Posts

Scientists have developed a way to produce soft, flexible and stretchy electronic circuits and radio antennas by hand, simply by writing on specially designed sheets of material. This technique could help people draw electronic devices into existence on demand for customized devices, researchers said in a new study describing the method. Whereas conventional electronics are stiff, new soft electronics are flexible and potentially stretchable and foldable. Researchers around the world are investigating soft electronics for applications such as wearable and implantable devices....

A tale of shark bites at a Scottish pub has led us to some new ideas about rebuilding broken bodies. In the early 2000s American geneticist Michael Zasloff of Georgetown University had traveled to the University of St. Andrews to give a talk about several natural antibiotics found in animal skin. After the lecture, he and some of the university scientists went for a drink, and one of them, a marine biologist, began to talk about how dolphins were frequently savaged by sharks, sustaining some bite wounds 45 centimeters long and 12 centimeters deep....

At issue is the impact of homologation — the final step in designating land as Indigenous property in a process laid out in Brazil’s Constitution — on destruction of Earth’s largest tropical forest. After homologation, economic activity can’t be carried out in designated lands without consent from both the tribe and the federal government. And the study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Columbia University found that between 1982 and 2016, deforestation inside homologated territories declined from an average of about 3% a year to 1% a year....

By Janelle WeaverBacteria don’t have noses, but they detect some odors in a similar way to animals, according to a study to be published on Wednesday. The pungent gas ammonia causes bacteria to form slimy colonies called biofilms, and smelling it may help the microbes to locate food and avoid competitors.The study offers the first evidence that bacteria respond to odors–produced when volatile chemicals evaporate–and is perhaps the earliest evolutionary example of olfaction, says Reindert Nijland, a microbiologist at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands....

Science fiction has imagined some pretty wild ideas about the universe and our place in it. Parallel or alternative universes have been a recurrent theme in Star Trek. In Interstellar, an astronaut explores hidden extra dimensions. The Matrix and other movies have depicted ordinary life on Earth as nothing but a holographic or mental projection. But these imaginings all seem downright tame compared with the mind-bending science now coming out of physics and astronomy....

SARS, Zika, Ebola – when some of the world’s most terrifying disease outbreaks occur, health workers often find themselves powerless. A billion-dollar initiative launched on 18 January aims to change that situation by pre-emptively developing and stockpiling vaccines to combat potential epidemic threats. “I’m thrilled. This is only the formal launch, and to have near $500 million—and likely more—to get started is great,” says Jeremy Farrar, director of biomedical charity the Wellcome Trust in London, one of the new project’s backers....

When biologist Luis Zambrano began his career in the late 1990s, he pictured himself working miles from civilization, maybe discovering new species in some hidden corner of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Instead, in 2003, he found himself counting amphibians in the polluted, murky canals of Mexico City’s Xochimilco district. The job had its advantages: he was working minutes from his home and studying the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum), a national icon in Mexico and arguably the world’s most recognizable salamander....

In its modern incarnation, South Carolina’s picturesque Charleston Harbor hosts a wide variety of marine birds—from the pelicans and cormorants that forage in its estuaries to the gulls and herons that breed and nest on its offshore islands and the songbirds that pass through en route to warmer climes for the winter months. Around 25 million years ago, however, dragons ruled the Carolina skies. These beasts were not the monsters of medieval folklore, of course, but rather evolution’s closest facsimiles, fearsome in their own right: giant flying birds with wings longer than those of some light aircraft and beaks equipped with deadly, spearlike choppers....

Traumatic brain injuries are commonplace during combat; two thirds of soldiers sent to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq suffer from such injuries. A new study of aging Vietnam veterans with head trauma paints a grim picture of the future for troops returning from Iraq with similar wounds. Jordan Grafman, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, led a study of Vietnam veterans who had suffered penetrating head injuries—trauma caused in these cases by shrapnel or bullets entering the brain....

There’s a favorite argument among doubters of mainstream climate science: Climate models overestimate the rate at which the Earth is warming. That claim surfaces time and again and is frequently based on single examples of uncertainty or cherry-picked data. Various studies have gone back and closely examined individual climate models in recent years and have generally found that they’re working pretty well. A study released yesterday has taken the exercise to the next level....

