The impact of ozone on soybean production can be predicted more accurately thanks to improvements to a computer modelling system. Surface ozone is a pollutant that affects plant growth by entering leaves and reducing the rate of photosynthesis, and rising ozone levels could severely limit production of crops including soy. Being able to estimate this damage on soybean production using a "climate-vegetation model" is vital for predicting global and regional soy yields in the future. This study uses results from a field experiment in the USA, which found that a normal ozone level of 10ppm/h (AOT40) could reduce soybean yield by 10%. At extreme ozone levels - comparable to those observed on very polluted days in some parts of the world - soybean production fell to less than ...

Increases in life expectancy in the UK and elsewhere had slowed even before 2016 - and COVID-19 is expected to further eliminate any gains, Newcastle University studies show. After 2011, over the post-financial crisis period the authors find that the UK performed poorly, in almost all measures, compared to the 28 countries of the European Union (EU28). Life expectancy at birth, and age 65, in the UK were increasing rapidly in 2008 but slowed around 2011 and Germany, Portugal and France showed evidence of a similar slowing. Furthermore, years of good health, called Healthy Life Years, at birth in the UK decreased, whereas it increased in most EU28 countries. The UK experienced a period ...

Using salt as a key ingredient, Chinese and British researchers have designed a new type of rechargeable battery that could accelerate the shift to greener, electric transport on our roads. Many electric vehicles (EV) are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they can lose energy and power over time. Under certain conditions, such batteries can also overheat while working or charging, which can also degrade battery life and reduce miles per charge. To solve these issues, the University of Nottingham is collaborating with six scientific ...

The year 2020 played host to an uncharacteristically large number of natural disasters. The year began with large wildfires in the Amazon rainforest and Australia. A series of wildfires broke out in the American states of California during summer and Oregon in September 2020. In particular, the Oregon wildfire intensified to an uncontrollable extent and was spread over a wide area by strong gusts of wind that carried it forward. These unseasonably strong winds may have been stoked by an unexpected source: typhoons on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. In late August and early September, three storms--Bavi, Mayask, and Haishen--occurred just two weeks apart in the Korean peninsula, causing floods, mudslides, and several casualties. In a recently ...

T-cells are an important component of our immune system: with the receptors they carry on their surface, they can recognise highly specific antigens. Upon detection of an intruder, an immune response is triggered. It is still unclear exactly what happens when antigens are recognised: How many antigens are necessary to elicit an immune response, and does the response depend on their spatial arrangement? These effects take place in the nanometer range - on the size scale of molecules, far below what can be seen with ordinary microscopes. To study all this, tiny tools are needed. Therefore, an unusual method was used at TU Wien: DNA molecules were folded in an ingenious way, similar to the paper folding ...

Students from lower socio-economic groups (SEG) are less likely to participate in sport or physical activity at university, research from Sheffield Hallam University has found. The main barriers affecting participation were found to be down to cost of being part of a sports team, lack of time due to academic commitments, part-time working or their social life taking precedence and limited prior knowledge of and participation in sport before starting university. Funded by British Universities and Colleges Sport and published in the peer-reviewed Sport, Education and Society journal, the study surveyed over 700 students from 20 universities and found those that had participated in sport and physical ...

A collaboration between the Pericàs group with Prof. Timothy Noël and Dr. Paola Riente at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, The Netherlands), has crystallised in a Nature Communications paper where they provide key insight into the chemical nature of the true photocatalyst involved in the Bi2O3-driven atom-transfer radical addition (ATRA) reaction. Back in 2014, ICREA professors Miquel Pericàs and Emilio Palomares together with former postdoctoral researcher Dr. Riente published a paper on Angewandte Chemie International Edition pioneering the research on organic transformations in mild reactions conditions ...

The work of the research group under the guidance of Professor Leonid Martyushev (co-authors: Roman Bando and Evgenia Chervontseva) will help to predict the behavior of fluids in various environments. "When oil wells are depleted, water is pumped there under pressure to force the residual oil to the surface. If the interface between water and oil were an even layer, then it would be safe to say that as a result of water injection we recover all the residual oil. But since the interface between the two liquids is a highly distorted section, oil, contrary to expectations, can still remain underground, while water comes out to the surface. This is where our calculations come in ...

