ALS is a very severe neurodegenerative disease in which nerve cells in the spinal cord controlling muscles and movement slowly die. There is no effective treatment and the average life expectancy after being diagnosed with ALS is usually short. Because of this, new knowledge about the disease is urgently needed. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have gained new insights about ALS, by investigating the early development of the disease in a mouse model. "We have found that networks of nerve cells in the spinal cord called inhibitory interneurons lose connection to motor neurons, the nerve ...

Researchers have created a new nanometer-scale proximity labeling system that targets histidine residues quickly, providing a new chemical tool in protein chemical modification. The results of their research were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on April 27, 2021. Protein chemical modification, a technology that introduces functions into the chemical structure of proteins through irreversible strong bonds, is used for the creation of protein-based biomaterials and for drug delivery systems. In order to carry out modification, protein labeling is necessary. Proximity labeling is one of those techniques. It labels biomolecules located close to a protein of interest which can then also be marked ...

The photochemistry of the future will spring up human industry without smoke, and bring a brighter civilization based on the utilization of solar energy instead of fossil energy. Photochemistry has been used in controlling many reaction processes, especially for the challenging reactions containing selective C-H activation and C-C coupling in chemical synthesis. It is of great interests that a "dream catalytic reaction" of direct coupling of methanol to ethylene glycol (2CH3OH ? HOCH2CH2OH + H2, denoted as MTEG) could be achieved through the solar energy-driven C-H activation and C-C coupling processes, and this MTEG reaction has not been achieved through thermocatalysis yet. Ethylene glycol (EG) is an important monomer for the manufacture of polymers (e.g., poly(ethylene ...

Spending time outdoors is good for a person's body and soul, but how good is it for the wildlife around us? Outdoor recreation has become a popular activity, especially in the midst of a pandemic, where access to indoor activities might be limited. Long known to have negative behavioural and physiological effects on wildlife, outdoor recreation is one of the biggest threats to protected areas. Human disturbance to animal habitats can lower their survival and reproduction rates, and ultimately shrink populations or eradicate them from areas where they would ...

Researchers have identified the key factors that influence a vital pattern of ocean currents. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) carries warm water from the tropics northward. Many scientists think that this heat transport makes areas including north-west Europe and the UK warmer than they would otherwise be. Climate models suggest the AMOC is likely to weaken over the coming decades, with widespread implications for regional and global climate. The new study - led by the universities of Exeter and Oxford, and published in Nature Geoscience - pinpoints the causes of monthly and annual AMOC variation and finds a differing picture at two key locations. Observational data came from large ...

The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced us to expressions like 'lockdown', 'isolation' and 'social distancing', which became part of social conduct all over the world. Now it appears that bats also maintain social distancing which might help prevent the spread of contagious diseases in their colonies. In a new study published in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, researchers from Tel Aviv University demonstrate that sick bats, just like ill humans, prefer to stay away from their communities, probably as a means for recovery, and possibly also as a measure for protecting others. The study was conducted by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Kelsey Moreno and PhD candidate Maya Weinberg ...

Methane emissions from North American livestock may be routinely undercounted, a new analysis by researchers at New York University and Johns Hopkins University finds. The work also notes that in developing countries, where animal agriculture is becoming increasingly industrialized, methane emissions could rise more than expected. These assessments are based on a review, appearing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, of eight existing studies. Methane is a global warming gas even more powerful than CO2. Its amount and lifetime in the atmosphere are smaller than CO2, but quantities are still increasing. The United Nations has recently ...

RNA sequencing is a powerful technology for studying cells and diseases. In particular, single-cell RNA sequencing helps uncover the heterogeneity and diversity of our body. This is the central technology of the "Human Cell Atlas" in its quest to map all human cells. However, single-cell RNA sequencing reaches its limits in very large projects, as it is time-consuming and very expensive. To address these challenges, scientists from the research group of Christoph Bock, principal investigator at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and professor at the Medical University of Vienna, developed ...

