Tech
One way to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is now at its highest point in 800,000 years, would be to capture the potent greenhouse gas from the smokestacks of factories and power plants and use renewable energy to turn it into things we need, says Thomas Jaramillo.
As director of SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis, a joint institute of Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, he's in a position to help make that happen.
The growing popularity of lithium-ion batteries in recent years has put a strain on the world's supply of cobalt and nickel - two metals integral to current battery designs - and sent prices surging.
In a bid to develop alternative designs for lithium-based batteries with less reliance on those scarce metals, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a promising new cathode and electrolyte system that replaces expensive metals and traditional liquid electrolyte with lower cost transition metal fluorides and a solid polymer electrolyte.
Scientists have observed how the human brain represents a familiar piece of music, according to research published in JNeurosci. Their results suggest that listening to and remembering music involve different cognitive processes.
Previous research has pinpointed areas of the brain -- primarily on the right side -- that are activated by music. However, less is known about how activity in these regions unfolds over time.
MADISON -- New tools for editing genetic code offer hope for new treatments for inherited diseases, some cancers, and even stubborn viral infections. But the typical method for delivering gene therapies to specific tissues in the body can be complicated and may cause troubling side effects.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have addressed many of those problems by packing a gene-editing payload into a tiny customizable, synthetic nanocapsule. They described the delivery system and its cargo today (Sept. 9, 2019) in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
What The Study Did: This research letter examined crowdfunding efforts to defray expenses associated with cancer care.
Authors: Benjamin N. Breyer, M.D., M.A.S., F.A.C.S., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.3330)
Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
While walking, people with intact legs feel when they move their knee or when their feet touch the ground. The nervous system constantly draws on sensory feedback of this sort to precisely control muscles. People using a leg prosthesis, however, do not know precisely where the prosthesis is located, how it is moving, or what type of terrain it is standing on. They often cannot trust their pros-thesis completely when walking, leading them to rely too often on their intact leg, which in turn re-duces their mobility and causes them to tire quickly.
A new material could aid in the development of extremely energy efficient IT applications. The material was discovered by an international research team in cooperation with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The electrons at the oxide interface of the material possess special properties which drastically increase the conversion rate of spin current to charge current. This is the foundation for future spintronic applications. The new material has been found to be more efficient than any previously investigated material, the team writes in the journal Nature Materials.
When large areas of carbon-rich soil catch fire, the blaze emits massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and creates a thick haze some residents of Southeast Asia know all too well. In 2015, the haze from peatland fires was fatal, responsible for more than 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
Because of how they accumulate organic material for long periods of time, undisturbed peatlands are considered one of the most effective natural ecosystems for carbon storage. So large fires come at a huge cost to human health and sustainability.
LA JOLLA--(September 9, 2019) The brain's prefrontal cortex, which gives us our ability to solve problems and plan ahead, contains billions of cells. But understanding the large diversity of cell types in this critical region, each with unique genetic and molecular properties, has been challenging.
Scientists have known that much of this diversity results from epigenetics (such as the chemical tags on DNA) as well as how epigenetic features ultimately fold up within chromosomes to affect how genes are expressed.
Human activities have destroyed more than 7.7 million hectares of threatened species habitat, revealing critical failures with Australia's federal environmental protection laws.
A University of Queensland-led study has revealed that less than seven per cent of this destruction was referred to the Federal Government for assessment, scrutiny required under Australia's flagship environmental legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted great attentions in the past decades due to their many noticeable features, such as large surface areas, highly ordered pores, tunable structures and unique functions, making them promising for many promising applications. The structure engineering of MOFs at the nanometer scale is essential to customize MOFs for specific applications.
There's nothing new in treating water by sorption of organic solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE). But finding a method that neutralizes these contaminants, instead of just shifting them somewhere else, is no mean feat. A team led by Anna Śrębowata, professor at the IPC has improved a method of catalytic hydrotreatment, that is, transforming TCE into hydrocarbons that are environmentally less harmful. Thanks to scientists from the IPC PAS, not only the water in our taps, but also in our rivers, can be cleaner and safer for human health.
A team of scientists has concluded that earth experienced a previously underestimated severe mass-extinction event, which occurred about 260 million years ago, raising the total of major mass extinctions in the geologic record to six.
Unmarried patients with cancer are less likely to get potentially life-saving surgery or radiotherapy than their married counterparts, raising the concern that medical providers may be relying on stereotypes that discount sources of social support other than a current spouse.
That's the conclusion reached by the University of Delaware's Joan DelFattore, a professor emerita of English who combined her personal experience as an unmarried patient with her skills as a researcher to publish a peer-reviewed article in the latest issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
New Rochelle, NY, September 9, 2019--Many studies have examined the health effects of smartphone abuse, but a new study looks at the sociodemographic features and health indicators of people who have a smartphone but do not use it regularly. This under-studied group of individuals were significantly more likely to report feelings of loneliness, according to the article published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.