Scientists at the University of Bonn have built hair-thin optical fibre filters in a very simple way. They are not only extremely compact and stable, but also colour-tunable. This means they can be used in quantum technology and as sensors for temperature or for detecting atmospheric gases. The results have been published in the journal Optics Express. Optical fibers not much thicker than a human hair today not only constitute the backbone of our world-wide information exchange. They are also the basis for building extremely compact and robust sensors with very high sensitivity for temperature, chemical analysis and much more. Optical resonators or filters are important components cutting out very narrow spectral lines from white light sources. In the simplest case such filters ...

Tityus serrulatus, the Yellow scorpion, causes more deaths than any other venomous animal in Brazil. Its sting can induce heart attack and pulmonary edema, especially in children and the elderly. According to the Brazilian Health Ministry, more than 156,000 cases of scorpion envenomation, 169 fatal, were reported in the country in 2019. Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) have demonstrated for the first time that in severe cases of scorpion envenomation a systemic neuroimmune reaction produces inflammatory mediators leading to the release of neurotransmitters. A paper reporting the results of their study is published in Nature Communications. It suggests the inflammatory process can be inhibited by administration of a corticosteroid almost immediately after the ...

Skoltech researchers and their collaborators from France, the US, Switzerland, and Australia were able to create and describe a mixed oxide Na(Li1/3Mn2/3)O2 that holds promise as a cathode material for sodium-ion batteries, which can take one day complement or even replace lithium-ion batteries. The paper was published in the journal Nature Materials. Lithium-ion batteries are powering the modern world of consumer devices and driving a revolution in electric transportation. But since lithium is rather rare and challenging to extract from an environmental standpoint, researchers and engineers have been looking for more sustainable and cost-effective alternatives for quite some time now. One option is sodium-ion technology, as sodium is much more abundant than ...

Researchers Yulia Chilipenok, Olga Gaponova, Nadezhda Gaponova and Lyubov Danilova of HSE - Nizhny Novgorod looked at how the lockdown has impacted Russian women during the COVID-19 pandemic. They studied the following questions: how women divided their time; how they worked from home; how they got on with their partners and children; and how they dropped old habits and started new ones in relation to nutrition, health, beauty, and self-development. In cases in which the whole family had to stay home together for a long time, it was largely women on whom the family's adaptation to the new reality depended. The paper was published in the Woman in Russian Society Journal. It is difficult to find a strictly academic definition for today's 'self-isolation'. According to the ...

A new study from researchers at the Allen Institute collected and analyzed the largest single dataset of neurons' electrical activity to glean principles of how we perceive the visual world around us. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, captures the hundreds of split-second electrical signals that fire when an animal is interpreting what it sees. Your brain processes the world around you nearly instantaneously, but there are numerous lightning-fast steps between light hitting your retinas and the point at which you become aware of what's in front of you. Humans have three dozen different brain areas responsible for understanding the visual world, and scientists still don't ...

Various software packages can be used to evaluate products and predict failure; however, these packages are extremely computationally intensive and take a significant amount of time to produce a solution. Quicker solutions mean less accurate results. To combat this issue, a team of Penn State researchers studied the use of machine learning and image colorization algorithms to ease computational load, maintain accuracy, reduce time and predict strain fields for porous materials. They published their work in the Journal of Computational Materials Science with accompanying presentations and proceedings in Procedia Engineering. "There is always a human side to design," said Chris McComb, assistant professor of engineering design in the School of Engineering Design, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - When humans first domesticated maize some 9,000 years ago, those early breeding efforts led to an increase in harmful mutations to the crop's genome compared to their wild relatives, which more recent modern breeding has helped to correct. A new comparative study investigates whether the same patterns found in maize occurred in sorghum, a gluten-free grain grown for both livestock and human consumption. The researchers were surprised to find the opposite is true: Harmful mutations in sorghum landraces (early domesticated crops) actually decreased compared to their wild relatives. The ...

Harbor porpoises have rebounded in a big way off California. Their populations have recovered dramatically since the end of state set-gillnet fisheries that years ago entangled and killed them in the nearshore waters they frequent. These coastal set-gillnet fisheries are distinct from federally-managed offshore drift-gillnet fisheries. They have been prohibited in inshore state waters for more than a decade. The new research indicates that the coastal set gillnets had taken a greater toll on harbor porpoise than previously realized. The return of harbor porpoises reflects the first documented example of the species rebounding. It's a bright spot for marine wildlife, the scientists write in a new assessment published in Marine Mammal Science. "This is ...

