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Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemically similar metals, which got their name because they typically occur at low concentrations (between 0.5 and 67 parts per million) within Earth's crust. Because they are indispensable in modern technology such as light-emitting diodes, mobile phones, electromotors, wind turbines, hard disks, cameras, magnets and low-energy lightbulbs, the demand
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Nature Communications, Published online: 28 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36891-5 More than a decade after the first demonstration of large-scale graphene synthesis by chemical vapor deposition, the commercialization of graphene products is limited not only by price, but also by consistency, reproducibility, and predictability. Here, the author discusses the reproducibility issues in the
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On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project . This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features " What has global warming done since 1998? ". More will follow in
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Nature Communications, Published online: 28 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36763-y Understanding how foams destabilize is key for developing applications. Experiments with foamed oil-in-water emulsions now show that bubble size evolution can be controlled by varying the continuous phase elastic modulus, exploiting the interplay between a foam’s structure and mechanical properties.
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Department of Energy has changed its assessment of COVID-19’s origins:… Four agencies, plus the National Intelligence Council, guessed that COVID started (as nearly all pandemics do) with a natural exposure to an infected animal; three agencies couldn’t decide on an answer; and one blamed a laboratory accident.
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Madeleine Finlay speaks to environmental journalist Rachel Salvidge about PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals’, which have been found at high levels at thousands of sites across the UK and Europe. Rachel explains what they are, how harmful they can be, and what can be done to mitigate their effects Clip: Roll Call You can find Rachel’s reporting, and the map of PFAS levels in the UK and Europe
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Madeleine Finlay speaks to environmental journalist Rachel Salvidge about PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals’, which have been found at high levels at thousands of sites across the UK and Europe. Rachel explains what they are, how harmful they can be, and what can be done to mitigate their effects. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod
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Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemically similar metals, which got their name because they typically occur at low concentrations (between 0.5 and 67 parts per million) within Earth's crust. Because they are indispensable in modern technology such as light-emitting diodes, mobile phones, electromotors, wind turbines, hard disks, cameras, magnets and low-energy lightbulbs, the demand
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What does the near future have in store for vertical farming? Can vertical farming help reduce the need for large tracts of agricultural land or help urban centers become food independent? What are your thoughts and feelings on this topic? submitted by /u/Josh12345_ [link] [comments]
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While analyzing data from the first images of a well-known early galaxy taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered a companion galaxy previously hidden behind the light of the foreground galaxy — one that surprisingly seems to have already hosted multiple generations of stars despite its young age, estimated at 1.4 billion years old.
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The new method simultaneously monitors the size and shape of the clumps and the mixing intensity in a single step, in real time, allowing for more accurate measurements. The value of the research lies in the fact that mixing is one of the most energy-consuming processes during water and wastewater purification.
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Researchers have succeeded in producing very special catalysts, known as 'Lewis superacids', which can be used to break strong chemical bonds and speed up reactions. The production of these substances has, until now, proven extremely difficult. The chemists' discovery enables non-biodegradable fluorinated hydrocarbons, similar to Teflon, and possibly even climate-damaging greenhouse gases, such as
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Using a new dataset, scientists analyzed the coordinates and surface of 183 million buildings in nearly 6,000 cities across all 52 countries in Africa. With their model, they quantify the shape of cities. Thus, they show that if a city's population doubles, the energy demand associated with commuting triples. These results clearly show how important it will be to plan fast-growing cities in a sust
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A study has investigated the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to address societal mega-trends and analyzed its proposed solutions in dealing with these global challenges. Artificial intelligence can offer understandable insights into the complex and cross-cutting issues of mega-trends, and how they could change and benefit in different areas if AI systems are deployed.
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Upon capture, police found only $7.70 in John Dillinger's pocket. Can Josh locate his missing fortune? #discoveryplus #expeditionunknown Stream Full Episodes of Expedition Unknown https://www.discoveryplus.com/show/expedition-unknown About Expedition Unknown: Josh Gates investigates the truth behind the world's most iconic and captivating legends. Leaving no stone unturned, his adventures take hi
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Amphibians worldwide are affected by climate change and potentially one of the most threatened. Biologists found that some species of amphibians are more likely to be sensitive to climate change because they are not protected by state or federal regulations. The team determined that approximately 11 percent of anuran species are sensitive to climate change, but are not currently listed as at-risk
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Scientists reveal that a warming world is increasing human-wildlife conflicts globally. They show that climate shifts can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats, the timing of events, wildlife behaviors and resource availability. It also showed that people are changing their behaviors and locations in response to climate change in ways that increase conflicts.
