Tech
You know you have a skeleton, but did you know that your cells have skeletons, too? Cellular skeletons, or cytoskeletons, are shapeshifting networks of tiny protein filaments, enabling cells to propel themselves, carry cargo, and divide. Now, an interdisciplinary team of Caltech researchers has designed a way to study and manipulate the cytoskeleton in test tubes in the lab. Understanding how cells control movement could one day lead to tiny, bioinspired robots for therapeutic applications.
Combining machine learning and robotic precision, researchers present an integrated strategy for computer-augmented chemical synthesis, one that successfully yielded 15 different medicinally related small molecules, they say. Their novel, AI-informed, robotically controlled platform has the potential to greatly improve target-oriented continuously flowing chemical reactions and represents an important step towards fully automated and scalable synthesis of complex molecules.
Thunderstorms generated by a group of giant wildfires in 2017 injected a small volcano's worth of aerosol into the stratosphere, creating a smoke plume that lasted for almost nine months. CIRES and NOAA researchers studying the plume found that black carbon or soot in the smoke was key to the plume's rapid rise: the soot absorbed solar radiation, heating the surrounding air and allowing the plume to quickly rise.
A new economic study in the journal Science shows that thousands of farmers in northern India could increase their profits if they stop burning their rice straw and adopt no-till practices to grow wheat. Alternative farming practices could also cut farmers' greenhouse gas emissions from on-farm activities by as much as 78% and help lower air pollution in cities like New Delhi.
Rivers and lakes cover just about one percent of Earth's surface, but are home to one third of all vertebrate species worldwide. At the same time, freshwater life is highly threatened. Scientists from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and international colleagues have now quantified the global decline of big freshwater animals: From 1970 to 2012, global populations of freshwater megafauna declined by 88 percent - twice the loss of vertebrate populations on land or in the ocean. Large fish species are particularly affected.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission -- MMS -- has spent the past four years using high-resolution instruments to see what no other spacecraft can. Recently, MMS made the first high-resolution measurements of an interplanetary shock.
These shocks, made of particles and electromagnetic waves, are launched by the Sun. They provide ideal test beds for learning about larger universal phenomena, but measuring interplanetary shocks requires being at the right place at the right time. Here is how the MMS spacecraft were able to do just that.
What's in a Shock?
WASHINGTON--Consecutive low snow years may become six times more common across the Western United States over the latter half of this century, leading to ecological and economic challenges such as expanded fire seasons and poor snow conditions at ski resorts, according to a study.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured this infrared image of Supertyphoon Lekima as it tracked 214 nautical miles southwest of Okinawa, Japan. Tropical cyclone warning signal #1 is in force for the Luzon provinces of Batanes and Babuyan group of islands. The storm has tracked north-northwest at 10 knots over the past six hours.
Satellite imagery shows this system continues to rapidly intensify as evidenced by tightly compact central convection which includes an eight nautical mile-sized eye with a tight pinhole in the eye which is an indication of a strong storm.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - The most productive places on Earth for solar power are farmlands, according to an Oregon State University study.
The study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, finds that if less than 1% of agricultural land was converted to solar panels, it would be sufficient to fulfill global electric energy demand. The concept of co-developing the same area of land for both solar photovoltaic power and conventional agriculture is known as agrivoltaics.
DALLAS (July 23, 2019) - Cues signaling trust and dominance are crucial for social life. Recent research from Dr. Dan Krawczyk's lab at the Center for BrainHealth® explored whether administering two chemically similar hormones known to affect social cognition - oxytocin and vasopressin - would influence the perception of trustworthiness and/or social dominance.
Our knowledge of the dwindling sea ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean comes mostly through satellites, which since 1979 have imaged the sea ice from above. The University of Washington's Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean and Modeling System, or PIOMAS, is a leading tool for gauging the thickness of that ice. Until now that system has gone back only as far as 1979.
A new mathematical analysis suggests that migration can generate patterns in the spatial distribution of individuals that promote cooperation and allow populations to thrive, in spite of the threat of exploitation. Felix Funk and Christoph Hauert of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, present these findings in PLOS Computational Biology.
Cybersecurity researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Technion Institute of Technology have discovered critical vulnerabilities in the Siemens S7 Simatic programmable logic controller (PLC), one of the world's most secure PLCs that are used to run industrial processes.
Prof. Avishai Wool and M.Sc student Uriel Malin of TAU's School of Electrical Engineering worked together with Prof. Eli Biham and Dr. Sara Bitan of the Technion to disrupt the PLC's functions and gain control of its operations.
PHILADELPHIA - A crucial signaling pathway that can tell the immune system to fight off cancer can also be co-opted by cancer cells to put the brakes on the immune system, according to a new study from researchers in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers say this increased understanding can serve as a biomarker that helps predict which patients are likely to respond to immunotherapies.
North Sea oil and gas rigs could be modified to pump vast quantities of carbon dioxide emissions into rocks below the seabed, research shows.
Refitting old platforms to act as pumping stations for self-contained CO2 storage sites would be 10 times cheaper than decommissioning the structures, researchers say.
The sites would store emissions generated by natural gas production, and could also be used to lock away CO2 produced by other sources - such as power stations - helping to combat climate change.