals by rupture of chemical bonds. But could those harmful and highly reactive radicals also form in our tissues when stretched?
An international team led by researchers from the University of Oviedo and the Centre for Research in Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology (CINN-CSIC), together with scientist from the Basque research centers CIC nanoGUNE, DIPC, Materials Physics Center (CSIC-UPV/EHU), and international collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University (USA), Austrian Institute of Technology, Paris Materials Centre, and University of Tokyo has discovered an effective method for controlling the frequency of confined light at the nanoscale in the form of phonon polaritons (light
Prof. ZHONG Zhicheng's team at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has investigated the electronic structure of the recently discovered nickelate superconductors NdNiO2.
They successfully explained the experimental difficulties in synthesizing superconducting nickelates, in cooperation with Prof. Karsten Held at Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) in Austria. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters (Phys. Rev. Lett.).
The Monte Conca cave system on the island of Sicily is a vast system of springs and pools, sitting below a nature preserve. It might be presumed to be one of the few places untouched by human-driven pollution.
But new research published by a USF microbiology and geoscience team has found that even below ground, the microbial communities in the pools of water in the Monte Conca cave show signs of being altered by pollution from above.
In many fish species body size plays an important role in sexual selection. Large individuals are preferred mating partners because they can enhance offspring survival by providing better quality resources than small individuals. While large females and males are often favored by sexual selection, fishing targets and removes these reproductively superior individuals. Academy Research Fellow Silva Uusi-Heikkilä discusses in her recent literature review the implications fisheries selection might have on sexual selection, individual reproductive success and population viability.
High-resolution images and video were taken by the Japanese space agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft as it briefly landed to collect samples from Ryugu - a nearby asteroid that orbits mostly between Earth and Mars - allowing researchers to get an up-close look at its rocky surface, according to a new report. During the touchdown Hayabusa2 obtained a sample of the asteroid, which it will bring back to Earth in December 2020.
After three years of intensive data-gathering and careful drawing, the mapmakers' work was complete.
The complex terrain they charted, with all its peaks, valleys and borders, is only about half an inch long and weighs less than a jellybean: the brain of the laboratory mouse.
In a paper published today in the journal Cell, the Allen Institute mapmakers describe this cartographical feat -- the third iteration of the Allen Mouse Brain Common Coordinate Framework, or CCFv3, a complete, high-resolution 3D atlas of the mouse brain.