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Keeping queen bees chilled in indoor refrigeration units can make the practice of 'queen banking' — storing excess queens in the spring to supplement hives in the fall — more stable and less labor-intensive, a study found. It may also help strengthen honey bee survival in the face of a changing climate. In a paper published in the Journal of Apicultural Research, researchers compared queen banks
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Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos — other effects predominate. Now scientists have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on th
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Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos — other effects predominate. Now scientists have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on th
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Physicists report new evidence that production of an exotic state of matter in collisions of gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) can be 'turned off' by lowering the collision energy. The findings will help physicists map out the conditions of temperature and density under which the exotic matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), can exist and identify key features of the
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A giant insect found in Arkansas has set historic records. The Polystoechotes punctata or giant lacewing is the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years. The giant lacewing was formerly widespread across North America, but was mysteriously extirpated from eastern North America by the 1950s. This discovery suggests there may be relic populations of this large insect yet
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Scientists know that TDP-43, which helps regulate processing of RNA, may be responsible for the death of nerve cells in ALS and frontotemporal dementia. And a study suggests that a common modification to RNA, a methylation event known as m6A, plays a pivotal role in TDP-43-related neurodegeneration in ALS. Through sequencing analysis, investigators showed that methylation strongly influences the b
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Physicists report new evidence that production of an exotic state of matter in collisions of gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) can be 'turned off' by lowering the collision energy. The findings will help physicists map out the conditions of temperature and density under which the exotic matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), can exist and identify key features of the
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Researchers have discovered that channeling ions into defined pathways in perovskite materials improves the stability and operational performance of perovskite solar cells. The finding paves the way for a new generation of lighter, more flexible, and more efficient solar cell technologies suitable for practical use.
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To encourage more active lifestyles, public health agencies recommend mixed-use neighborhoods and 'complete' streets that are friendlier to walkers and bikers, but new research finds that while those strategies increase physical activity, an urban bias limits their applicability in many parts of the country.
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By returning to spawn in the Sacramento River at different ages, Chinook salmon lessen the potential impact of a bad year and increase the stability of their population in the face of climate variability, according to a new study. Unfortunately, spawning Chinook salmon are increasingly younger and concentrated within fewer age groups, with the oldest age classes of spawners rarely seen in recent y
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Face blindness, a mystifying condition that can trick us into believing we recognize people we've never met or make us fail to recognize those we have, has been previously estimated to affect between 2 and 2.5 percent of people in the world. Now, a new study is providing fresh insights into the disorder, suggesting it may be more common than currently believed.
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I see so many posts on this subreddit about how renewable energy sources, especially solar, are becoming more and more efficient, cost-effective and productive. Eventually some countries may reach a point where they could meet all of their energy needs from solar energy, to the point where they could have excess capacity. What do you think of promoting the idea of using this excess capacity to di
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We have growing teeth built in to our DNA. We have already grown two sets. What need to take place to grow a third set? How many things stand in the way of turning on that piece of DNA back on? How many other other things need to be turned off? How can we say we only want adult teeth? Is there any way to speed up the process and still have quality teeth? Do we need something to stop the process o
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Nanoscale plastic particles, such as those that permeate most food and water, pass from pregnant rats to their unborn offspring and may impair fetal development, according to a new study. “Much remains unknown, but this is certainly cause for concern and follow-up study,” says Philip Demokritou, professor in nanoscience and environmental bioengineering at Rutgers University School of Public Healt
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Existing UK fertility law should be updated to regulate modern treatments, says HFEA Children born via sperm or egg donation would not need to wait until adulthood to find out more about their biological parents, under proposed changes to the law in the UK. At present, donor-conceived children cannot obtain information about their biological parents until they are 18. But the Human Fertilisation
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This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. American intelligence officials are concerned that China is considering sending lethal aid to Russia. The West must increase the speed and scale of aid to Ukraine, to remind Beijing that it should stay
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What is the origin of the ancestors of present-day fish? What species evolved from them? A 50-year-old scientific controversy revolved around the question of which group, the 'bony-tongues' or the 'eels', was the oldest. A study has just put an end to the debate by showing through genomic analysis that these fishes are in fact one and the same group, given the rather peculiar name of 'Eloposteoglo
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While apprehensions about employment and schools dominate headlines, the truth is that the effects of large-scale language models such as ChatGPT will touch virtually every corner of our lives. These new tools raise society-wide concerns about artificial intelligence's role in reinforcing social biases, committing fraud and identity theft, generating fake news, spreading misinformation and more. A
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From regulators to researchers and most industries in between, all eyes are on PFAS. PFAS, per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of highly fluorinated human-made compounds that have been used for decades in everything from nonstick cookware and personal care products to fire-fighting foams and school uniforms. Their commonality and extreme resistance to environmental degradation has made
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Have you ever bitten into a plump, red strawberry, only to find it bland and watery? Certain pesticides might be responsible. A team has found that two common strawberry fungicides can impact cellular mechanisms, creating berries with subdued flavor and sweetness, as well as a lower nutritional value.
