On Earth, plate tectonics is not only responsible for the rise of mountains and earthquakes. It is also an essential part of the cycle that brings material from the planet's interior to the surface and the atmosphere, and then transports it back beneath the Earth's crust. Tectonics thus has a vital influence on the conditions that ultimately make Earth habitable. Until now, researchers have found no evidence of global tectonic activity on planets outside our solar system. A team of researchers led by Tobias Meier from the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) at the University of Bern and with the participation of ETH Zurich, the University of Oxford and the National Center of Competence in Research NCCR PlanetS has now found evidence of the flow patterns inside ...

Female gannets travel further than male gannets to find fish for their chicks in some years but not others, new research shows. Scientists tracked breeding gannets from Grassholm Island in Wales over 11 years with tiny GPS devices and by measuring isotopic signatures in their blood. Male gannets flew an average of 220km to forage for their chicks, while females averaged 260km. Some birds travelled 1,000km on a single trip. The scientists also found that the two sexes selected different habitats and foraged at different times of day, but some years ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Putting a price on producing carbon is the cheapest, most efficient policy change legislators can make to reduce emissions that cause climate change, new research suggests. The case study, published recently in the journal Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports, analyzed the costs and effects that a variety of policy changes would have on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in Texas and found that adding a price, based on the cost of climate change, to carbon was the most effective. "If the goal is reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, what we found is that putting a price on carbon and then letting suppliers and consumers make their ...

In order to show the clinical relevance of a difference between two treatment alternatives, in recent years, the manufacturer dossiers submitted in early benefit assessments of new drugs have increasingly contained responder analyses for patient-relevant outcomes. In such analyses, it is investigated whether the proportion of patients experiencing a noticeable change in the respective outcome differs between the two treatment groups in a study. This involves information on health-related quality of life or on individual symptoms such as pain or itching, which patients recorded with the help of scales in questionnaires. But what difference makes a change relevant for the individual? That is, at what threshold can a response to an intervention be derived for ...

A deep sequencing study of 747 SARS-CoV-2 virus isolates has revealed mutant peptides derived from the virus that cannot effectively bind to critical proteins on the surface of infected cells and, in turn, hamper activation of CD8+ killer T cells that recognize and destroy these infected cells. These peptides, the authors say, represent one way the coronavirus subverts killer T cell responses and stymies immunity in the host. Their results may be of particular importance for SARS-CoV-2 subunit vaccines, such as the RNA vaccines currently in use, which induce responses against a limited number of viral ...

There are no therapeutics available that have been developed for COVID-19 treatment. Repurposing of already available medication for COVID-19 therapy is an attractive option to shorten the road to treatment development. The drug Camostat could be suitable. Camostat exerts antiviral activity by blocking the protease TMPRSS2, which is used by SARS-CoV-2 for entry into cells. However, it was previously unknown whether SARS-CoV-2 can use TMPRSS2-related proteases for cell entry and whether these proteases can be blocked by Camostat. Moreover, it was unclear whether metabolization of Camostat interferes with antiviral activity. An international team of researchers around Markus Hoffmann and Stefan Pöhlmann ...

Solving a Genetic Mystery at the Heart of the COVID-19 Pandemic As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its second year, scientists are still working to understand how the new strain of coronavirus evolved, and how it became so much more dangerous than other coronaviruses, which humans have been living alongside for millennia. Virologists and epidemiologists worldwide have speculated for months that a protein called ORF8 likely holds the answer, and a recent study by Berkeley Lab scientists has helped confirm this hypothesis. In a paper published in mBio, lead author Russell Neches and his colleagues ...

By embedding a silver catalyst inside a porous crystal, KAUST researchers have improved a chemical reaction that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide (CO), which is a useful feedstock for the chemical industry. Carbon monoxide is a building block for producing hydrocarbon fuels, and many researchers are searching for ways to produce it from CO2, a greenhouse gas emitted by burning fossil fuels. One strategy involves using electricity and a catalyst to drive a so-called CO2 reduction reaction. But this reaction typically produces a variety of other products, including methane, methanol and ethylene. Separating these products significantly raises the cost of the process, ...