A new study shows that humans express a powerful hormone during exercise and that treating mice with the hormone improves physical performance, capacity and fitness. Researchers say the findings present new possibilities for addressing age-related physical decline. The research, published on Wednesday in Nature Communications, reveals a detailed look at how the mitochondrial genome encodes instructions for regulating physical capacity, performance and metabolism during aging and may be able to increase healthy lifespan. "Mitochondria are known as the cell's energy source, but they are also hubs that coordinate and fine-tune metabolism by actively communicating to the rest of the body," said Changhan David Lee, assistant professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology ...

BOSTON - Opioid addiction is persistently stigmatized, delaying and preventing treatment for many - an urgent problem with overdose deaths continuing to rise. To help alleviate this, various medical ways of describing opioid-related impairment, such as "a chronically relapsing brain disease," "illness," or "disorder," have been promoted in diagnostic systems and among national health agencies. "While intensely debated, there were no rigorous scientific studies out there to inform practice and policy about which terms may be most helpful in reducing stigma," says John F. Kelly, PhD, lead investigator ...

Two novel techniques, atomic-resolution real-time video and conical carbon nanotube confinement, allow researchers to view never-before-seen details about crystal formation. The observations confirm theoretical predictions about how salt crystals form and could inform general theories about the way in which crystal formation produces different ordered structures from an otherwise disordered chemical mixture. Crystals include many familiar things, such as snowflakes, salt grains and even diamonds. They are regular and repeating arrangements of constituent molecules that grow from a chaotic sea of those molecules. ...

Researchers from King's College London have shown that whole body magnetic resonance imaging (WBMRI) not only detects more myeloma-defining disease than positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) but that it also allows critical treatment to be initiated earlier. In a study published today in the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, researchers looked at 46 patients with suspected myeloma, a debilitating bone marrow cancer which sees 140,000 new cases each year globally. Less than 50 percent of patients survive after five years and at present it is not clear which is the best imaging ...

"Such reactions are usually carried out using transition metals, such as nickel or iridium," explains Prof. Robert Kretschmer, Junior Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Jena, whose work has been published in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society. "However, transition metals are expensive and harmful to the environment, both when they are mined and when they are used. Therefore, we are trying to find better alternatives." That two metals can do more than one is already known in the case of transition metals. "However, there has been hardly ...

Viral respiratory diseases are easily transmissible and can spread rapidly across the globe, causing significant damage. The ongoing covid-19 pandemic is a testament to this. In the past too, other viruses have caused massive respiratory disease outbreaks: for example, a subtype of the influenza virus, the type A H1N1 virus, was responsible for the Spanish flu and the Swine flu outbreaks. Thus, to prevent such health crises in the future, timely and accurate diagnosis of these viruses is crucial. This is exactly what researchers from Korea have attempted to work toward, in their brand-new study. Read on to understand how! For several decades now, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays have been the gold standard for detecting influenza viruses. And while these ...

An international study coordinated by the Research Group for Urban Nature and Biosystems Engineering (NATURIB) from the University of Seville's School of Agricultural Engineering emphasises that having plants at home had a positive influence on the psychological well-being of the dwelling's inhabitants during COVID-19 lockdown. Researchers from the Hellenic Mediterranean University (Greece), the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco (Brazil) and the University of Genoa (Italy) participated in the study along with representatives from the University ...

Did you know that fleas, ants, and click beetles are capable of blazingly fast accelerations, with some up to 10^6 meters per square-second? Their quick movements make fast animals like the cheetah look like slowpokes. A new study by a team that included Jake Socha, professor in biomedical engineering and mechanics in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences shows that a snap-through unbending movement of the body is the main reason for the clicking beetle's fast acceleration. Most animals use muscle to move. For example, when we want to bend our elbow, our biceps ...

Countries where massive natural hazard events occur frequently are not more likely than others to make changes to reduce risks from future disasters. This is shown in an interdisciplinary Uppsala University study now published in Nature Communications. Natural hazard events, such as storms, floods, and wildfires, entail huge and growing costs all over the world, but they can also be occasions for countries to implement risk-reducing changes. There is no research consensus on whether natural hazard events lead to policy modifications or, instead, contribute to stability and preservation of existing solutions. Knowledge in this area to date has been ...