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Glaciers — giant blocks of moving ice — along Antarctica's coastline are flowing faster in the summer because of a combination of melting snow and warmer ocean waters, say researchers. On average, the glaciers travel at around one kilometre a year. But a new study has found a seasonal variation to the speed of the ice flow, which speeded up by up to 22 % in summer when temperatures are warmer. T
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Just a few weeks ago, city officials in Lake Elsinore, Calif., shut down their trails to prevent members of the public from disrupting a potential superbloom of golden poppy flowers in the region. The shutdown was to prevent chaos from breaking out over people trying to view the flowers, much like what happened in Lake Elsinore in 2019 when a different superbloom took place. But what exactly is a
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Relatable Suffering a bit of anxiety over what recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence might mean for humanity? So is Twitter, Tesla, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. "Having a bit of AI existential angst today," the billionaire tweeted over the weekend, just a few hours after starting the day on a much lighter " hope you have a good Sunday " note to followers. Honestly, in the grand scheme of M
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Vacuum Gleaner A team of physicists claims to have pulled energy out of a vacuum, Quanta reports — a trick that required them to teleport it from a different location using quantum tech. The work builds on previous research by Tohoku University theoretical physicist Masahiro Hotta, who back in 2008 claimed to have found a way to produce negative energy, a seemingly counterintuitive aspect of quan
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By inspecting the body's immune response at a molecular level, a research team has developed a new way to test patients for COVID-19. Their method can potentially catch infections a matter of hours after exposure—far earlier than current COVID-19 tests can detect the virus—with near-perfect accuracy. The team describes their innovation, which is still in the early stages of development, in the Feb
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By inspecting the body's immune response at a molecular level, a research team has developed a new way to test patients for COVID-19. Their method can potentially catch infections a matter of hours after exposure—far earlier than current COVID-19 tests can detect the virus—with near-perfect accuracy. The team describes their innovation, which is still in the early stages of development, in the Feb
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I’ve heard a lot about it but don’t have a complete understanding of it. All I know is that it’s bad news for us when it happens and apparently we are in the midst of one. So what are some possible catastrophes that might come of a pole shift? Is there any way humanity can prepare/adapt to the changes if it does happen? submitted by /u/Gopokes91 [link] [comments]
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We often think that our world is an infinite realm comprising great plains, jungles and oceans, teeming with wild animals featured in memorable nature shows like the BBC's Planet Earth. But the first global census of wild mammal biomass, conducted by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers and reported today in PNAS, reveals the extent to which our natural world—along with its most iconic animal
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Researchers present initial findings from study that followed thousands of US women for about 20 years Seven healthy habits and lifestyle factors may play a role in reducing the risk of dementia, according to a two decade-long study. Being active, eating a better diet, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, keeping normal blood pressure, controlling cholesterol and having low blood sugar in m
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We often think that our world is an infinite realm comprising great plains, jungles and oceans, teeming with wild animals featured in memorable nature shows like the BBC's Planet Earth. But the first global census of wild mammal biomass, conducted by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers and reported today in PNAS, reveals the extent to which our natural world—along with its most iconic animal
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Crash Love Bad news for Tesla stans: the Elon Musk-owned company is pausing all new installations of its controversial "Full Self-Driving" software after federal regulators deemed it a "crash risk." As The Verge reports , anyone who has purchased the $15,000 FSD add-on and not yet installed it — even if they just did so — will not be able to use the advanced assisted driving option until the comp
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Green leaves and photosynthesis were once considered key features of plants. However, some plants have since abandoned this process, obtaining their nutrients from other organisms. One such plant is the genus of Thismia, commonly known as fairy lanterns, which is characterized by its unusual appearance, elusiveness, and lack of photosynthesis.
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Experts from the University of Barcelona, the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC) and the Aragon Nanoscience and Materials Institute of Aragon (INMA)—a joint institute of the CSIC and the University of Zaragoza—have developed a new method to detect RNA viruses based on the triplex-forming probe technology.
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Experts from the University of Barcelona, the Institute for Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM-CSIC) and the Aragon Nanoscience and Materials Institute of Aragon (INMA)—a joint institute of the CSIC and the University of Zaragoza—have developed a new method to detect RNA viruses based on the triplex-forming probe technology.
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Trees have a huge arsenal of ways to keep the pests that attack them under control. In the course of evolution, for example, some English oaks (Quercus robur) have developed the ability to release volatile signaling substances when attacked by oak moths (green oak leaf roller, Tortrix viridana), whose caterpillars can completely defoliate the trees.
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Trees have a huge arsenal of ways to keep the pests that attack them under control. In the course of evolution, for example, some English oaks (Quercus robur) have developed the ability to release volatile signaling substances when attacked by oak moths (green oak leaf roller, Tortrix viridana), whose caterpillars can completely defoliate the trees.
