When temperatures drop below zero degrees Celsius, water turns to ice. But does everything actually freeze if you just cool it down enough? In the classical picture, matter inherently becomes solid at low temperatures. Quantum mechanics can, however, break this rule. Therefore, helium gas, for example, can become liquid at -270 degrees, but never solid under atmospheric pressure: There is no helium ice. The same is true for the magnetic properties of materials: at sufficiently low temperatures, the magnetic moments known as 'spins', for example, arrange themselves in such a way that they are oriented opposite/antiparallel to their respective neighbors. One can think of this as arrows pointing alternating up and down along a chain or in a checkerboard pattern. It ...

Snow cover in the Alps has been melting almost three days earlier per decade since the 1960s. This trend is temperature-related and cannot be compensated by heavier snowfall. By the end of the century, snow cover at 2,500 meters could disappear a month earlier than today, as simulations by environmental scientists at the University of Basel demonstrate. Global warming demands huge adjustments in tourism, hydropower generation and agriculture in alpine areas. But the fauna and flora also have to adapt to rising temperatures. By the end of the century, ...

If you are exposed to silica (quartz) dust at work - e.g. from working with concrete and granite - you have a greater risk of certain types of rheumatic disease. This is shown by results from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, which have just been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Exposure to silica dust at work, which is the case especially at workplaces within construction and industry, may lead to autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Photo: Unsplash. Exposure to silica dust at work, which is the case especially at workplaces within construction and industry, may lead to autoimmune rheumatic diseases. Photo: Unsplash. As the research results from Aarhus University show, exposure to ...

The leading newspapers in two nuclear waste management forerunner countries, Finland and France, fulfil their "watchdog" roles in highly distinct ways. The Finnish Helsingin Sanomat (HS) tends to reproduce government and industry framings, whereas Le Monde cherishes its role as an independent critic of the powers that be. These differences reflect distinct cultural, political and media traditions in the two countries. "The critical watchdog model works in a liberal democracy such as the French, based on mistrust towards the governing elites. But would it backfire in Finland by undermining the very institutional trust that the Nordic democracies have been built upon throughout history?" asks the first author of the article, Research Fellow Markku Lehtonen from the Department of Humanities ...

A new study has shown that underweight and overweight women are at a significantly higher risk of experiencing recurrent miscarriages compared to those of average weight. A research team led by the University of Southampton assessed the link between women's lifestyle and risk of recurrent pregnancy loss, defined as women having two or more consecutive early miscarriages. The systematic review and meta-analysis study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports. Miscarriage is the most common complication of early pregnancy, affecting 15 - 20% of all pregnancies. Recurrent pregnancy loss is a complex disease and although often attributed to numerous medical factors and lifestyle influences, the cause is deemed "unexplained" ...

Tokyo, Japan - Leukemias are debilitating cancers of the hematopoietic or blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Now, researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) describe an ingenious strategy against chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) wherein an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) comprising a cytotoxic drug payload linked to an antibody that selectively targets specific cell lines effectively blocks malignant cell proliferation at source. Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) continually differentiate into the entire panoply of blood cells, as many as 500 ...

Since fast radio bursts (FRBs) were first discovered over a decade ago, scientists have puzzled over what could be generating these intense flashes of radio waves from outside of our galaxy. In a gradual process of elimination, the field of possible explanations has narrowed as new pieces of information are gathered about FRBs - how long they last, the frequencies of the radio waves detected, and so on. Now, a team led by McGill University researchers and members of Canada's CHIME Fast Radio Burst collaboration has established that FRBs include radio waves at frequencies lower than ever detected before, a discovery that redraws the boundaries for theoretical astrophysicists trying to put their finger on the source of FRBs. "We ...

WHAT: The experimental antiviral drug MK-4482 significantly decreased levels of virus and disease damage in the lungs of hamsters treated for SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health scientists. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19. MK-4482, delivered orally, is now in human clinical trials. Remdesivir, an antiviral drug already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use against COVID-19, must be provided intravenously, making its use primarily limited to clinical settings. In their study, published in the journal ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) has sped up the process of detecting flooded buildings immediately after a large-scale flood, allowing emergency personnel to direct their efforts efficiently. Now, a research group from Tohoku University has created a machine learning (ML) model that uses news media photos to identify flooded buildings accurately within 24 hours of the disaster. Their research was published in the journal Remote Sensing on April 5, 2021. "Our model demonstrates how the rapid reporting of news media can speed up and increase the accuracy of damage mapping activities, accelerating ...