Researchers at the Biomedicine Institute of Seville (IBiS) have discovered a new mechanism of Alzheimer's disease that disorganises the blood vessels around amyloid plaques, one of the characteristic features of the disease. The study, published in the international journal Nature Communications, was led by the laboratory of Dr. Alberto Pascual, from the Neuronal Maintenance Mechanisms Group at IBiS and was chiefly carried out by María Isabel Álvarez Vergara and Alicia E. Rosales-Nieves. Relevance of the finding Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia worldwide. In Spain, its incidence is increasing dramatically as the population ages and yet, unfortunately, the origin of the disease is still unknown. The mechanism put forward ...

New research has found that adolescents with higher levels of an omega-3 fatty acid in their blood were less likely to develop psychotic disorder in early adulthood, suggesting that it may have a potential preventative effect of reducing the risk of psychosis. The study, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in END ...

The routine use of the glycosylated hemoglobin test to track blood sugar levels in the general population can identify individuals with more advanced atherosclerotic disease. Currently used in the diagnosis and management of diabetes, glycosylated hemoglobin can provide a useful estimate of atherosclerotic disease, and therefore of cardiovascular risk, in individuals without diabetes with or without possible prediabetes. This is the main finding of a study carried out by scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC). The advance heralded by the CNIC study is the use of this blood-sugar measure in apparently healthy middle-aged ...

Skoltech researchers used the resources of the university's Zhores supercomputer to study a new method of generating gamma-ray combs for nuclear and X-ray photonics and spectroscopy of new materials. The paper was published in the journal Physical Review Letters. A gamma-ray comb is a series of short bursts that, when plotted as intensity versus frequency, look like sharp and equally spaced teeth of a comb. Generating these combs at high brightness in the gamma-ray domain has been challenging because of something called ponderomotive spectral broadening - an effect that destroys the monochromaticity that allows gamma-ray sources to be used in nuclear spectroscopy, medicine, and other applications. Sergey ...

The intriguing chemistry and biology of sulfur?containing natural products from marine microorganisms (1987-2020) https://doi.org/10.1007/s42995-021-00101-2 Announcing a new publication for Marine Life Science & Technology journal. In this review article the authors Yang Hai, Mei?Yan Wei, Chang?Yun Wang, Yu?Cheng Gu and Chang?Lun Shao from Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China and Syngenta Jealott's Hill International Research Centre, Berkshire, UK consider the chemistry and biology of sulfur?containing natural products from marine microorganisms. Natural products derived ...

The National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) publishes Polar Science, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal dealing with polar science in collaboration with the Elsevier B. V.. The most recent issue (Vol. 27 published in March 2021) was a special issue entitled "Arctic Challenge for Sustainability Project (ArCS)," which featured the former national (nation-wide) Arctic research project in Japan. The full text of this issue is freely accessible worldwide for a limited time until 10 September 2021. The Arctic Research Project "Arctic Challenge for Sustainability (ArCS)" was carried out from September 2015 to March 2020 as a national flagship project funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, ...

In past studies, researchers have found that C. elegans gonads generate more germ cells than needed and that only half of them grow to become oocytes, while the rest shrinks and die by physiological apoptosis, a programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Now, scientists from the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden (BIOTEC), the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL) at the TU Dresden, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (MPI-PKS), the Flatiron Institute, NY, and the University of California, Berkeley, found evidence to answer the question of what triggers this cell fate decision between life and death in the germline. Prior studies ...

Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have developed a novel set of tools for designing vitamin D clinical trials that capture large seasonal and population-wide differences in vitamin D status, typically seen in individuals. Their study published in the journal Scientific Reports (today, Monday 31st May 2021) provides a framework for clinical trials to establish whether vitamin D supplementation is effective against a given disease. The study also reveals that many trials which failed to find any association between vitamin D and disease prevention may have been underpowered or conducted without enough subjects to detect a benefit of vitamin D. You can read the full journal paper here: https://go.nature.com/3uERjgO The ...

YouTube is a treasure trove of virtual reality fails: users tripping, colliding into walls and smacking inanimate and animate objects. By investigating these "VR Fails" on YouTube, researchers at the University of Copenhagen have sought to learn more about when and why things go sideways for users and how to improve VR design and experiences so as to avoid accidents. Millions of YouTube viewers have enjoyed hearty laughs watching others getting hurt using virtual reality - people wearing VR headsets, falling, screaming, crashing into walls and TV sets, or knocking spectators to the floor. Some of us have even been that failing someone. Now, videos of virtual reality mishaps, called "VR Fails", ...

