One of the most significant challenges in the global R&D effort towards better energy technologies -- efficient and accurate material simulation -- may be one step closer to being solved, based on new techniques released by UK-based quantum software startup Phasecraft. The new peer-reviewed study in the Physical Review B journal from the American Physical Society sets out a novel technique for modelling fermionic particles -- like electrons -- which significantly reduces the quantum hardware resources needed to perform simulations. Phasecraft's Joel Klassen, who co-led the study, explained, "One of the most exciting potential applications for quantum computing ...

LOWELL, Mass. - Researchers led by a UMass Lowell environmental science professor say mercury measurements in a Massachusetts forest indicate the toxic element is deposited in forests across the globe in much greater quantities than previously understood. The team's results underscore concern for the health and well-being of people, wildlife and waterways, according to Prof. Daniel Obrist, as mercury accumulating in forests ultimately runs off into streams and rivers, ending up in lakes and oceans. Mercury is a highly toxic pollutant that threatens fish, birds, mammals and humans. Hundreds of tons of it are ...

PITTSBURGH, July 12, 2021 - States that legalize recreational marijuana experience a short-term decline in opioid-related emergency department visits, particularly among 25- to 44-year-olds and men, according to an analysis led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Published today in the journal Health Economics, the study shows that even after the temporary decline wears off, recreational cannabis laws are not associated with increases in opioid-related emergency department visits. "This isn't trivial--a decline in opioid-related emergency department visits, even if only for six months, is a welcome public health development," said lead author Coleman Drake, Ph.D., assistant professor ...

MINNEAPOLIS - The American Academy of Neurology (AAN), the world's largest association of neurologists with more than 36,000 members, is issuing ethical guidance for neurologists and neuroscience professionals who care for people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. The new position statement is published in the July 12, 2021 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This update to the 1996 AAN position statement was developed by the Ethics, Law, and Humanities Committee, a joint committee of the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society. "Dementia care and scientific understanding have advanced considerably, including greater recognition of non-Alzheimer's dementias and advances ...

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought increasing attention to disparities in how police officers treat Black and white Americans. Now, research published by the American Psychological Association finds that disparity may exist even in subtle differences in officers' tone of voice when they address Black and white drivers during routine traffic stops. In the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers gathered short audio excerpts from police body camera footage and found that when officers spoke to Black men at traffic stops, their tone of voice conveyed less warmth, respect and ease than when they spoke to white men. The researchers also found that these subtle negative interactions ...

INFORMS Journal Management Science Study Key Takeaways: Lack of direct airline routes limit the flexibility of organ transplantation policies. A new airline route can increase the number of kidneys shared between different regions by more than 7% while also decreasing the organ discard rate. An increase in the quantity of kidneys does not come with a decrease in kidney quality. CATONSVILLE, MD, July 12, 2021 - It's a supply and demand problem, it's a transportation problem, it's a donor problem - and that just scratches the surface. According ...

[Points] 319 Tb/s long-haul transmission of wideband (>120 nm) S, C and L-bands signal using 552 PDM-16QAM, wavelength-division multiplexed channels in a 4-core optical fiber Long-distance transmission over 3,001 km enabled by adoption of both erbium and thulium doped-fiber amplifiers and distributed Raman amplification Demonstration shows potential of SDM fibers with standard-cladding diameter and compatibility with existing cabling technologies for near-term adoption of high-throughput SDM fiber systems [Abstract] Researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA ...

When we think about singularities, we tend to think of massive black holes in faraway galaxies or a distant future with runaway AI, but singularities are all around us. Singularities are simply a place where certain parameters are undefined. The North and South Pole, for example, are what's known as coordinate singularities because they don't have a defined longitude. Optical singularities typically occur when the phase of light with a specific wavelength, or color, is undefined. These regions appear completely dark. Today, some optical singularities, including ...