A study on big droughts in the Greater Mekong region revealed findings that can help reduce the carbon footprint of power systems while providing insights into better designed and more sustainable power plants. The study, titled 'The Greater Mekong's climate-water-energy nexus: how ENSO-triggered regional droughts affect power supply and CO2 emissions', was published by researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the journal Earth's Future. Known as an important means to support economic growth in Southeast Asia, the hydropower resources of the Mekong River Basin have been largely exploited by the riparian countries. The researchers ...

The current commercial production of methanol through the hydrogenation of the green-house gas CO2 relies on a catalyst consisting of copper, zinc oxide and aluminum oxide. Even though this catalyst has been used for many decades in the chemical industry, unknowns still remain. A team of researchers from the Interface Science Department of the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max Planck Society, the Ruhr-University Bochum, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), FZ Juelich and Brookhaven National Laboratory have now elucidated the origin of intriguing catalytic activity and selectivity trends of complex nanocatalysts ...

In 2015, hackers infiltrated the corporate network of Ukraine's power grid and injected malicious software, which caused a massive power outage. Such cyberattacks, along with the dangers to society that they represent, could become more common as the number of cyber-physical systems (CPS) increases. A CPS is any system controlled by a network involving physical elements that tangibly interact with the material world. CPSs are incredibly common in industries, especially those integrating robotics or similar automated machinery to the production line. However, as CPSs make their way into societal infrastructures such as public transport and energy management, it becomes even more important to ...

A research review led by Oxford Brookes University has found a large proportion of COVID-19 survivors will be affected by neuropsychiatric and cognitive complications. Psychologists at Oxford Brookes University and a psychiatrist from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, evaluated published research papers in order to understand more about the possible effects of the SARS-COV-2 infection on the brain, and the extent people can expect to experience short and long-term mental health issues. Patients experienced a range of psychiatric problems The study found that in the short term, a wide range of neuropsychiatric problems were reported. In one examined study, 95% of clinically ...

As millions of Fantasy Premier League players mull over a decision whether to start Bruno Fernandes or Mohamed Salah in their teams this weekend, new research by the University of Limerick in Ireland has unlocked the secrets of the popular online game. A new study by a team of researchers at UL has identified the underlying tactics used by the top-ranked competitors among the seven million players of Fantasy Premier League (FPL), the official - and world's largest - fantasy football game of the English Premier League. Joseph O'Brien, Professor James Gleeson, and Dr David O'Sullivan, based within the ...

With three out of four newly emerging infectious human diseases originating in animals*, there is an urgent need to monitor the legal trade in wildlife, according to new research by Vincent Nijman, Professor in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. Professor Nijman, who has been involved in monitoring and regulating the legal wildlife trade for over two decades, said: "Covid-19 more than anything else has put a spotlight on emerging infectious diseases and how this is linked to the trade in wild animals. Few people are aware of its scale. With literally hundreds of millions ...

New research reveals an essential step in scientists' quest to create targeted, more eco-friendly fungicides that protect food crops. Scientists have known for decades that biological cells manufacture tiny, round structures called extracellular vesicles. However, their pivotal roles in communication between invading microorganisms and their hosts were recognized only recently. UC Riverside geneticist Hailing Jin and her team found plants use these vesicles to launch RNA molecules at fungal invaders, suppressing the genes that make the fungi dangerous. "These vesicles shuttle small RNAs between cells, like tiny Trojan horses with weapons hidden inside," said Jin, a professor of genetics and the Cy Mouradick Chair in the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology. ...

In a close collaboration between experimental and theoretical physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the research groups of Professor Mathias Kläui and Dr. Peter Virnau investigated the behavior of magnetic whirls within nanoscale geometric structures. In their work published in Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers confined small magnetic whirls, so-called skyrmions, in geometric structures. Skyrmions can be created in thin metal films and have particle-like properties: They exhibit high stability and are repelled from each other and from specially prepared walls. Experiments and accompanying computer simulations showed that the mobility of skyrmions within these geometric structures depends massively on their arrangement. In triangles, ...

Oxidative dispersion has been widely used in the regeneration of sintered metal catalysts as well as the fabrication of single-atom catalysts. The consensus on the oxidative dispersion process includes the formation of mobile metal oxide species from large metal particles and the capture of these species on a support surface. Nevertheless, the mechanism of oxidation-induced dispersion has yet to be confirmed via in situ electron microscopic and/or spectroscopic characterizations. Recently, a research team led by Prof. FU Qiang and Prof. BAO Xinhe from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. YANG Bing from DICP and Prof. GAO Yi ...