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About 3,000 years ago, the ancient Scythians were a force to be reckoned with. Beginning with their emergence from Iran around 900 B.C. until the peak of their power, during the 4th century B.C., the nomadic tribes who all shared aspects of Scythian culture were spread across Eurasia. Their territory once stretched more than a million square miles, from the edges of China and India to eastern Euro
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What Even Accounts of a bizarre falling powder-like substance have emerged in multiple Mid-Atlantic states on the East Coast. As a local CBS affiliate in Baltimore reports , there appears to be dust or powder falling from the sky and accumulating on cars and in yards in Maryland, northern Virginia, and West Virginia. Though a definitive explanation hasn't yet been issued, CBS Baltimore notes that
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ScabGPT AI replacing your job is already happening — and apparently, some of your bosses are happy to admit it. With the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT, the relevance of human workers, ranging from writers to coders, has come under threat of obsolescence. And the threat is very real, it seems. According to a ResumeBuilder.com survey of 1,000 business leaders who use or plan to use ChatGPT, 49 percen
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Speaking at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz summarized his country’s approach to the war in Ukraine. “Despite all the pressure to take action,” he said , “caution must take priority over hasty decisions, unity over solo actions.” The line provided Scholz’s most explicit defense to date of Germany’s cycle of denial, delay, and cautious delivery of n
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International recognition is key to many successful academic careers, but research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesshows female scientific researchers are less internationally mobile than their male counterparts, although the gender gap has shrunk.
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It's not easy to claim being an old woman. To start with, how can I be 75 when I feel about 40? And isn't it shameful to be old when youth is valued? People proudly parrot statements such as, "I'm growing older but not getting old" (meaning, "How terrible to be old!"). I even heard that line quoted approvingly by one of the middle-aged hosts of the recent Australia Day Award ceremony.
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A joint paper by the Department of Computational Physics and Modeling of Physical Processes and Udmurt Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences published in the journal Materials introduces an algorithm that allows for the correct estimation of the crossover temperature for a large class of materials, regardless of their compositions or glass-forming abilities.
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The fallout from the train derailment and subsequent chemical spill and burn in Ohio continues, with new reports indicating that people who live near the East Palestine, Ohio crash site are starting to get sick. As NBC News reports , both workers and residents near the eastern Ohio site of the Norfolk Southern crash have been diagnosed with bronchitis and other ailments that their doctors and nur
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Swansong A large, mysterious object is slowly being sucked into the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, an extreme rendezvous of epic proportions that we've closely been following for over two decades. Using the WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, a team of astronomers has been watching the collision since 2002. In more recent observations, the strange object — dubbed X7
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Cocaine is perhaps most notoriously known as a dangerous drug. But it’s also used legally as a local anesthetic for surgeries. Scientists in China have now genetically engineered a tobacco plant to produce cocaine in its leaves. “Actually, it’s a big challenge to solve this unresolved scientific question,” says Sheng-Xiong Huang, a plant chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Kunming Institut
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A pair of researchers, Guillaume Guinot and Fabien Condamine, both with Université de Montpellier, in France, has looked at the impact of the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event on elasmobranch species to learn more about survival of marine creatures during extinction events. In their study, published in the journal Science, the marine biologists collected and analyzed data for thousands
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A new era of lunar exploration is on the rise, with dozens of moon missions planned for the coming decade. Europe is in the forefront here, contributing to building the Gateway lunar station and the Orion spacecraft—set to return humans to our natural satellite—as well as developing its large logistic lunar lander, known as Argonaut. As dozens of missions will be operating on and around the moon a
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Fact-checking is an important tool in the fight against online disinformation that can have serious implications for individuals and society by influencing elections, conflict and health. However, according to a survey conducted as part of the vera.ai project, the crucial task of archiving appearances of disinformation is made extremely difficult by anti-scraping measures taken by social media pla
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A pair of researchers, Guillaume Guinot and Fabien Condamine, both with Université de Montpellier, in France, has looked at the impact of the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event on elasmobranch species to learn more about survival of marine creatures during extinction events. In their study, published in the journal Science, the marine biologists collected and analyzed data for thousands
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Balding is really common, affecting more than 50% of men. It's also physically inconsequential (bald men live just as long as haired men). So why, in his memoir Spare, does Prince Harry refer to his brother's baldness as "alarming?"
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Every Oscars season brings new surprises: first-time nominees, snubbed Hollywood veterans, a list of honorees spanning blockbusters to indies. But one kind of movie is always a contender: the biopic. A true-story film is one of the most reliable forms of awards catnip; seven of the past 10 winners for Best Actor in a Leading Role were nominated for their portrayal of a real figure, sometimes a we
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February 27 has been set aside as International Polar Bear Day, first organized by the group Polar Bears International in 2011. The day was established to help spread awareness of the impact of global warming on the bears and their changing habitat, and international conservation efforts. Organizers hope to encourage people to take steps in their own life to reduce their carbon footprint. Below,
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While not primarily useful for telling the time, nuclear clocks could allow scientists to test humankind's fundamental understanding of how reality works.