Los Alamos, N.M., July 12, 2021--For the first time, the long-theorized neutron-clustering effect in nuclear reactors has been demonstrated, which could improve reactor safety and create more accurate simulations, according to a new study recently published in the journal Nature Communications Physics. "The neutron-clustering phenomenon had been theorized for years, but it had never been analyzed in a working reactor," said Nicholas Thompson, an engineer with the Los Alamos Advanced Nuclear Technology Group. "The findings indicate that, as neutrons fission and create more neutrons, some go on to form large lineages of clusters while others quickly die off, resulting in so-called 'power tilts,' ...

(Boston)--Despite the availability of numerous effective birth control methods, more than 40 percent of pregnancies worldwide are unintended. In addition to contributing significantly to population growth, unintended pregnancies can have pronounced adverse effects on maternal physical, mental and economic wellbeing. Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and ZabBio (San Diego, CA) have developed an anti-sperm monoclonal antibody, the Human Contraception Antibody (HCA), which they found to be safe and possess potent sperm agglutination (clumping) and immobilization activity in laboratory tests. "HCA appears to be suitable for contraceptive use and could be administered vaginally in a dissolvable film for a ...

A research team from the University of Göttingen and the University of British Columbia (Canada) has investigated how people in five different countries react to various usages of genome editing in agriculture. The researchers looked at which uses are accepted and how the risks and benefits of the new breeding technologies are rated by people. The results show only minor differences between the countries studied - Germany, Italy, Canada, Austria and the USA. In all countries, making changes to the genome is more likely to be deemed acceptable when used in crops rather than in livestock. The study was published in Agriculture and Human Values. Relatively new breeding technologies, such as CRISPR gene editing, have enabled a range of new opportunities for plant and animal breeding. ...

The sensory cells in the inner ear and the touch receptors in the skin actually have a lot in common, according to a new study from the USC Stem Cell laboratory of Neil Segil published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS). "There are striking similarities in the development of two types of specialized sensory cells: the so-called 'hair cells' that receive sound vibrations in the inner ear, and the Merkel cells that sense light touch at the surface of the skin," said Segil, who is a Professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology ...

The Lucinidae family, lucinids for short, comprises approximately 500 living species of bivalves. They are at least 400 million years old, according to fossil records, and have managed to colonize a wide variety of habitats, from beautiful beaches to the abyssal depths untouched by the sun over a kilometer below the sea surface. Their ability to thrive in a wide variety of habitats is made possible by their 'partner in crime', a sulfur-oxidizing bacterial symbiont that utilizes hydrogen sulfide, better known as 'rotten egg gas', as an energy source to power primary production. This process is not unlike photosynthesis used by plants, yet not dependent on sunlight, ...

BOSTON - By implementing a long-term, prospective approach to the development of celiac disease, a collaborative group of researchers has identified substantial microbial changes in the intestines of at-risk infants before disease onset. Using advanced genomic sequencing techniques, MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) researchers, along with colleagues from institutions in Italy and the University of Maryland, College Park, uncovered distinct preclinical alterations in several species, pathways and metabolites in children who developed celiac disease compared to at-risk children who did not develop celiac disease. As part of the MGHfC Celiac Disease, Genomic, Microbiome and Metabolomic (CDGEMM) Study, researchers ...

Communities trying to fight sea-level rise could inadvertently make flooding worse for their neighbors, according to a new study from the END ...

Better treatments of HER2-positive breast cancer are closer at hand, thanks to new research by a team led by Université de Montréal professor Jean-François Côté at the cytoskeleton organization and cell-migration research unit of the UdeM-affiliated Montreal Clinical Research Institute. Published in PNAS, the journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the new research by Marie-Anne Goyette, a doctoral student in Côté's laboratory, reveals a highly promising therapeutic target to counter the HER2-positive breast cancer. In HER2-positive breast cancer, a gene called HER2 is expressed that promotes an aggressive form of the disease. Affecting 20 per cent of ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Traces of the gas phosphine point to volcanic activity on Venus, according to new research from Cornell University. Last autumn, scientists revealed that phosphine was found in trace amounts in the planet's upper atmosphere. That discovery promised the slim possibility that phosphine serves as a biological signature for the hot, toxic planet. Now Cornell scientists say the chemical fingerprint support a different and important scientific find: a geological signature, showing evidence of explosive volcanoes on the mysterious planet. "The phosphine is not telling us about the biology ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Lead exposure in childhood may lead to less mature and less healthy personalities in adulthood, according to a new study lead by psychology researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sampled more than 1.5 million people in 269 U.S. counties and 37 European nations. Researchers found that those who grew up in areas with higher levels of atmospheric lead had less adaptive personalities in adulthood -- lower levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher levels of neuroticism. "Links between lead exposure and personality traits are quite impactful, because we take our personalities with us everywhere," ...

