After routing de Soto, Chickasaws repurposed Spanish objects for everyday use

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Research led by Kansas State University's Suprem Das, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, in collaboration with Christopher Sorensen, university distinguished professor of physics, shows potential ways to manufacture graphene-based nano-inks for additive manufacturing of supercapacitors in the form of flexible and printable electronics. As researchers around the world study the potential replacement of batteries by supercapacitors, an energy device that can charge and discharge very fast -- within few tens of seconds -- the team led by Das has an alternate prediction. The team's work could be adapted to integrate them to overcome ...

A huge global network of researchers is working together to take the pulse of our global tropical forests. ForestPlots.net, which is co-ordinated from the University of Leeds, brings together more than 2,500 scientists who have examined millions of trees to explore the effect of climate change on forests and biodiversity. A new research paper published in Biological Conservation explains the origins of the network, and how the power of collaboration is transforming forest research in Africa, South America and Asia. The paper includes 551 researchers and outlines 25 years of discovery in the carbon, biodiversity and dynamics of tropical forests. Professor Oliver Phillips, of Leeds' School of Geography, said "Our new paper shows how we are linking students, botanists, ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- A recent study by Kansas State University virologists demonstrates successful postinfection treatment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. College of Veterinary Medicine researchers Yunjeong Kim and Kyeong-Ok "KC" Chang published the study in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, or PNAS. They found that animal models infected with SARS-CoV-2 and treated with a deuterated protease inhibitor had significantly increased survival and decreased lung viral load. The results suggest that postinfection treatment with inhibitors of proteases that are essential for viral replication may be an effective treatment against SARS-CoV-2. ...

How on Earth? It has puzzled scientists for years whether and how bacteria, that live from dissolved organic matter in marine waters, can carry out N2 fixation. It was assumed that the high levels of oxygen combined with the low amount of dissolved organic matter in the marine water column would prevent the anaerobic and energy consuming N2 fixation. Already in the 1980s it was suggested that aggregates, so-called "marine snow particles", could possibly be suitable sites for N2 fixation, but this was never proven. Until now.. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen demonstrate, by use of mathematical models, ...

During the large second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in fall 2020, pulmonologist and critical care provider Juan C. Rojas, MD, reflected on how disproportionately members of minority populations were being affected by the disease. After hearing similar thoughts from colleagues in New Orleans and New York City, Rojas began to wonder how, if at all, state governments planned to ensure these disparities would be addressed when COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out to the public. In a new study published July 2 in JAMA Network Open, Rojas and his team were surprised ...

(Boston)--Would you be more willing to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus if you could participate in a lottery for cash and prizes? The answer was surprisingly no, according to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers who found that Ohio's "Vax-a-Million" lottery-based incentive system, intended to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, was not associated with an increase in COVD-19 vaccinations. Prior reports in the media had suggested that the Ohio lottery increased COVID-19 vaccinations, leading other states to use COVID-19 vaccine incentive lotteries in an attempt to increase slowing vaccination rates. "However, prior evaluations of ...

Some three quarters of the biomass in hop plants used in beer-making ends up in landfills. But a group of Japanese researchers has developed a technique that 'upcycles' that waste hop into cellulose nanofibers (CNFs). A paper describing the technique was published in the journal ACS Agricultural Science & Technology on June 11. In the past few years, craft beer-making has exploded in popularity around the world, including many beer styles that make use of many more and different types of hops than conventional commercial beers. A traditional preservative in beer, hops also add ...

Berkeley -- Many insects and spiders get their uncanny ability to scurry up walls and walk upside down on ceilings with the help of specialized sticky footpads that allow them to adhere to surfaces in places where no human would dare to go. Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have used the principle behind some of these footpads, called electrostatic adhesion, to create an insect-scale robot that can swerve and pivot with the agility of a cheetah, giving it the ability to traverse complex terrain and quickly avoid unexpected obstacles. The robot is constructed from a thin, layered material that bends and contracts when an electric voltage is applied. In a 2019 paper, the research team demonstrated that this simple ...

Wander around a desert most anywhere in the world, and eventually you'll notice dark-stained rocks, especially where the sun shines most brightly and water trickles down or dew gathers. In some spots, if you're lucky, you might stumble upon ancient art - petroglyphs - carved into the stain. For years, however, researchers have understood more about the petroglyphs than the mysterious dark stain, called rock varnish, in which they were drawn. In particular, science has yet to come to a conclusion about where rock varnish, which is unusually rich in manganese, comes from. Now, scientists at the California Institute of Technology, the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator ...

Neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated in new research that dopamine plays a key role in how songbirds learn complex new sounds. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the finding that dopamine drives plasticity in the auditory pallium of zebra finches lays new groundwork for advancing the understanding of the functions of this neurotransmitter in an area of the brain that encodes complex stimuli. "People associate dopamine with reward and pleasure," says lead author Matheus Macedo-Lima, who performed the research in the lab of senior author Luke Remage-Healey as a Ph.D. student in UMass Amherst's Neuroscience and Behavior graduate program. "It's a very well-known concept that dopamine is involved in learning. ...