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It's no secret that the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic struck corporations with an unprecedented number of business challenges, and even casual observers can note that companies' ability to withstand the stresses of quarantine-era trials varied widely among companies in similar industries and with similar business models. So why the difference in performance?
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SpaceX surprised everyone with the rapid spread of Starlink internet access, but the company may have overextended itself. Speeds have been on the decline while prices keep going up , and the solution is more satellites. SpaceX has been making plans for its Gen 2 Starlink megaconstellation, and it’s showing off the “V2 Mini” satellites that will help it get there without waiting for the delayed S
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A long line of quick-moving thunderstorms that produced a swath of damaging wind gusts across northern Texas and Oklahoma late Sunday likely qualified the event as a derecho, although that's not an official designation, said Nolan Meister, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
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COVID-19 affected the global supply chain substantially, severely compromising the efficiency of the supply chain due to delays and disruptions. The effects continue to impact consumers and businesses, primarily in terms of rising inflation and increasing living costs.
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Have you ever bitten into a plump, red strawberry, only to find it bland and watery? Certain pesticides might be responsible. A team reporting in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has found that two common strawberry fungicides can impact cellular mechanisms, creating berries with subdued flavor and sweetness, as well as a lower nutritional value.
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Researchers, publishing in the International Journal of Green Economics, have investigated the many factors that affect consumer attitudes and buying habits when it comes to organic food products. Mohd Farhan of the Mittal School of Business in Punjab, India, suggests that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led many consumers to become more aware of how the nutritional quality of the food they eat
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Have you ever bitten into a plump, red strawberry, only to find it bland and watery? Certain pesticides might be responsible. A team reporting in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has found that two common strawberry fungicides can impact cellular mechanisms, creating berries with subdued flavor and sweetness, as well as a lower nutritional value.
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36651-5 Metabolic reprogramming plays vital roles in tumorigenesis. Here, Chen et al. reveal that mitochondria-encoded mcPGK1 drives the mitochondrial translocation of PGK1, promoting liver tumorigenesis and TIC self-renewal by switching energy production from OXPHOS to glycolysis.
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Signs of dementia can spark anxiety and fear in anyone who is aging and experiencing cognitive decline. These concerns often ripple into the psyche of family members, friends and loved ones, too. Part of the challenge is the many unknowns and uncertainties that accompany dementia, which is not a sole diagnosable disease. Rather, this syndrome — involving a gradual decline in thinking, memory or ot
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Physicists report new evidence that production of an exotic state of matter in collisions of gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—an atom-smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory—can be "turned off" by lowering the collision energy. The "off" signal shows up as a sign change—from negative to positive—in data that describe "higher order" c
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Department of Energy’s updated report on origins of coronavirus pandemic jars with most scientists’ assessments According to the Wall Street Journal , an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report has concluded that the coronavirus behind the recent pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons programme. Continue reading…
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Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos—other effects predominate.
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Social media has brought sky-watchers together to view an event that may be seen as far south as the home counties Compare the bucket lists of your friends and the chances are that seeing the northern lights will be on many of them. So the news that, instead of trekking northwards to Norway or Iceland, you can just step out of your back door to see them sounds like a dream come true. In the past
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Researchers at Paderborn University have succeeded in producing very special catalysts, known as "Lewis superacids," which can be used to break strong chemical bonds and speed up reactions. The production of these substances has, until now, proven extremely difficult.
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Recently, a team led by Prof. Lu Junling collaborating with Prof. Li Weixue's and Prof. Wei Shiqiang's team, revealed the conjugated dual size effect of core-shell bimetallic nanocatalysts for the first time, with the activity of the catalysts increases with the core size in the benzyl alcohol oxidation reaction. Their work was published in Nature Communications.
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In a discovery that could have important implications for low-power computer memory, RIKEN researchers have shown that an entire sample can be switched between different magnetic states, or phases, simply by applying an electrical current.
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The RNA molecule is commonly recognized as messenger between DNA and protein, but it can also be folded into intricate molecular machines. An example of a naturally occurring RNA machine is the ribosome, that functions as a protein factory in all cells.