Redox-flow batteries store electrical energy in chemical compounds that are dissolved in an electrolyte. They are a particularly promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries as stationary energy storage. A team headed by Prof. Dr. Ingo Krossing from the Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Freiburg has succeeded in developing a non-aqueous All-Manganese Flow battery (All-MFB) that uses sustainable manganese as its active material and has a long cycle life. The researchers present the results of their work in the latest edition of Advanced Energy Materials. Active materials are ...

Energy communities will play a key role in building the more decentralised, less carbon intensive, and fairer energy systems of the future. Such communities enable local prosumers (consumers with own generation and storage) to generate, store and trade energy with each other -- using locally owned assets, such as wind turbines, rooftop solar panels and batteries. In turn, this enables the community to use more locally generated renewable generation, and shifts the market power from large utility companies to individual prosumers. Energy community projects often involve jointly-owned assets such as community-owned wind turbines or shared battery storage. Yet, this raises the question of how these assets should be controlled - often in real time, and how the energy outputs jointly-owned ...

Thyroid nodules are a common pathology having a prevalence of 19-76% when screened with ultrasound, with higher frequencies in women. Current medical methods used to assess the malignancy of a nodule consist in performing an ultrasound, followed by a Doppler ultrasound, and then a biopsy. However, unfortunately, these methods present both low specificity and low sensitivity. This insufficient effectiveness in accurately being able to diagnose thyroid tumors leads to many unclear or unnoticed cases as well as many others that undergo unnecessary surgeries (false positives) and increase the cost ...

When the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel crossed white-flowering with purple-flowering pea plants in the mid-19th century, he made an interesting discovery: The offspring were all purple. He therefore called this trait dominant, while the white blossom color was recessive. The reason for this phenomenon: In peas, each gene occurs twice. One version comes from the maternal plant and the other from the paternal plant. If a pea has inherited the gene for purple flower color from one parent, but the gene for white flower color from the other, purple wins. Only when two genes for white flowers come together in the offspring plant is it white. Humans also have genes that are inherited either dominantly or recessively. However, the case is not so clear for the mutations investigated ...

Using a Fitbit and a spy mic, scientists have discovered new insight into the behaviour of the elusive Canada lynx. A new study by researchers from McGill University, University of Alberta, and Trent University provides a first look at how miniaturized technology can open the door to remote wildlife monitoring. "Working on one of the boreal forest's top predators, the Canada lynx, we found that two different technologies, accelerometers and audio recording devices, can be used to remotely monitor the hunting behaviour of predators, even documenting the killing of small prey," says lead author Emily Studd, a Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Murray Humphries at McGill University and Stan Boutin at University ...

The University of Ottawa's Positive Energy program released new survey results showing that a large segment of the Canadian public does not trust the courts to settle disputes over energy projects or climate policy. The survey was conducted by Positive Energy's official pollster, Nanos Research. Canadians were asked: On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means do not trust at all and 10 means trust completely, how much do you trust the courts to settle disputes over government decisions on energy projects? They were asked the same question for climate policy. The results are very similar. Only one in three Canadians trust the courts to settle disputes over energy projects or climate policy (answering between 7 and 10: 31% for energy, 30% for ...

Machine learning, when used in climate science builds an actual understanding of the climate system, according to a study published in the journal Chaos by Manuel Santos Gutiérrez and Valerio Lucarini, University of Reading, UK, Mickäel Chekroun, the Weizmann Institute, Israel and Michael Ghil, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. This means we can trust machine learning and further its applications in climate science, say the authors. The study is part of the European Horizon 2020 TiPES project on tipping points in the Earth system. TiPES is administered from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Man or ...

Humans are exposed to a bath of chemicals every day. They are in the beds where we sleep, the cars that we drive and the kitchens we use to feed our families. With thousands of chemicals floating around in our environment, exposure to any number is practically unavoidable. Through the work of researchers like Dr. Deborah Kurrasch, PhD, the implications of many of these chemicals are being thoroughly explored. "Manufacturers follow standards set by regulatory bodies, it's not up to the manufacturers to prove the chemicals in consumer products are safe," says Kurrasch, a researcher in the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain ...