Tech
How do researchers explore nature on its most fundamental level? They build "supermicroscopes" that can resolve atomic and subatomic details. This won't work with visible light, but they can probe the tiniest dimensions of matter with beams of electrons, either by using them directly in particle colliders or by converting their energy into bright X-rays in X-ray lasers. At the heart of such scientific discovery machines are particle accelerators that first generate electrons at a source and then boost their energy in a series of accelerator cavities.
About 35 million years ago, an asteroid hit the ocean off the East Coast of North America. Its impact formed a 25-mile diameter crater that now lies buried beneath the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary in Virginia and Maryland. From this impact, the nearby area experienced fires, earthquakes, falling molten glass droplets, an air blast and a devastating tsunami.
A new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications finds that currently-available global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices, previously thought to not alter animal survival rates, can decrease greater sage-grouse survival.
The researchers monitored sage-grouse survival at 14 sites throughout California and Nevada. Between 2012 and 2017, VHF transmitters were attached to 821 female and 52 male sage-grouse. GPS devices were attached to 234 female and 125 male sage-grouse.
Arctic sea ice could disappear completely through September each summer if average global temperatures increase by as little as 2 degrees, according to a new study by the University of Cincinnati.
The study by an international team of researchers was published in Nature Communications.
"The target is the sensitivity of sea ice to temperature," said Won Chang, a study co-author and UC assistant professor of mathematics.
"What is the minimum global temperature change that eliminates all arctic sea ice in September? What's the tipping point?"
Researchers at the University of South Florida are harnessing the power of human physiology to transform greenhouse gases into usable chemical compounds - a method that could help lessen industrial dependence on petroleum and reduce our carbon footprint.
Scientists have discovered a potential tool to enhance magnetization and magnetic anisotropy, making it possible to improve the performance of samarium-cobalt magnets.
The scientists, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Critical Materials Institute at Ames Laboratory, in collaboration with the Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Nebraska, identified orbital-moment quenching as the possible tool, and rationalized the quenching in terms of the dependence of electrical charge distribution in samarium atoms.
Long-term exposure to air pollution was linked to increases in emphysema between 2000 and 2018, according to a new study funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), both part of the National Institutes of Health. Emphysema, usually associated with smokers, is a chronic disease in which lung tissue is destroyed and unable to effectively transfer oxygen in the body. The study is published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Bottom Line: Whether exposure to outdoor air pollutants is associated with emphysema progression and change in lung function was the focus of this observational study. The study included 7,071 participants from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis studies conducted in six U.S. metropolitan regions (New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Baltimore; Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and St. Paul, Minnesota). Computed tomographic (CT) scans were used to assess changes in emphysema (measured for density as a percentage of lung pixels) and lung function testing was done.
What The Study Did: This research letter uses survey data to report on perceived bullying by internal medicine residents during training.
Authors: Scott M. Wright, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jama.2019.8616)
Editor's Note: The article contains funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
Air pollution--especially ozone air pollution which is increasing with climate change--accelerates the progression of emphysema of the lung, according to a new study led by the University of Washington, Columbia University and the University at Buffalo.
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 13, 2019 -- Advances in adapting the technology for cold climates and offshore use and better methods for predicting wind conditions have fanned significant growth of the use of wind turbines for electricity in the last 40 years. A new report takes stock of where the field is now and what lies ahead.
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 13, 2019 -- Animal models provide benefits for biomedical research, but translating such findings to human physiology can be difficult. The human heart's energy needs and functions are difficult to reproduce in other animals, such as mice and rats. One new system looks to circumvent these issues and provide a functional view of how different treatments can help ailing cells in the heart following oxygen and nutrient deprivations.
Thin, flexible fibers made of carbon nanotubes have now proven able to bridge damaged heart tissues and deliver the electrical signals needed to keep those hearts beating.
Scientists at Texas Heart Institute (THI) report they have used biocompatible fibers invented at Rice University in studies that showed sewing them directly into damaged tissue can restore electrical function to hearts.
Kidneys work to constantly filter blood and remove toxins from the body. Conditions such as chronic kidney disease (CKD) are characterized by a reduced ability to perform this essential function. CKD incidence is growing and more than 1.4 million individuals depend on dialysis or kidney transplant for survival. Development of new treatments requires an understanding of the mechanisms of the disease progression, but scientists have not been able to accurately model kidney filtration in vitro - until now.
BOSTON -Infants born to mothers taking naltrexone to treat opioid use disorder during pregnancy developed no signs of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS) during their hospitalization, a new study shows. In comparison to infants of mothers taking buprenorphine during pregnancy, infants exposed to naltrexone had shorter hospital stays, and mothers reported no use of other opioids during their pregnancy.