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Molecular models are a tried-and-tested tool for teaching chemistry to students of all ages. By enabling users to visualize the three-dimensional structure of a molecule and how its atoms are arranged, they can accelerate the learning process for essential topics such as covalent bonds. In biochemistry classes, molecular models of DNA are a popular way to teach students about nucleobase pairing an
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Tech Bros Ain't Loyal It takes a lot to gain Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk's loyalty — in fact, even sleeping at the office in a show of fealty and dedication to the cause no longer seems to be enough. In November, shortly after Musk took over the social media platform, former head of Twitter payments Esther Crawford appeared in a photo on social media, claiming that she chose to "sleep where y
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When older adults with cancer take multiple medications it can result in more toxic chemotherapy side effects and may even lead to a need to stop cancer treatment, according to new research. The medications can include ordinary drugs like blood pressure pills, supplements, or antacids. The study, published in the journal Cancer , provides a cautionary note to both patients and physicians regardin
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Engineers have developed wooden seed carriers that mimic the behavior of self-burying seeds. Before a seed can grow into a tree, flower, or plant, it needs to successfully implant itself in soil—a delicate and complex process. For the Erodium flower to implant a seed , its stalk forms a tightly wound, seed-carrying body with a long, curved tail at the top. When it begins to unwind, the twisting t
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Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have created a new method for deriving approximate linear equations to complicated nonlinear problems. Using simulation results, they show that the model derived using their proposed pseudo-linearization approach yields responses that are closer to those of the well-known alternative method. This work can help scientists and engineers predict and more preci
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Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are important immature blood cells in bone marrow that can be triggered to develop into any blood cell type. HSC transplants can be used to treat conditions where bone marrow is damaged and no longer able to produce healthy blood cells, but the widespread and safe use of HSCs is limited by barriers to cell growth and expansion in the lab (i.e., ex vivo). Now, a team
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Our body produces lots of enzymes that break down toxic substances. One class of such enzymes are the flavin-containing monooxygenases (FMOs), which are present in all tetrapods. Humans have five different FMO genes, of which the first four display the same activity.
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Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are important immature blood cells in bone marrow that can be triggered to develop into any blood cell type. HSC transplants can be used to treat conditions where bone marrow is damaged and no longer able to produce healthy blood cells, but the widespread and safe use of HSCs is limited by barriers to cell growth and expansion in the lab (i.e., ex vivo). Now, a team
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A team of researchers from the Faculty of Science at Charles University, BIOCEV and IOCB (Czech Republic), Johns Hopkins University (U.S.) and ELSI (Japan) has discovered why modern proteins use a quasi-universal repertoire of 20 canonical amino acids (AAs). The study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, shows that foldability was likely a critical factor in the selection of
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Introducing pollinator habitat can improve bee abundance and diversity, but the quality of that habitat matters, research finds. An examination of the program’s effectiveness shows that the quality of the habitat played a key role in positive effects, and that management of the area could affect habitat quality over time. North Carolina State University researchers studied the effects of a NC Dep
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A team of researchers from the Faculty of Science at Charles University, BIOCEV and IOCB (Czech Republic), Johns Hopkins University (U.S.) and ELSI (Japan) has discovered why modern proteins use a quasi-universal repertoire of 20 canonical amino acids (AAs). The study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, shows that foldability was likely a critical factor in the selection of
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Humanity faces complex, often interrelated challenges and threats, ranging from climate change, poverty, inequality, crime, and biological, chemical, physical and cyber disasters, to severe civil and military conflicts and even nuclear war. These issues have caused and will continue to cause immense suffering to individuals, families, communities and societies around the world and could ultimatel
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In 2019, researchers announced that something appeared to be off with the sun. After 10 years of observations, they had concluded that the sun’s high-energy radiation was seven times more abundant than expected. Now a new study based on even higher-energy data has sharpened the picture. Researchers found that the solar gamma-ray excess persists at higher energies. It then drops off at the topmost
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There are growing fears around the impact automation could have on jobs , but there’s been much less focus on how it could impact unpaid labor. New research suggests close to half of the time-consuming domestic work people do for free could be automated within a decade. The prospect of “technological unemployment” has been a central part of the public discourse around AI and robotics ever since a
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Keeping queen bees chilled in indoor refrigeration units can make the practice of "queen banking"—storing excess queens in the spring to supplement hives in the fall—more stable and less labor-intensive, a Washington State University study found. It may also help strengthen honey bee survival in the face of a changing climate.
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UK falls from fourth to 10th place in phase III trials amid ‘ossified’ bureaucracy and stretched health service The state of clinical trials in the NHS is “much worse than it has been in years” with patients losing access to cutting-edge cancer and dementia treatments, one of the UK’s most senior clinicians has warned. Sir John Bell, the regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford an
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As a civilization originating from rivers, China possesses one of the world's largest water resources and has a long history of water management. It is particularly the case in the Yangtze River Delta, where many rivers and lakes connect, requiring a huge amount of effort in their management.
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Kvinnor som åker Vasaloppet har en lägre risk att drabbas av komplikationer i samband med graviditet och förlossning. Men det är inte skidåkningen i sig som är avgörande, snarare handlar det om en aktiv livsstil. Inlägget dök först upp på forskning.se .
