A mathematical model which can predict landslides that occur unexpectantly has been developed by two University of Melbourne scientists, with colleagues from GroundProbe-Orica and the University of Florence. Professors Antoinette Tordesillas and Robin Batterham led the work over five years to develop and test the model SSSAFE (Spatiotemporal Slope Stability Analytics for Failure Estimation), which analyses slope stability over time to predict where and when a landslide or avalanche is likely to occur. In a study published in Scientific Reports, the research team was ...

Discovered by Victor Hess in 1912, cosmic rays, relativisitic particles that shower Earth, contribute a signicant part of the energy density in the universe and carries unambiguous informations on various astrophysical processes . Yet until now, origin of cosmic rays is still a mystery. A key problem in understanding the origin of cosmic rays is the searching for the acceleration site up to or even beyond Ultra-high energy (UHE). Such extreme accelerators are dubbed as PeVatrons. However, composed of subatomic particles, such as protons or atomic nuclei, cosmic rays are charged and lose ...

Using intermittent electric energy to convert excessive CO2 into C2 products, such as ethylene and ethanol, is an effective strategy to mitigate the greenhouse effect. Copper (Cu) is the only single metal catalyst which can converts CO2 into C2 products by electrochemical method, but with undesirable selectivity of C2 product. Therefore, how to improve the conversion efficiency of Cu-based catalysts for reducing CO2 to C2 product has attracted great attention. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Min Liu from Central South University, China designed a Cu-Pd bimetallic electrocatalyst possessing CuPd(100) interface which can lower the energy barrier of C2 product generation. The electrocatalyst was obtained through using ...

WASHINGTON--People who eat too many refined carbs and fatty meats for dinner have a higher risk of heart disease than those who eat a similar diet for breakfast, according to a nationwide study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Cardiovascular diseases like congestive heart failure, heart attack and stroke are the number one cause of death globally, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. Eating lots of saturated fat, processed meats and added sugars can raise your cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease. Eating a heart-healthy diet with more whole carbohydrates like vegetables and grains and less meat can significantly offset the risk of cardiovascular disease. "Meal timing along with food quality are important factors ...

The farming of livestock to feed the global appetite for animal products greatly contributes to global warming. A new study however shows that emission intensity per unit of animal protein produced from the sector has decreased globally over the past two decades due to greater production efficiency, raising questions around the extent to which methane emissions will change in the future and how we can better manage their negative impacts. Despite what we know about the environmental cost of livestock production, the global appetite for animal products such as meat, eggs, and dairy continues to grow. The livestock sector is in fact the largest source of manmade methane emissions globally, and these emissions are projected ...

A team of international researchers has found that the Tsimane indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon experience less brain atrophy than their American and European peers. The decrease in their brain volumes with age is 70% slower than in Western populations. Accelerated brain volume loss can be a sign of dementia. The study was published May 26, 2021 in the Journal of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. Although people in industrialized nations have access to modern medical care, they are more sedentary and eat a diet high in saturated fats. In contrast, the Tsimane ...

UC San Francisco researchers have found a way to double doctors' accuracy in detecting the vast majority of complex fetal heart defects in utero - when interventions could either correct them or greatly improve a child's chance of survival - by combining routine ultrasound imaging with machine-learning computer tools. The team, led by UCSF cardiologist Rima Arnaout, MD, trained a group of machine-learning models to mimic the tasks that clinicians follow in diagnosing complex congenital heart disease (CHD). Worldwide, humans detect as few as 30 to 50 percent of these conditions before birth. However, the combination of human-performed ultrasound ...

University of Virginia School of Medicine scientists have developed important new resources that will aid the battle against cancer and advance cutting-edge genomics research. UVA's Chongzhi Zang, PhD, and his colleagues and students have developed a new computational method to map the folding patterns of our chromosomes in three dimensions from experimental data. This is important because the configuration of genetic material inside our chromosomes actually affects how our genes work. In cancer, that configuration can go wrong, so scientists want to understand ...

Hundreds of antibiotic resistant genes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of Danish infants Danish one-year-olds carry several hundred antibiotic resistant genes in their bacterial gut flora according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen. The presence of these genes is partly attributable to antibiotic use among mothers during pregnancy. An estimated 700,000 people die every year from antibiotic resistant bacterial infections and diseases. The WHO expects this figure to multiply greatly in coming decades. To study how antibiotic resistance occurs in humans' ...

