Tech
Air pollution from just the City of Boston contributes to nearly as many deaths across the wider region as car crashes do, as well as non-fatal cardiovascular and respiratory disease and days of missed work.
With much of the City of Boston shut down by COVID-19, the region is enjoying better air quality than it has seen in decades, a preview of the reduced emissions that will come as part of the city's ambitious "Carbon Free Boston" goals.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Whiteflies are among the most important agricultural pests in the world, yet they have been difficult to genetically manipulate and control, in part, because of their small size. An international team of researchers has overcome this roadblock by developing a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing protocol that could lead to novel control methods for this devastating pest.
WESTMINSTER, Colorado - April 23, 2020 - Cover crops have a well-documented role to play in suppressing troublesome weeds. But what happens as those cover crops degrade?
Susanne Hellmuth and Olaf Stemmann from the Chair of Genetics at the University of Bayreuth have discovered a natural protective mechanism that leads to the programmed death of potentially diseased cells. It protects from cancer that can develop as a result of irregular distribution of genetic information to daughter cells. The enzyme separase plays a central role in these processes. The findings published in "Nature" offer promising approaches for cancer therapy.
New perovskite-based detectors can sense X-rays over a broad energy range.
Getting an X-ray at the dentist or the doctor is at best a little inconvenient and at worst a little risky, as radiation exposure has been linked to an increased risk of cancer. But researchers may have discovered a new way to generate precise X-ray images with a lower amount of exposure, thanks to an exciting set of materials that is generating a lot of interest.
When iron is limited, the tiny algae that live within coral cells -- which can provide the majority of a coral's nutritional needs -- change how they take in other trace metals, which could have cascading effects on vital biological functions. A new study in the journal Coral Reefs explores how different species of these microalgae rely on iron, whose already limited supply in oceans could decline with warming ocean waters, perhaps exacerbating the effects of climate change on corals.
Artificial intelligence has become a focus of certain ethical concerns, but it also has some major sustainability issues.
Last June, researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a startling report estimating that the amount of power required for training and searching a certain neural network architecture involves the emissions of roughly 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. That's equivalent to nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average U.S. car, including its manufacturing.
ITHACA, N.Y. - After spotting a curious pattern in scientific papers - they described exoplanets as being cooler than expected - Cornell University astronomers have improved a mathematical model to accurately gauge the temperatures of planets from solar systems hundreds of light-years away.
This new model allows scientists to gather data on an exoplanet's molecular chemistry and gain insight on the cosmos' planetary beginnings, according to research published April 23 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Sacrificial rituals featuring human heart extraction were a prevalent religious practice throughout ancient Mesoamerican societies. Intended as a means of appeasing and honoring certain deities, sacrifices served as acts of power and intimidation as well as demonstrations of devotion and gratitude. Human sacrifices were highly structured, complex rituals performed by elite members of society, and the ceremonies included a myriad of procedures imbued with symbolic significance.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cancer cells not only ravage the body - they also compete with each other.
Cornell mathematicians are using game theory to model how this competition could be leveraged, so cancer treatment - which also takes a toll on the patient's body - might be administered more sparingly, with maximized effect.
Their paper, "Optimizing Adaptive Cancer Therapy: Dynamic Programming and Evolutionary Game Theory," published April 22 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
MSU professor collaborates with international colleagues in Review of Modern Physics journal article
In an atomic nucleus, protons and neutrons, collectively called nucleons, are bound together by nuclear forces. These forces describe the interactions between nucleons, which cause them to occupy states grouped in shells, where each shell has a different energy and can host a certain number of nucleons. A nucleus is said to be magic when the neutron or protons happen to exactly fill up their respective shells up to the rim. Such magic nuclei are especially well bound and have properties that make them stand out.
The origin of machine and deep learning algorithms, which increasingly affect almost all aspects of our life, is the learning mechanism of synaptic (weight) strengths connecting neurons in our brain. Attempting to imitate these brain functions, researchers bridged between neuroscience and artificial intelligence over half a century ago. However, since then experimental neuroscience has not directly advanced the field of machine learning and both disciplines -- neuroscience and machine learning -- seem to have developed independently.
(Philadelphia, PA) - Overreaction is rarely useful, and in the case of the human immune system, it can be outright deadly. When the body overreacts to an infection, the result is sepsis - a life-threatening condition that frequently leads to acute organ dysfunction, including deterioration of the heart and blood vessels, which make up the cardiovascular system. A major indication that the cardiovascular system is failing in sepsis is a drop in blood pressure, the only treatment for which is fluid replacement.
MINNEAPOLIS - It's no secret that a healthy diet may benefit the brain. However, it may not only be what foods you eat, but what foods you eat together that may be associated with your risk of dementia, according to a new study published in the April 22, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Industries often position products to tout the benefits of one category over another -- such as the higher-quality, traditional ingredients of a microbrew over mass-produced brewery beer. Researchers suggest that during the past decade, efforts to promote e-cigarettes as a healthier alternative to combustible cigarettes instead backfired, resulting in a product with a reputation as bad or worse than the existing cigarette category.