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Essential oils have been in use for nearly 6,000 years — intended for therapeutic, hygienic and spiritual purposes — and they remain quite popular today. Claims about their benefits range from stress and pain relief to insomnia and psoriasis treatment, with a global market expected to reach $14.1 billion by 2026. But each vial of extract has a limited shelf life that consumers should consider. Can
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Hot gases composed of metal ions and electrons, called plasmas, are widely used in many manufacturing processes, chemical synthesis, and metal extraction from ores and welding. A collaborative research group from Tohoku University and the Toyohashi University of Technology has invented a new and efficient method to create metallic plasmas from solid metals under a strong magnetic field in a microw
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Palliative care, which focuses on quality of life for people with a serious illness such as cancer or heart failure, isn’t likely to reduce psychological distress, according to a new study. Researchers found no statistically significant improvements in patient or caregiver anxiety, depression, or psychological distress in a meta-analysis of 38 randomized clinical trials of palliative care interve
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New findings show how scarcity marketing gets us to snap up products. Researchers investigated the Japanese beer market, where limited-time products—sold in limited batches or with a set end date, for example, for a specific season or event—are a popular strategy for creating the impression of scarcity in consumers. “I think it’s an important contribution to the literature that we quantify the em
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Like so many cities before it, Phoenix went all out to host the Super Bowl earlier this month. Expecting about 1 million fans to come to town for the biggest American sporting event of the year, the city rolled out a fleet of self-driving electric vehicles to ferry visitors from the airport. Robots sifted through the trash to pull out anything that could be composted. A 9,500-square-foot mural co
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This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. Like tens of thousands of young women before me, I wrote to Judy Blume because something strange was happening to my body. I had just returned from visiting the author in Key West when I noticed a line of small, bright
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President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month featured a hefty dose of good old-fashioned economic populism. Biden called out the rich for cheating on taxes, and big companies for not paying any taxes at all. He attacked Big Pharma for jacking up drug prices. And he took aim at one of progressives’ bêtes noires: stock buybacks. Biden attacked companies for spending money on
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Nanoplastics are plastics that have been discarded from our daily lives and that enter ecosystems in the size scale below 1 μm after their physical and chemical disintegration. Recent research has shown that the concentration of microplastics in the major rivers in South Korea is the highest worldwide; it is not unusual to find news reports about the detection of microplastics in simple tea bags o
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Changes in peregrine falcon diets during COVID-19 lockdowns highlight the impact of human behavior on urban predators. The findings are from a new study published in the British Ecological Society journal, People and Nature.
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Using a new dataset, Rafael Prieto-Curiel of the Complexity Science Hub and colleagues analyzed the coordinates and surface of 183 million buildings in nearly 6,000 cities across all 52 countries in Africa. With their model, they quantify the shape of cities. Thus, they show that if a city's population doubles, the energy demand associated with commuting triples. These results clearly show how imp
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Nature, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-00576-2 Julie Robinson, a marine ecologist-turned-policymaker in Belize, is helping to save her country through seaweed farming.
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This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Welcome to Chula Vista, where police drones respond to 911 calls In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it’s not uncommon to see an unmanned aerial vehicle darting across
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A group of 10 companies, including OpenAI, TikTok, Adobe, the BBC, and the dating app Bumble, have signed up to a new set of guidelines on how to build, create, and share AI-generated content responsibly. The recommendations call for both the builders of the technology, such as OpenAI, and creators and distributors of synthetic media, such as the BBC and TikTok, to be more transparent about what
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This is the first entry in an exchange between me and Scott Hastings, who requested the exchange. This is his opening arguments. My response will be tomorrow’s post. Part I: Hi Steven, first of all, I am tremendously grateful to you for taking time to engage with me on this very important topic. Thank you. I’d like to start by sharing just a few media articles I found that are now over 3 years ol
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I have a part-time job that is quite good, except for one task I must do—not even very often, just every other week—that I actively loathe. The task isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes: I scan a long list of short paragraphs about different people and papers from my organization that have been quoted or cited in various publications and broadcasts, pick three or four of thes
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Editor’s Note: On the last Monday of each month, Lori Gottlieb answers a reader’s question about a problem, big or small. Have a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com . Don't want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear Therapist” in your inbox. Dear Therapist, When I married my husband, he had two adult children, and I had none. We both wanted to have a child together, but
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Every memoir author eventually confronts the same question: Who cares? Sometimes you hear that taunt in your head late at night as you try and fail to sleep. Maybe it’s the voice of an old acquaintance whose respect you once craved. Or worse, perhaps this voice sounds like your own, the most insecure and anxious version of you. The truth is, it’s never not a little embarrassing when someone hears
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This article is from The Technocrat, MIT Technology Review’s weekly tech policy newsletter about power, politics, and Silicon Valley. To receive it in your inbox every Friday, sign up here . All eyes were on the US Supreme Court this week as it weighed up arguments for two cases relating to recommendation algorithms and content moderation, both core parts of how the internet works. It was also th
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This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Artificial-intelligence news in 2023 has moved so quickly that I’m experiencing a kind of narrative vertigo. Just weeks ago, ChatGPT seemed like a minor miracle. Soon, however, enthusiasm curdled into skepticism—maybe it was just a fancy auto-complete tool that cou
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36873-7 Microcavities concentrate light in tiny volumes and are important, e.g., for semiconductor lasers and nonlinear optics. In this paper, metasurfaces are introduced to realize microcavities with arbitrary mode profiles.