The Hubble parameter is one of the central parameters in the modern cosmology. Their values inferred from the late-time observations are systematically higher than those from the early-time measurements by about 10%. This is called the "Hubble tension". To come to a robust conclusion, independent probes with accuracy at percent levels are crucial. With the self-calibration by the theory of general relativity, gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence open a completely novel observational window for Hubble parameter determination. Hence, it can shed some light on the Hubble tension. Depends on whether being associated with ...

A new rapid coronavirus test developed by KAUST scientists can deliver highly accurate results in less than 15 minutes. The diagnostic, which brings together electrochemical biosensors with engineered protein constructs, allows clinicians to quickly detect bits of the virus with a precision previously only possible with slower genetic techniques. The entire set-up can work at the point of patient care on unprocessed blood or saliva samples; no laborious sample preparation or centralized diagnostic laboratory is required. "The combination of state-of-the-art ...

Dust storms are often defined as catastrophic weather events where large amounts of dust particles are raised and transported by strong winds, characterized by weak horizontal visibility (< 1 km), suddenness, short duration, and severe destruction. Over the past few decades, the observed dust storms in northern China showed generally decreasing trends (Fig. 2), which could have made the dust storms "out of sight" of the public gradually. Yet a most recent strong dust storm event originated from Mongolia since mid-March this year exerted serious impacts on most areas in northern China, ...

RICHLAND, Wash.--As the Clean Energy Transformation Act drives Washington state toward carbon-free electricity, a new energy landscape is taking shape. Alongside renewable energy sources, a new report finds small modular reactors are poised to play an integral role in the state's emerging clean energy future. The technology could help fill a power source gap soon to be left by carbon-emitting resources like coal and natural gas, which will be phased out in coming years, according to a report composed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Nuclear energy is a reliable source of baseload electricity," said PNNL's ...

Modern genetic research often works with what are known as reference genomes. Such a genome comprises data from DNA sequences that scientists have assembled as a representative example of the genetic makeup of a species. To create the reference genome, researchers generally use DNA sequences from a single or a few individuals, which can poorly represent the complete genomic diversity of individuals or sub-populations. The result is that a reference does not always correspond exactly to the set of genes of a specific individual. Until a few years ago, it was very laborious, expensive and time-consuming to generate ...

Many eye diseases are associated with a restricted blood supply, known as ischaemia, which can lead to blindness. The role of the protein tenascin-C, an extracellular matrix component, in retinal ischaemia was investigated in mice by researchers from Ruhr-Universit&#228;t Bochum (RUB). They showed that tenascin-C plays a crucial role in damaging the cells responsible for vision following ischaemia. The results were published online by the team in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience on 20 May 2021. As part of the research, the team around Dr. Susanne Wiemann and Dr. Jacqueline Reinhard from the Department of Cell Morphology and Molecular Neurobiology at RUB collaborated with Professor Stephanie Joachim's research group from ...

Included in the vast fallout stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are paying closer attention to microbial infections and how life forms defend against attacks from pathogens. Research led by University of California San Diego scientists has shed new light on the complex dynamics involved in how organisms sense that an infection is taking place. UC San Diego Assistant Project Scientist Eillen Tecle in Professor Emily Troemel's laboratory (Division of Biological Sciences) led research focusing on how cells that are not part of the conventional immune system respond to infections when pathogens attack. Scientists have conducted extensive research on so-called "professional" immune cells that are defensive specialists. Much less is known about how "non-professional" cells ...

Alzheimer's disease - also called dementia - where memory and cognitive functions gradually decline due to deformation and death of neurons, and Parkinson's disease that causes tremors in hands and arms impeding normal movement are major neurodegenerative diseases. Recently, a research team at POSTECH has identified the structure of the agent that causes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases to occur together. A research team led by Professor Joon Won Park and Ph.D. candidate Eun Ji Shin of the Department of Chemistry at POSTECH investigated the surface structure of hetero-oligomers found in the overlap of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, using an atomic force microscopy (AFM) to reveal their structural identity. This study was featured as the ...

