Tech
Researchers have successfully detected the environmental DNA (eDNA *1) of the Argentine ant (*2) in surface soil samples from sites on Kobe's Port Island and in Kyoto's Fushimi District, two areas that have a long history of destruction caused by this invasive species.
A team of international researchers has found that the Tsimane indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon experience less brain atrophy than their American and European peers. The decrease in their brain volumes with age is 70% slower than in Western populations. Accelerated brain volume loss can be a sign of dementia.
The study was published May 26, 2021 in the Journal of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.
Tobacco use continues to be a primary contributor to the global burden of disease, causing an estimated 12% of deaths worldwide among people aged 30 and over. Four leading cardiovascular organizations - American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology and World Heart Federation - today released a joint opinion calling for greater action at the global scale to end the tobacco epidemic once and for all.
HOUSTON - Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered a novel function for the metabolic enzyme medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) in glioblastoma (GBM). MCAD prevents toxic lipid buildup, in addition to its normal role in energy production, so targeting MCAD causes irreversible damage and cell death specifically in cancer cells.
Dust storms are often defined as catastrophic weather events where large amounts of dust particles are raised and transported by strong winds, characterized by weak horizontal visibility (Dust storm occurrence is generally a function of natural climatic factors (temperature, precipitation and surface wind speed) and human activity, while it is still unclear which one is the dominating factor controlling the dust storm frequency, magnitude, and extent. The available instrumental records are too short to unravel these questions.
While the plates carry water to the Earth's interior, phase transitions of dry olivine, the main mineral in the plates, are thought to be responsible for deep-focus earthquakes and plate deformation. This study resolves the contradiction of the presence of dry olivine even in wet plates.
Tiny charged electrons and protons which can damage satellites and alter the ozone have revealed some of their mysteries to University of Otago scientists.
In a study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, the group looked at charged particles interacting with a type of radio wave called 'EMIC' - a wave generated in Earth's radiation belts (invisible rings of charged particles orbiting the Earth).
The evolutionary history of fluvial geomorphology is the consequences of combined effects of tectonic, climate, lithology and base level. Previous researches had emphasized tectonic impacts on the fluvial system at the tectonically active region, while lithology and base level get little attention. In addition, the resistance of lithology may cause knickpoint and control the evolutionary history of landscape in relatively stable areas, and difference in local base-level is sufficient to induce drainage reorganization.
Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have found strong evidence that warm ice - that is, ice very close in temperature to zero degrees Celsius - may fracture differently than the kinds of ice typically studied in laboratories or nature. A new study published in The Cryosphere takes a closer look at the phenomenon, studied at the world's largest indoor ice tank on Aalto's campus.
Whether in desalination, water purification or CO2 separation, membranes play a central role in technology. The Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon has been working for several years on a new variant: it consists of special polymers that form pores of the same size on the nanometer scale. The materials to be separated, such as certain proteins, can literally slip through these pores. Because these separation layers are very thin and thus very fragile, they are bound to a spongey structure with much coarser pores, providing the structure with the necessary mechanical stability.
Current wireless networks such as Wi-Fi, LTE-Advanced, etc., work in the lower radio spectrum, below 6 GHz. Experts warn that soon this band will become congested due to mushrooming data traffic. It is calculated that by 2024, 17,722 million devices will be connected.
To meet the growing, ubiquitous demand for wireless broadband connectivity, communication via the terahertz band (THz) (0.1 to 10 THz) is seen as a necessary choice for 6G networks and beyond, due to the large amount of available spectrum in these frequencies.
Washington, DC-- The cause of Earth's deepest earthquakes has been a mystery to science for more than a century, but a team of Carnegie scientists may have cracked the case.
New research published in AGU Advances provides evidence that fluids play a key role in deep-focus earthquakes--which occur between 300 and 700 kilometers below the planet's surface. The research team includes Carnegie scientists Steven Shirey, Lara Wagner, Peter van Keken, and Michael Walter, as well as the University of Alberta's Graham Pearson.
Scientists at UC San Diego, San Diego State University and colleagues find that extreme heat and elevated ozone levels, often jointly present during California summers, affect certain ZIP codes more than others.
Those areas across the state most adversely affected tend to be poorer areas with greater numbers of unemployed people and more car traffic. The science team based this finding on data about the elevated numbers of people sent to the hospital for pulmonary distress and respiratory infections in lower-income ZIP codes.
In 2018, the Camp Fire ripped through the town of Paradise, California at an unprecedented rate. Officials had prepared an evacuation plan that required 3 hours to get residents to safety. The fire, bigger and faster than ever before, spread to the community in only 90 minutes.
Mosquitoes are one of humanity's greatest nemeses, estimated to spread infections to nearly 700 million people per year and cause more than one million deaths.