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36772-x Some HIV-infected cells persist during antiretroviral therapies (ART) but their phenotype is less clear. Dufour et al. show that HIV-infected cells that persist in people receiving ART are phenotypically diverse and that CD4+ T cells expressing the integrin VLA-4 are highly enriched in replication-competent
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In this episode we speak to Steve Furber, a leading scientist in the Human Brain Project. He talks about how he developed his interest in computing at university, his work on the SpiNNaker neuromorphic platform, and his advice to young people to ‘keep as many doors open as possible.’ Furber is also the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University o
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-35961-y In the phase III FLAURA study (NCT02296125), the third-generation epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) osimertinib provided superior progression-free survival versus comparator EGFR-TKIs in patients with NSCLC. Here, by next-generation sequencing of circulating tumor DNA, the
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Joe Biden seems like he’s running again, God love him. He will most likely make this official in the next couple of months, and with the support of nearly every elected Democrat in range of a microphone. That is how things are typically done in Washington: The White House shall make you primary-proof. The gods of groupthink have decreed as much. Unless some freethinking Democrat comes along and c
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I ett projekt har lärare utrustats med sensorer för att visualisera hur de rör sig i klassrummen. Målet är att ny teknik ska ge dem en bättre överblick av hur tiden fördelas mellan olika elever. Inlägget dök först upp på forskning.se .
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In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program 10 hours a day, seven days a week from four launch sites, it’s not uncommon to see an unmanned aerial vehicle darting across the sky. For officers on the force, tapping into this aerial reconnaissance resource has gone from a rare occurrence to a routine one. An officer about to enter a house where a pote
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36757-w The synthesis of polycarbonyl compounds featuring four or more carbonyl groups is a synthetic challenge for organic chemists. Here, the authors describe how unsymmetric polycarbonyl compounds bearing up to 4 adjacent carbonyl groups can be accessed within a two-step synthesis from readily available starting
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36814-4 The authors present an integrated photonic processor for blind source separation (BSS) to address broadband radio-frequency interference issues. The photonic BSS achieves 19.2 GHz processing bandwidth with highly energy-efficient BSS processing of sub-15 nanosecond latency.
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36685-9 Smart membranes with responsive wettability show promise for controllably separating oil/water mixtures but it remains challenging to fabricate responsive and stable scalable membranes. Here, the authors develop a capillary force-driven self-assembling strategy to construct a scalable and stable CO2-responsi
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Focus on fungi | Not Robinson Crusoe but The Coral Island | Sleep | Lettuce play with words | Crypto fools and their money One valuable benefit of purchasing cultivated mushrooms ( The world is your oyster mushroom! The expert guide to cooking delicious fungi, 21 February ) is that it avoids the worry of poisoning yourself from an incorrectly identified wild sample while reducing excess wild fora
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Many former service members take multiple medications to alleviate symptoms of PTSD, substance misuse, and chronic pain. Wary of taking so many pills, some veterans are seeking better access to hyperbaric oxygen therapy, an unapproved treatment, in an effort to quell the lingering wounds of war.
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Exclusive: MPs say research system unfit for purpose as mother of boy who died calls for answers on ‘missing millions’ Ministers have spent only £15m in five years on research into tackling brain tumours, the biggest killer of adults and children under 40, while boasting about delivering £40m, MPs have found. The revelation emerged in a damning report seen by the Guardian that is due to be publis
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36710-x Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) represent an emerging class of organic photocatalysts but it remains challenging to gain insight into photocatalytic active sites and reaction mechanisms. Herein, the authors construct a family of isoreticular crystalline hydrazide-based COF photocatalysts, with the optoele
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Nature Communications, Published online: 27 February 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36760-1 A kagome lattice spin-ice system is created with the superconducting qubits of a quantum annealer, and shown to exhibit a field-induced kinetic crossover between spin-liquid phases. Specifically, kinetics within both the Ice-I phase and the unconventional field-induced Ice-II phase are presented.
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Wikimedia Commans CC 2.0 Paleolitisk kost, allmänt känd som paleodiet eller stenålderskost, är en modediet som ska efterlikna den kost som människor åt under den paleolitiska eran (”stenåldern”). Med stenåldern … Continued Inlägget dök först upp på Vetenskap och Folkbildning .
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