Collaborative research of the University of Jyvaskyla and Natural Research Institute Finland presents new evidence of the effects of enriched rearing on well-being of aquaculture fishes. The research demonstrates that stone enrichments that have been previously conditioned in lake water significantly improve survival of fish compared to clean stones. Also a higher number of stones has a similar positive effect. The results have practical implications for prevention of aquaculture diseases. The study was published in Antibiotics in March 2021. The volume of aquaculture is continuously increasing. Parasitic diseases represent a significant threat to farmed fishes and ecological solutions to minimize use of medication are being sought. Enriched rearing, where rearing tanks ...

A survey of star formation activity in the Orion Nebula Cluster found similar mass distributions for newborn stars and dense gas cores, which may evolve into stars. Counterintuitively, this means that the amount of gas a core accretes as it develops, and not the initial mass of the core, is the key factor in deciding the final mass of the produced star. The Universe is populated with stars of various masses. Dense cores in clouds of interstellar gas collapse under their own gravity to form stars, but what determines the final mass of the star remains an ...

Academic medical centers continuously strive to enhance patient care. One of the major mechanisms to improve patient health outcomes is through translational research - bringing research breakthroughs from the lab to patients via clinical trials. Making clinical trials more efficient, and ultimately more successful, would significantly advance patient care. However, fragmentation of the relevant data necessary to implement improvements to translational science is a significant barrier. While some bioinformatic tools have attempted to address this problem, they often lacked the ability to assess the efficiency of translational science. ...

Gas accidents such as toxic gas leakage in factories, carbon monoxide leakage of boilers, or toxic gas suffocation during manhole cleaning continue to claim lives and cause injuries. Developing a sensor that can quickly detect toxic gases or biochemicals is still an important issue in public health, environmental monitoring, and military sectors. Recently, a research team at POSTECH has developed an inexpensive, ultra-compact wearable hologram sensor that immediately notifies the user of volatile gas detection. A joint research team led by Professor Junsuk Rho of departments of mechanical and chemical engineering and Dr. Inki Kim of Department of Mechanical ...

A person who owns a car or who has a college education may be less vulnerable to COVID-19, according to an analysis of cases in Tehran, Iran, one of the early epicenters of the pandemic. While such variables do not inherently lower a person's risk, they do indicate an infrastructure of protection that persists despite how densely populated a person's district might be. The international collaboration published their results on April 3 in Sustainable Cities and Society. "In the past few decades, there have been various efforts aimed at increasing urban density to enhance efficiency and contribute to climate change mitigation -- but the COVID-19 pandemic has brought questions about ...

The nervous system is the internet of the human body and can in the same way transfer signals over long distances very quickly. Some of the most important elements in this signaling are the axons. They are projections of the nerve cells which send signals to other nerve cells or muscles. For instance, axons that jut out from nerve cells in the spinal cord can be over one meter long. Researchers from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen have now in a new study examined how signal molecules are transported in ...

Scientists have called for the use of climate projections in conservation planning, to ensure that areas most at risk from biodiversity loss and climate impacts are protected. Protected areas are often created in areas of low population density and remote locations, rather than because of their biodiversity conservation potential. Conservation planning in tropical forests especially tends to be less rigorous and climate rarely taken into account, they said. But climate projections and science-based information are critical to actively seek out and safeguard areas where species are most at risk and ecosystems are fast declining, said authors of the ...

New research has shed light on how autism-spectrum disorder (ASD) manifests in the brains of girls, prompting the scientists to warn that conclusions drawn from studies conducted primarily in boys should not be assumed to hold true for girls. The researchers discovered that there is a significant difference in the genes and "genetic burden" that underpin the condition in girls and boys. They also identified specific ways the brains of girls with ASD respond differently to social cues such as facial expressions and gestures than do those of girls without ASD. "This new study provides us with a roadmap for understanding how to better match current and future evidenced-based interventions to underlying ...