While the plates carry water to the Earth's interior, phase transitions of dry olivine, the main mineral in the plates, are thought to be responsible for deep-focus earthquakes and plate deformation. This study resolves the contradiction of the presence of dry olivine even in wet plates. Takayuki Ishii, a researcher at the Center for High Pressure Science & Technology Advanced Research (HPSTAR), China and the Bavarian Institute of Geosciences, University of Bayreuth, Germany, and Eiji Otani, a professor emeritus at Tohoku University, used high-pressure and high-temperature experiments to determine the water content of olivine under ...

Tiny charged electrons and protons which can damage satellites and alter the ozone have revealed some of their mysteries to University of Otago scientists. In a study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, the group looked at charged particles interacting with a type of radio wave called 'EMIC' - a wave generated in Earth's radiation belts (invisible rings of charged particles orbiting the Earth). Lead author Dr Aaron Hendry, of the Department of Physics, says it is important to understand how these waves affect the belts - which are filled with expensive and important satellites - and Earth's climate. "Much like the Earth's atmosphere, the Earth's magnetosphere - the region around the Earth where our magnetic field is stronger ...

A new study from the University of Kent, Toulouse Business School, ESSCA School of Management (Paris) and ESADE Business School (Spain) has revealed the three primary risks and benefits perceived by consumers towards autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars). The increased development of autonomous vehicles worldwide inspired the researchers to uncover how consumers feel towards the growing market, particularly in areas that dissuade them from purchasing, to understand the challenges of marketing the product. The following perceptions, gained through qualitative interviews and ...

There is growing evidence that house design can decrease the force of malaria infection. The world's most deadly assassin is Africa's malaria mosquito: Anopheles gambiae. In 2019, the World Health Organisation estimated that malaria killed 386,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly children. Whilst we think of the home as a sanctuary, in Africa, around 80% of the malaria bites occur indoors at night. Preventing mosquitoes from getting indoors is a simple way of protecting people from this often lethal disease. As most mosquitoes fly low to the ground, a team of researchers led by Durham University wondered whether ...

Fishery and aquaculture have given rise to an enormous uniformity in the diversity of bivalves along the more than 18,000 kilometer long Chinese coast, biologist He-Bo Peng and colleagues report in this month's issue of Diversity and Distributions. Climate zones Peng and colleagues sampled bivalves at 21 sites along the Chinese coast from the city of Dongliaodao in the tropical south, to the mudflats of Yalu Jiang, more than 2000 km further north and ice-covered for several months in winter. "At 19 out of these 21 sites, commercially exploited species dominated", Peng saw. "In the naturally occurring species, we still recognized the natural gradient with highest diversity in the tropics and lowest diversity in ...

The Manchester Arena terrorist bomb attack in 2017 exposed flaws in the response of emergency services that could be addressed with a new three-phase approach, research by the University of Bath School of Management shows. Current government guidelines outline a two-phase structure of 'response and recovery', which researchers discovered hampered effective communication between agencies, created over-reliance on centralised Police decision-making, and inhibited other services' ability to take initiative earlier in an emergency. "To better prepare responders for emergencies we recommend a three?phase structure of 'response/resolve/recovery' is introduced in place of the current guidelines ...

Skeletal muscle is the largest organ in the body that accounts for 30 to 40% of body weight and is responsible for multiple functions such as energy metabolism and heat production. However, skeletal muscle mass is reduced in some diabetics, and that muscle loss correlates with mortality. It has been reported that the differentiation of myoblasts, which are the muscle precursor cells, is reduced in diabetic patients, and this is thought to be one of the underlying causes of muscle loss. Assistant Professor Tomohide Takaya of Shinshu University recently reported that oligo DNA derived from the genome ...

The evolutionary history of fluvial geomorphology is the consequences of combined effects of tectonic, climate, lithology and base level. Previous researches had emphasized tectonic impacts on the fluvial system at the tectonically active region, while lithology and base level get little attention. In addition, the resistance of lithology may cause knickpoint and control the evolutionary history of landscape in relatively stable areas, and difference in local base-level is sufficient to induce drainage reorganization. Nevertheless, it is still unclear how far the lithology and base level affect the evolution of fluvial landforms in tectonically active areas. In this study, researchers chose the area in the NE Tibet Plateau (Laohu and Hasi mountains) (Figure ...