JUPITER, FL - In a landmark neurobiology study, scientists from Scripps Research have discovered a memory gating system that employs the neurotransmitter dopamine to direct transient forgetting, a temporary lapse of memory which spontaneously returns. The study adds a new pin to scientists' evolving map of how learning, memory and active forgetting work, says Scripps Research Neuroscience Professor Ron Davis, PhD. "This is the first time a mechanism has been discovered for transient memory lapse," Davis says. "There's every reason to believe, because of conservation ...

An extra 290,000 pounds a year for lighting and cleaning because smog darkens and pollutes everything: with this cost estimate for the industrial city of Manchester, the English economist Arthur Cecil Pigou once founded the theory of environmental taxation. In the classic "The Economics of Welfare", the first edition of which was published as early as 1920, he proved that by allowing such "externalities" to flow into product prices, the state can maximise welfare. In 2020, exactly 100 years later, the political implementation of Pigou's insight has gained strength, important objections are being invalidated, and carbon pricing appears more efficient than regulations and bans according to a ...

Scientists from the CNRS, CNES, IRD, Sorbonne Université, l'Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier and their Australian colleagues*, with the support of the IPEV, have provided a comprehensive analysis on the evolution of Southern Ocean temperatures over the last 25 years. The research team has concluded that the slight cooling observed at the surface hides a rapid and marked warming of the waters, to a depth of up to 800 metres. The study points to major changes around the polar ice cap where temperatures are increasing by 0.04°C per decade, which could have serious consequences for Antarctic ice. Warm water is also rising rapidly to the surface, at a rate of 39 metres per decade, i.e. between three and ten ...

Citrus greening disease, also known as Huanglongbing (HLB), is devastating to the citrus industry, causing unprecedented amounts of damage worldwide. There is no known cure. Since the disease's introduction to the United States in the early 2000s, research efforts have increased exponentially. However, there is still a lack of information about the molecular mechanism behind the disease. "Getting into the molecular details behind what contributes to citrus greening symptom development and disease progression is key to finding sustainable solutions to combat the pathogen," explained plant pathologist Wenbo Ma. "We bring the community one step closer to understanding these mechanisms ...

Understanding the genetic and environmental factors that enable some feral honey bee colonies to tolerate pathogens and survive the winter in the absence of beekeeping management may help lead to breeding stocks that would enhance survival of managed colonies, according to a study led by researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. Feralization occurs when previously domesticated organisms escape to the wild and establish populations in the absence of human influence, explained lead researcher Chauncy Hinshaw, doctoral candidate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology. "In the case of honey bees, colonies that escape domestication and establish in the wild provide an opportunity to study how environmental and genetic factors ...

Muscle structure and body size predict the athletic performance of Olympic athletes, such as sprinters. The same, it appears, is true of wild seabirds that can commute hundreds of kilometres a day to find food, according to a recent paper by scientists from McGill and Colgate universities published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. The researchers studied a colony of small gulls, known as black-legged kittiwakes, that breed and nest in an abandoned radar tower on Middleton Island, Alaska. They attached GPS-accelerometers--Fitbit for birds -- ...

Warming ocean waters could reduce the ability of fish, especially large ones, to extract the oxygen they need from their environment. Animals require oxygen to generate energy for movement, growth and reproduction. In a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, an international team of researchers from McGill, Montana and Radboud universities describe their newly developed model to determine how water temperature, oxygen availability, body size and activity affect metabolic demand for oxygen in fish. The model is based on physicochemical principles that look at oxygen consumption and diffusion at the gill surface in relation to water temperature and body size. Predictions were compared against actual measurements from over 200 fish species where oxygen ...

A McGill-led research team has identified a new species of praying mantis thanks to imprints of its fossilized wings. It lived in Labrador, in the Canadian Subarctic around 100 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, in the Late Cretaceous period. The researchers believe that the fossils of the new genus and species, Labradormantis guilbaulti, helps to establish evolutionary relationships between previously known species and advances the scientific understanding of the evolution of the most 'primitive' modern praying mantises. The unusual find, described in a recently published study in Systematic ...