A candidate vaccine that could provide protection against the COVID-19 virus and other coronaviruses has shown promising results in early animal testing. The candidate coronavirus vaccines, created by Virginia Tech's University Distinguished Professor X.J. Meng and UVA Health's Professor Steven L. Zeichner, prevented pigs from being becoming ill with a pig coronavirus, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). The researchers have recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The candidate vaccine was developed using an innovative vaccine platform targeting a highly conserved genomic region of coronaviruses," said Meng, a University ...

Angiogenesis is a process of new vessel formation that is activated both in physiological (tissue repair, reproduction, etc.) and pathological (myocardial infarction, diabetic retinopathy, cancer, etc.) conditions. The process is carried out by endothelial cells and includes their proliferation, migration and arrangement in tubes. Angiogenesis regulation is precise and is mainly mediated by pro-angiogenic factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which in turn promote different signalling pathways leading to an increase of intracellular Ca2+ concentrations. The researchers from the Cardiovascular Pathophysiology group at the Institute ...

A team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has proposed a satellite-aided drought monitoring method that can adequately represent the complex drought conditions into a single integrated drought index. The newly-proposed drought index has attracted considerable attention as a new method for monitoring and forecasting drought hazards due to its accuracy with no space-time constraints. Drought is one of the most complex natural disasters. Therefore, unlike most other natural disasters, it is usually difficult to define the drought onset or drought declaration. For this reason, various drought indices (i.e., drought severity, the area affected, duration, and timing) are used to monitor drought and its risk management. The existing drought indices are tended to be specific to particular ...

Researchers at UniSA have developed a cost-effective technique that could deliver safe drinking water to millions of vulnerable people using cheap, sustainable materials and sunlight. Less than 3 per cent of the world's water is fresh, and due to the pressures of climate change, pollution, and shifting population patterns, in many areas this already scarce resource is becoming scarcer. Currently, 1.42 billion people - including 450 million children - live in areas of high, or extremely high, water vulnerability, and that figure is expected to grow in coming decades. Researchers at UniSA's Future Industries Institute have developed a promising new process that could eliminate water stress for millions of people, including those living in many of the planet's most vulnerable ...

Reston, VA--New research shows that a novel positron emission tomography (PET) tracer that targets inflammation is safe and can clearly identify early stages of rheumatoid arthritis. The promising PET tracer, 68Ga-DOTA-Siglec-9, rapidly clears from blood circulation, has a low radiation dose, and can be easily produced. This first-in-human study was published in the April issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Inflammation is a significant part of several chronic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and its related issues. While PET imaging with 18F-FDG is a valuable tool for the diagnosis and monitoring of the effects of treatments, it is not specific enough to assess inflammation. "It's important to detect inflammation early so that patients ...

New UCLA research suggests that elderly patients of female physicians are more likely than those of male physicians in the same outpatient practice to be vaccinated against the flu. This trend holds for all racial and ethnic groups studied and could provide insight into improving vaccination rates for influenza, COVID-19 and other illnesses, according to the research letter, which is published in the peer-reviewed JAMA Internal Medicine. Prior studies have shown that female physicians tend to spend more time with their patients, said study author Dr. Dan Ly, an assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David ...

A single footprint left by a cat-sized dinosaur around 100 million years ago has been discovered in China by an international team of palaeontologists. University of Queensland researcher Dr Anthony Romilio was part of the team that investigated the track, originally found by Associate Professor Lida Xing from the China University of Geosciences (Beijing). "This footprint was made by a herbivorous, armoured dinosaur known broadly as a stegosaur - the family of dinosaurs that includes the famed stegosaurus," Dr Romilio said. "Like the stegosaurus, this little dinosaur probably had spikes on its tail and ...

While Black, Hispanic, Latino, Indigenous, Asian and Pacific Islander people are more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people nationwide, a recent study from Oregon State University found the risk was even greater for racial and ethnic minority groups living in rural areas compared with urban areas. To address the disparities, researchers say the health care response to COVID-19, including the vaccine rollout, needs to allocate additional resources to rural areas that have been hardest hit, especially those where minority populations are concentrated. Earlier studies throughout the U.S. have shown that ...