Sugarcane is one of the most productive plants on Earth, providing 80 percent of the sugar and 30 percent of the bioethanol produced worldwide. Its size and efficient use of water and light give it tremendous potential for the production of renewable value-added bioproducts and biofuels. But the highly complex sugarcane genome poses challenges for conventional breeding, requiring more than a decade of trials for the development of an improved cultivar. Two recently published innovations by University of Florida researchers at the Department of Energy's Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) demonstrated the ...

Butterflies and moths have beautiful wings: the bright flare of an orange monarch, the vivid stripes of a swallowtail, the luminous green of a Luna moth. But some butterflies flutter on even more dramatic wings: parts of their wing, or sometimes the entire wing itself, are actually transparent. Many aquatic organisms, including jellies and fish, are transparent. But transparent butterfly and moth wings are so arresting that merely catching a glimpse of one typically causes a human to lunge for a camera or at least point it out to their friends. These enigmatic, transparent butterfly wings have not been studied comprehensively. Doris Gomez and Marianne Elias (French National Center for Scientific Research) set out to change that. Last week, along with a multidisciplinary ...

Chronic alcohol abuse and hepatitis can injure the liver and lead to fibrosis, the buildup of collagen and scar tissue. As a potential approach to treating liver fibrosis, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators are looking for ways to stop liver cells from producing collagen. "So we thought...what if we take immunotoxins and try to get them to kill collagen-producing cells in the liver," said team lead Tatiana Kisseleva, MD, PhD, associate professor of surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "If these antibodies carrying toxic molecules can find and bind the cells, the cells will eat up the 'gift' and die." In a study published July 12, 2021 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kisseleva ...

Having a home near a busy airport certainly has its perks. It is close to many establishments and alleviates the problem of wading through endless traffic to catch flights. But it does come at a cost -- tolerating the jarring sounds of commercial airplanes during landing and takeoff. Researchers at Texas A&M University have conducted a computational study that validates using a shape-memory alloy to reduce the unpleasant plane noise produced during landing. They noted that these materials could be inserted as passive, seamless fillers within airplane wings ...

MRI-guided focused ultrasound combined with microbubbles can open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and allow therapeutic drugs to reach the diseased brain location under the guidance of MRI. It is a promising technique that has been shown safe in patients with various brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's diseases, Parkinson's disease, ALS, and glioblastoma. While MRI has been commonly used for treatment guidance and assessment in preclinical research and clinical studies, until now, researchers did not know the impact of the static magnetic field generated by the MRI scanner on the BBB opening size and ...

Children with a devastating genetic disorder characterized by severe motor disability and developmental delay have experienced sometimes dramatic improvements in a gene therapy trial launched at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals. The trial includes seven children aged 4 to 9 born with deficiency of AADC, an enzyme involved in the synthesis of neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine, that leaves them unable to speak, feed themselves or hold up their head. Six of the children were treated at UCSF and one at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. Children in the study experienced improved motor function, better mood, and longer sleep, and were able to interact more fully with their ...

Historically, shared resources such as forests, fishery stocks, and pasture lands have often been managed with an aim toward averting "tragedies of the commons," which are thought to result from selfish overuse. Writing in BioScience, Drs. Senay Yitbarek (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Karen Bailey (University of Colorado Boulder), Nyeema Harris (Yale University), and colleagues critique this model, arguing that, all too often, such conservation has failed to acknowledge the complex socioecological interactions that undergird the health of resource ...