Supercomputers could find themselves out of a job thanks to a suite of new machine learning models that produce rapid, accurate results using a normal laptop. Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, based at RMIT University, have written a program that predicts the band gap of materials, including for solar energy applications, via freely available and easy-to-use software. Band gap is a crucial indication of how efficient a material will be when designing new solar cells. Band gap predictions involve quantum and atomic-scale chemical calculations ...

It's one of the iconic images of early Antarctic exploration: the heroic explorer sledging across the icy wastes towed by his trusty team of canine companions. But new research analysing a century-old dog biscuit suggests the animals in this picture were probably marching on half-empty stomachs: early British Antarctic expeditions underfed their dogs. In a paper just published in Polar Record, researchers from Canterbury Museum, Lincoln University and University of Otago in New Zealand analysed the history and contents of Spratt's dog cakes, the chow of choice for the canine members of early Antarctic expeditions. Lead author, ...

Two mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 have proven safe and effective in clinical trials, as well as in the millions of people who have been vaccinated so far. But how prior SARS-CoV-2 infection affects vaccine response, and how long that response lasts, are still uncertain. Now, a new study in ACS Nano supports increasing evidence that people who had COVID-19 need only one vaccine dose, and that boosters could be necessary for everyone in the future. In clinical trials, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were about 95% effective in protecting against symptomatic infections. Both mRNA vaccines trigger the immune system to produce antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD), and two doses are necessary to provide immunity in people ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Researchers report that they have developed a method to combine three brain-imaging techniques to more precisely capture the timing and location of brain responses to a stimulus. Their study is the first to combine the three widely used technologies for simultaneous imaging of brain activity. The work is reported in the journal Human Brain Mapping. The new "trimodal" approach combines functional MRI, electroencephalography and a third technique, called EROS, that tracks the activity of neurons near the surface of the brain using near-infrared light. "We know that fMRI is very good at telling us where in the brain things are happening, but the signal is quite slow," said postdoctoral researcher Matthew Moore, the first ...

A potent greenhouse gas, methane is released by many sources, both human and natural. Large cities emit significant amounts of methane, but in many cases the exact emission sources are unknown. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have conducted mobile measurements of methane and its sources throughout Paris. Their findings suggest that the natural gas distribution network, the sewage system and furnaces of buildings are ideal targets for methane reduction efforts. In cities, major sources of atmospheric methane include heating systems, landfills, wastewater ...

Rare-earth elements are in many everyday products, such as smart phones, LED lights and batteries. However, only a few locations have large enough deposits worth mining, resulting in global supply chain tensions. So, there's a push toward recycling them from non-traditional sources, such as waste from burning coal -- fly ash. Now, researchers in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology report a simple method for recovering these elements from coal fly ash using an ionic liquid. While rare-earth elements aren't as scarce as their name implies, major reserves are either in politically ...

A new United Nations report calls for an urgent change in the way the world's oceans are managed. The report from the International Resource Panel, hosted by the UN Environment Programme, raises concerns that if changes are not made quickly, the consequences will be dire. The Governing Coastal Resources Report was launched today at an event addressed by Ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Ocean. It outlines the effect land-based human activities have on the marine environment. Put into context - 80 per cent of marine and coastal pollution originates on land, but there are very few, if any, truly effective governance mechanisms that manage land-ocean ...

Using data for more than 500 young stars observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), scientists have uncovered a direct link between protoplanetary disk structures--the planet-forming disks that surround stars--and planet demographics. The survey proves that higher mass stars are more likely to be surrounded by disks with "gaps" in them and that these gaps directly correlate to the high occurrence of observed giant exoplanets around such stars. These results provide scientists with a window back through time, allowing them to predict what exoplanetary ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Americans consistently believe that poor African Americans are more likely to move up the economic ladder than they actually are, a new study shows. People also overestimate how likely poor white people are to get ahead economically, but to a much lesser extent than they do for Black people. "It's no surprise that most people in our society believe in the American Dream of working hard and succeeding economically," said Jesse Walker, co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. "But many people don't know how much harder it is for African Americans to achieve ...

As people go about their daily activities, complex fluctuations in their movement occur without conscious thought. These fluctuations -- known as fractal motor activity regulation (FMAR) -- and their changes are not readily detectable to the naked eye, but FMAR patterns can be recorded using a wristwatch-like device known as an actigraph. A new study, led by investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital, the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Washington University at St. Louis, analyzed FMAR patterns in cognitively healthy adults who were also tested for established biomarkers of preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. The team found that FMAR was associated with preclinical AD pathology in women, suggesting that FMAR may be a new biomarker for AD before cognitive symptoms ...

BOSTON - Research has previously linked inflammation to Alzheimer's disease (AD), yet scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS) have made a surprising discovery about that relationship. In a new study published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, they report that elevated levels of two chemical mediators of inflammation, known as cytokines, are associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults. "These are totally unexpected results," says the study's co-senior author, Rudolph Tanzi, PhD, vice chair of Neurology and co-director ...

DALLAS, June 23, 2021 —Can starchy snacks harm heart health? New research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association, found eating starchy snacks high in white potato or other starches after any meal was associated at least a 50% increased risk of mortality and a 44-57% increased risk of CVD-related death. Conversely, eating fruits, vegetables or dairy at specific meals is associated with a reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cancer or any cause.   “People are increasingly ...