More than four months after devastating monsoon floods began in Pakistan, at least 1,500 people have died, and the waters that inundated nearly the entire country have yet to recede. This ongoing emergency is causing illness and communicable disease to spread, and these effects are likely to be much more deadly than the initial catastrophe. “The public health risks are worse, and the death toll could be much higher,” says Richard Brennan, regional emergency director for the eastern Mediterranean region at the World Health Organization (WHO)....

When will COVID be over? In England, a step toward bringing the pandemic to a close came on July 19, dubbed “Freedom Day” by the tabloids, when restrictions limiting social contact were lifted. It meant no cap on the number of people who could meet, no national mask restrictions and no social distancing requirements. But after scrutiny of public health statistics, the Freedom Day moniker seems more a wish than a decision taken after careful deliberation of risks and benefits....

An injection of “new blood” is a phrase long used as a metaphor for the revitalizing effect of fresh minds on a stagnant organization. But research now suggests it also applies in a literal sense. In a development that calls to mind both vampire lore and stories of bathing in blood, young blood appears to in fact rejuvenate old brains. Researchers at Stanford University led by neuroscientist Tony Wyss-Coray showed in a 2014 study that infusions of blood from young mice reversed cognitive and neurological impairments seen in old ones....

Seawater has been converted into drinkable freshwater for decades in the Middle East and in the Caribbean. Only a few major seawater desalination plants exist in the U.S.; the largest operates in Tampa, Fla., and a project twice the size is being developed in Carlsbad, Calif. But that number could grow quickly as millions of people move to coastal communities, which often have insufficient groundwater. “Almost 20 desalination plants are proposed for California alone,” says Tom Pankratz, a desalination consultant in Houston....

It only took 141 years, but researchers report they have finally pinpointed one of the genes that Austrian monk Gregor Mendel manipulated in his pioneering experiments that established the basic laws of genetics–specifically, the gene that controlled the color of his peas’ seeds. A team identified the sequence of a gene common to several plant species, which use it to break down a green pigment molecule, and found that it matches Mendel’s gene....

About a million years ago a small mutation might have unlocked a big advantage for ancient humans. A recent study in Science Advances suggests that a variant of a critical stretch of DNA called the growth hormone receptor gene protected against starvation—in part by limiting individuals’ body size during periods of resource scarcity. The variant was widespread among Homo sapiens and their relatives, although it suddenly plummeted in frequency beginning around 40,000 years ago, especially in East Asia and Eurasia....

The solar forecast calls for sluggish times ahead, according to scientists in Boulder, Colo.—which could have a cooling effect on Earth. A better understanding of solar processes and their climatic impacts will be key to understanding how far such quiescence could go to counteract global warming caused by pollution from fossil fuels. There’s little doubt the sun’s been in a funk ever since solar cycle 23 wound down in 2007. (Astronomers began to number the solar activity cycles in 1755....

Artificial-intelligence (AI) systems known as neural networks can recognize images, translate languages and even master the ancient game of Go. But their limited ability to represent complex relationships between data or variables has prevented them from conquering tasks that require logic and reasoning. In a paper published in Nature on October 12, the Google-owned company DeepMind in London reveals that it has taken a step towards overcoming this hurdle by creating a neural network with an external memory....

The melting Greenland ice sheet could be a surprising source of toxic mercury. The island is one of the most remote places on Earth—yet runoff water from some melting glaciers contains as much mercury as highly polluted rivers in heavily populated parts of the world. These are the findings of a new study that analyzed meltwater flowing from the southeast corner of the ice sheet. The research raises concerns about the amount of mercury entering nearby rivers and fjords, important sources of fish for coastal Greenland communities....

When the World Health Organization first called COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, few people had any idea what the world was in for. The progression was swift: borders clamped shut, authorities issued stay-at-home orders, and public life ground to a near halt. Most of the world had no experience dealing with an infectious disease outbreak of this scale. The previously unknown virus, now called SARS-CoV-2, could spread through the air, often before (or, in some cases, possibly without ever) causing any symptoms....