Administering zinc supplements to covid-19 patients with low levels of this element may be a strategy to reduce mortality and recovery time. At the same time, it could help to prevent risk groups, like the elderly, from suffering the worst effects of the disease. These are the findings of a study by physicians and researchers from the Hospital del Mar, Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), led by Dr. Robert Güerri, a physician at the Infectious Diseases Service of Hospital del Mar, which has just been published in the journal Nutrients. The study analysed the zinc levels of 249 adult patients treated at the centre between 9 March and 1 April 2020, with an average age of 65 years. The most common symptoms presented at the time of ...

Researchers discover how to control zinc content in plants: Could help the world's malnourished Over 2 billion people worldwide are malnourished due to zinc deficiency. Led by the University of Copenhagen, an international team of researchers has discovered how plants sense zinc and use this knowledge to enhance plant zinc uptake, leading to an increase in seed zinc content by 50 percent. The new knowledge might one day be applied towards the cultivation of more nutritious crops. A deficiency of zinc and other essential dietary nutrients is one of the greatest causes of malnutrition worldwide. More than two billion people are estimated to suffer from zinc deficiency, a problem that can lead to impaired immune systems, mental disorders and stunting. Among other things, ...

Glycine can stimulate or inhibit neurons in the brain, thereby controlling complex functions. Unraveling the three-dimensional structure of the glycine transporter, researchers have now come a big step closer to understanding the regulation of glycine in the brain. These results, which have been published in Nature, open up opportunities to find effective drugs that inhibit GlyT1 function, with major implications for the treatment of schizophrenia and other mental disorders. Glycine is the smallest amino acid and a building block of proteins, and also a critical neurotransmitter that can both stimulate or inhibit ...

The oceans are becoming more acidic because of the rapid release of carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by anthropogenic (human) activities, such as burning of fossil fuels. So far, the oceans have taken up around 30% of all anthropogenic CO2 released to the atmosphere. The continuous increase of CO2 has a substantial effect on ocean chemistry because CO2 reacts with water and carbonate molecules. This process, called 'ocean acidification', lowers pH, and calcium carbonate becomes less available. This is a problem for calcifying organisms, such as corals and molluscs, that use calcium carbonate as the main building blocks of their exoskeleton. In particular, organisms that build their shells from a type of calcium carbonate known as 'aragonite' are in trouble because aragonite is ...

?Micro-Doppler radars could soon be used in clinical settings to predict injury risk and track recovery progress, according to Penn State researchers.? Being able to view subtle differences in human movement?would allow health care workers to more accurately identify individuals who may be at risk for injury and to track progress precisely while individuals are recovering from an injury. In an effort to find an accurate, reliable and cost-effective way to measure these subtleties ?in human movement, College of Engineering and College of Medicine researchers teamed up to develop a radar in front ...

Professor Christiani Jeyakumar Henry, Senior Advisor of Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and his team have developed a Glycaemic Index (GI) glossary of non-Western foods. The research paper was published in Nutrition & Diabetes on 6 Jan 2021: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41387-020-00145-w. Observational studies have shown that the consumption of low glycaemic index (GI) foods is associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), significantly less insulin resistance and a lower prevalence of the metabolic syndrome. However, most published GI values focus on Western foods with minimal inclusion of other foods from non-Western countries, hence their application ...

Tohoku University researchers have unearthed further details about radon concentration in the atmosphere before and after earthquakes, moving us closer to being able to anticipate when large earthquakes may hit. The results of their research were published in the journal Science Reports on February 18, 2021. Radon is a radioactive noble gas derived from radioactive decays of radium-226 in the ground. Radon bubbles up to the surface and is expelled into the atmosphere. It has long been known that elevated levels of radon underneath the ground can be detected before and after earthquakes. But the relationship between the mechanisms that cause abnormal changes in radon concentration and the occurrence of earthquakes requires greater ...

Interspecies interactions are the foundation of ecosystems, from soil to ocean to human gut. Among the many different types of interactions, syntrophy is a particularly important and mutually beneficial interspecies interaction where one partner provides a chemical or nutrient that is consumed by the other in exchange for a reward. Syntrophy plays an essential role in global carbon cycles by mediating the conversion of organic matter to methane, which is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and is a source of sustainable energy. And in the human gut, trillions of microbial cells also interact ...