Tech
Some insect wings such as cicada and dragonfly possess nanopillar structures that kill bacteria upon contact. However, to date, the precise mechanisms that cause bacterial death have been unknown.
Using a range of advanced imaging tools, functional assays and proteomic analyses, a study by the University of Bristol has identified new ways in which nanopillars can damage bacteria.
Since its accidental introduction in 2003 in France, the yellow-legged Asian hornet (Vespa velutina nigrithorax) is rapidly spreading through Europe. Both experts and citizen scientists keep on identifying the new invader spreading all over the Old Continent in the last decades.
Switzerland's Federal Council has decided that the country should become carbon-neutral by 2050. The governments of many other countries are pursuing similar goals. This may be challenging as far as car traffic and the entire power sector are concerned, but not impossible - with systematic electrification and the exclusive use of carbon-neutral energy sources, for example.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- As the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, a new mathematical model could offer insights on how to improve future epidemic predictions based on how information mutates as it is transmitted from person to person and group to group.
The U.S. Army funded this model, developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Princeton University, through the Army Research Laboratory's Army Research Office, both elements of the Combat Capabilities Development Command.
Researchers at Yokohama National University (YNU) meticulously examined cellulose nanofibers extracted from spent coffee grounds, identifying them as a viable new raw source.
The world generates over six million tons of coffee grounds, according to the International Coffee Organization. The journal Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported in 2012 that over half of spent coffee grounds end up in landfills. Cellulose nanofibers are the building blocks for plastic resins that can be made into biodegradable plastic products.
NASA analyzed Tropical Storm Irondro's rainfall and found heaviest rainfall was being pushed far southeast of the center because of strong wind shear.
The regular arrangement of atoms in a crystal allows complex interactions that can lead to new states of matter. Some crystals have magnetic interactions in only one dimension, i.e. are they magnetically one-dimensional. If, in addition, successive magnetic moments are pointing in opposite directions , then we are dealing with a one-dimensional antiferromagnet. Hans Bethe first described this system theoretically in 1931, predicting also the presence of excitations of strings of two or more consecutive moments pointing in one direction, so called Bethe strings.
The Arctic polar night remains one of the last undisturbed dark environments on the planet. But as the climate changes and human activities increase in the Arctic, natural light sources -- such as the moon, the stars and the aurora borealis -- are being masked by much stronger illumination from artificial light.
Researchers have designed a machine learning method that can predict battery health with 10x higher accuracy than current industry standard, which could aid in the development of safer and more reliable batteries for electric vehicles and consumer electronics.
Researchers have observed directly and for the first time magnetoacoustic waves (sound-driven spin waves), which are considered as potential information carriers for novel computation schemes. These waves have been generated and observed on hybrid magnetic/piezoelectric devices. The experiments were designed by a collaboration between the University of Barcelona (UB), the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and the ALBA Synchrotron. The results show that magnetoacoustic waves can travel over long distances -up to centimeters- and have larger amplitudes than expected.
A protein called phytochrome B, which can sense light and temperature, triggers plant growth and controls flowering time. How it does so is not fully understood.
A new study in animals suggests that the social and interpersonal problems associated with opioid addiction might be reversible.
By observing electrons that have been accelerated to extremely high energies, scientists are able to unlock clues about the particles that make up our universe.
Accelerating electrons to such high energies in a laboratory setting, however, is challenging: typically, the more energetic the electrons, the bigger the particle accelerator. For instance, to discover the Higgs boson--the recently observed "God particle," responsible for mass in the universe--scientists at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland used a particle accelerator nearly 17 miles long.
Extreme rainfall has become increasingly common in metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil. The capital of the state of São Paulo is the largest city in the southern hemisphere. The metropolitan area suffered from flooding due to heavy rain in February. Early in the month, no less than 114 millimeters (mm) fell in a single 24-hour period. This was the second highest 24-hour amount for the month since 1943, according to Brazil's National Meteorological Institute (INMET).
Scientists at Caltech and Occidental College have discovered a methane-fueled symbiosis between worms and bacteria at the bottom of the sea, shedding new light on the ecology of deep-sea environments.
They found that bacteria belonging to the Methylococcaceae family have been hitching a ride on the feathery plumes that act as the respiratory organs of Laminatubus and Bispira worms. Methylococcaceae are methanotrophs, meaning that they harvest carbon and energy from methane, a molecule composed of carbon and hydrogen.