A fair society has evolved in banded mongooses because parents don't know which pups are their own, new research shows. Mothers in banded mongoose groups all give birth on the same night, creating a "veil of ignorance" over parentage in their communal crèche of pups. In the new study, led by the universities of Exeter and Roehampton, half of the pregnant mothers in wild mongoose groups were regularly given extra food, leading to increased inequality in the birth weight of pups. But after giving birth, well-fed mothers gave extra care to the ...

Results of the MOSAiC expedition show: the expected recovery of the ozone layer may fail to happen anytime soon, if global warming is not slowed down In spring 2020, the MOSAiC expedition documented an unparalleled loss of ozone in the Arctic stratosphere. As an evaluation of meteorological data and model-based simulations by the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) now indicates, ozone depletion in the Arctic polar vortex could intensify by the end of the century unless global greenhouse gases are rapidly and systematically reduced. In the future, this could also mean more UV radiation exposure in Europe, North America and Asia when parts ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a technology for cost-effective surveillance of the global spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The technique is presented in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Since the onset of the pandemic, thousands of viral genomes have been sequenced to reconstruct the evolution and global spread of the coronavirus. This is important for the identification of particularly concerning variants that are more contagious, pathogenic, or resistant to the existing vaccines. For global surveillance of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, it is crucial to sequence and analyse many samples in a cost-effective way. Therefore, researchers in the Bienko-Crosetto laboratory at Karolinska Institutet and Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) ...

The origins of seven types of kidney cancer, including several rare subtypes, have been identified by researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and Oncode Institute. The findings confirm that these cancers have their origin in specific forms of developmental cells present in the maturing fetus. The study, published today (23 June) in Nature Communications, used computational methods to analyse existing datasets and pinpoint the 'cellular signals' given off by different cancers as they emerge. This method holds promise as a tool for diagnosing patients with rare cancers - in the study, one patient's cryptic kidney cancer was identified as ...

There is a race going on high in the atmosphere above the Arctic, and the ozone layer that protects Earth from damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation will lose the race if greenhouse gas emissions aren't reduced quickly enough. A new study from an international team of scientists, including University of Maryland Professor Ross Salawitch, shows that extremely low winter temperatures high in the atmosphere over the arctic are becoming more frequent and more extreme because of climate patterns associated with global warming. The study also shows that those extreme low temperatures are causing reactions among chemicals humans pumped into the air decades ago, leading to greater ozone losses. The new findings call into question ...

With the National Eye Institute reporting that about 11 million older adults in the U.S. endure a condition that leads to progressive blindness, known as age-related macular degeneration, University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers are starting to understand what goes wrong in the disease, in order to develop new therapies to treat it. Using human tissue and mice in their new study, published on June 23 in Nature Communications, they showed that the process which removes the eye's old, damaged light sensors is disrupted in macular degeneration. Although more than 50 genes have been ...

Digital trial replicated and expanded upon results of traditional clinical trials Developing virtual patient populations can speed up trials process A study involving virtual rather than real patients was as effective as traditional clinical trials in evaluating a medical device used to treat brain aneurysms, according to new research. The findings are proof of concept for what are called in-silico trials, where instead of recruiting people to a real-life clinical trial, researchers build digital simulations of patient groups, loosely akin to the way virtual populations are built in The Sims ...

Research led by scientists at the University of Bristol has shed new light on how the kidneys of the one-humped Arabian camel play an important role in helping it to cope with extremes. In a new paper published today in the journal Communications Biology, they have studied the response of the camel's kidneys to dehydration and rapid rehydration stresses. Camelus dromedarius is the most important livestock animal in the arid and semi-arid regions of North and East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, and continues to provide basic needs to millions of people. Thought to have been domesticated 3,000 to 6,000 years ago in the Arabian Peninsula, the camel has been used ...

SILVER SPRING, Md.-- Although Americans spend billions on them, published research shows a lack of strong evidence that dietary supplements and alternative therapies help adults lose weight, according to a new study published in Obesity, the flagship journal of The Obesity Society (TOS). There are hundreds of weight-loss supplements like green tea extract, chitosan, guar gum and conjugated linoleic acid, and an estimated 34% of Americans who are trying to lose weight have used one. For the study, researchers completed a comprehensive review of 315 existing clinical trials of weight loss supplements and therapies, and most of the studies showed the supplements did not produce weight loss among users. "Our findings are important ...

PHILADELPHIA - Patients with colon cancer enrolled in the U.S. military's universal health care system experienced improved survival compared with patients in the general population, according to results published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Colorectal cancer has the third highest death rate out of all cancers in the U.S. Therefore, it is highly important to improve survival of patients with colon cancer," said study author Craig D. Shriver, MD, FACS, FSSO, retired U.S. Army colonel and professor and director of the Murtha Cancer Center Research ...

Viral mutations during the COVID-19 pandemic could cause the SARS-CoV-2 virus to become more dangerous. A new study published in END ...

Women who currently use hormonal contraceptives face more than a 2-fold higher risk of developing glaucoma, according to an analysis of electronic medical records for women aged 15-45 years from 2008 to 2018. The END ...

Chronic psychosocial stress--which involves a pathway called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis)--may contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease. A new review published in END ...