Tech
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) will play a vital role in helping the world cut its carbon dioxide emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says.
Yet less than two dozen CCS projects have been initiated globally, partly because of costs, but also because of uncertainty about the viability of the technology.
There is no I in Team - as the saying goes. But new research suggests it is important for individuals to feel personal ownership towards a team project in order to be more creative.
The study, led by Dr Ieva Martinaityte of the University of East Anglia (UEA)'s Norwich Business School, suggests that this also drives each team member to invest more time and effort into the project.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 17, 2019--A newly released special issue of Educational Researcher, titled "Randomized Controlled Trials Meet the Real World: The Nature and Consequences of Null Findings," focuses on important questions raised by the prevalence of null findings--the absence of expected or measurable results--particularly in randomized control trials. In the issue, leading researchers address what it means when an evaluation produces null findings, why null findings are so prevalent, and how they can be used to advance knowledge.
Australian researchers have found a new drug target for stopping the spread of malaria, after successfully blocking the world's deadliest malaria parasite - Plasmodium falciparum - from completing the 'transmission stage' of its lifecycle.
Using small molecule inhibitors developed at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, the researchers blocked plasmepsin V, an enzyme essential for the development of gametocytes which are the only form of the parasite that can be transmitted from humans to mosquitoes.
WASHINGTON, D.C., December 17, 2019 -- An emerging technology involving tiny particles that absorb light and turn it into localized heat sources shows great promise in several fields, including medicine. For example, photothermal therapy, a new type of cancer treatment, involves aiming infrared laser light onto nanoparticles near the treatment site.
An antioxidant found in the green tea plant could become key to tackling tuberculosis one day, a team of international scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found.
Through laboratory investigations, the team led by NTU Professor Gerhard Grüber discovered how the prominent compound, known as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), can inhibit the growth of a tuberculosis-causing bacteria strain.
Limiting global warming to a lower level, such as the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target, would substantially relieve populations from precipitation extremes in China, according to a study recently published in Science Bulletin.
The research, which is an extension of climate projections, sheds light on how extreme precipitation changes would translate into social impacts. Taking population into account, even a half-degree global warming increment could result in a robust increase in extreme rainfall-related impacts, particularly in the densely populated southeastern China.
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have uncovered some new aspects of how connections in networks can influence their behavior over time. Usually, network elements with many connections generate more complex activity than others, but this effect can become inverted if the connections are overly strong. In contrast, in cases such as neurons, which behave in a seemingly random way when by themselves, connectivity can result in more regular and predictable patterns.
Understanding the behavior of materials at their interfaces - where they connect to and interact with other materials - is central to engineering a variety of devices used to process, store and transfer information. Devices such as transistors, magnetic memory and lasers could all improve as researchers delve into the nature of these bonds, which affect the materials' properties of conductivity and magnetism.
Using lipidomics, a technique that measures the composition of blood lipids at a molecular level, and machine learning, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have identified a blood lipid profile that improves the possibility to assess, several years in advance, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The blood lipid profile can also be linked to a certain diet and degree of physical activity.
Blood contains hundreds of different lipid molecules that are divided into different classes, such as cholesterol and triglycerides.
Gastric cancer, the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths, is often associated with a poor prognosis because it tends to be diagnosed at an advanced stage and is therefore difficult to treat. To reduce the death rate, it is essential to identify a biomarker enabling early diagnosis of this cancer.
Radiotherapy can effectively reduce or even eliminate some tumours; others, however, show enduring resistance. Considering the potentially harmful side effects of radiotherapy, clinicians agree that it is paramount to be able to determine if a patient will benefit from radiotherapy before exposing them to any of the associated risks.
Despite significant efforts to develop biomarkers that can assess the potential efficacy of radiotherapy treatment for individual patients, there is currently no established diagnostic test that can provide a clear answer.
We might associate donkeys with Christmas, but new research from the University of Portsmouth shows the animals are keener on hotter periods of the year.
Donkeys, it seems, love sun and warmth. That's the finding of the first study to examine the conditions under which healthy (non-working) donkeys and mules seek shelter in hot, dry climates.
It found that whilst mules would seek shelter from the heat and insects, donkeys enjoyed the sunshine and warmth for longer.
A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that plant-eating insects affect forest ecosystems considerably more than previously thought. Among other things, the insects are a factor in the leaching of nutrients from soil and increased emissions of carbon dioxide. The researchers also establish that the temperature may rise as a result of an increase in the amount of plant-eating insects in some regions.
Using old tree rings and archival documents, historians and climate scientists have detailed an extreme cold period in Scotland in the 1690s that caused immense suffering. It decimated agriculture, killed as much as 15 percent of the population and sparked a fatal attempt to establish a Scottish colony in southern Panama. The researchers say the episode--shown in their study to have been during the coldest decade of the past 750 years--was probably caused by faraway volcanic eruptions. But it was not just bad weather that brought disaster.