The coronavirus crisis has led to some of the general public developing a critical view of the current food consumption model, as shown by a recent survey by the Catalan Consumer Agency, which reveals that 60.5% of all Catalans tend to think that the pandemic will promote more responsible, sustainable and fair consumption. Moreover, the various lockdowns have caused a significant increase in online shopping throughout Spain, with a 92% rise in volume and a 114.5% rise in value, according to aggregated consumption data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This change in shopping habits and the awareness of the food model may also ...

The human body strives to keep itself in homeostasis, or balance. When blood clots are created, the body's innate response is to break the clots down to prevent significant health problems from arising. Research has found that patients with COVID-19 are prone to serious blood clotting. This is why many patients receive high dose anticoagulants as part of their treatment. But a new study in Scientific Reports, led by senior author Daniel Lawrence, Ph.D., a Professor of Basic Research in Cardiovascular Medicine at Michigan Medicine, found that aside ...

New research by Swansea University scientists found that boat ramps facilitate the dispersal of the highly invasive zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha). To contain the dispersion of this invasive species Dr Marta Rodriguez-Rey and co-authors suggest in the new study, that strict control measures and target monitoring around boat ramps should be implemented. Invasive bivalves are a problem as they can cause widespread environmental damage, and eradication has proved difficult. The zebra mussel is one of the most damaging invasive bivalves - it reproduces fast, disperses widely, and damages the economy. In Great Britain, £5 million are lost each year due to pipe fouling and damage to water infrastructures caused ...

Titanium dioxide nanoparticles decorated by gold absorb about 96% of the solar spectrum and turn it into heat. The material can accelerate the evaporation in desalination plants up to 2.5 times and can track hazardous molecules and compounds. An international research team with representatives from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), ITMO University, and the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, published a related article in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Access to safe water is included in the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Children's Fund (UNICEF) addressed the problem in 2019 report, noting that 2.2 ...

In Rome lies the Santi Apostoli church, cared for by Franciscan brothers for more than 500 years. For more than 1500 years, this site has held the believed remains of two of the earliest Christians and Jesu apostles: St. Philip and St. James the Younger - relics of the Holy Catholic Church. In the first few centuries of Christianity, life was difficult for the Christian minority, but gradually towards sixth century Christianity became the dominant religion and after Emperor Constantine on his deathbed declared Christianity the state religion, churches were erected all over the Roman Empire. Shortly after the churches were erected, remains of worshipped Christian martyrs were moved from their ...

The application Radar COVID detects twice as many close contacts of people infected with the virus SARS-Cov2 as the manual tracing system. This is the conclusion of the first scientific study that was carried out to assess the application in a trial carried out last summer on the island of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. The following researchers were involved in the project; Àlex Arenas, professor from the Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics; Lucas Lacasa, from the Queen Mary University, London; and Pablo Rodríguez, from the Association of Computing Machinery, United States. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The aim of the study was to check the technical and ...

An atlas of harmful algal blooms across the Red Sea reveals their link with industrial aquaculture and how these blooms have changed in recent decades. Warming oceans and anthropogenic pollution have led to more frequent and extensive harmful algal blooms (HABs) worldwide. These rapid surges in productivity occur when algae suddenly experience advantageous conditions, usually an influx of nutrients, and take over their environment, suffocating other marine life and spreading toxins through the food chain. These blooms harm wild and farmed fish and reduce marine biodiversity. "HABs are a global problem," says ...

Per capita income, population volume and density, the structure of cities, transport infrastructure or whether districts have their own schools are all factors that can affect the spread of COVID-19. This has been confirmed by a study carried out in 73 districts in Barcelona by researchers from the departments of Geography and Economics of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, the results of which have been published in the Journal of Public Health. The research reveals that the analysis of the characteristics of every district can facilitate decisions on the specific measures to be applied to individual districts ...

Flinders University researchers have discovered a new anti-inflammatory role for well-known blood clot protein fibrinogen, which could support targeted new treatments for kidney, heart and other common diseases. The study in Redox Biology describes how fibrinogen can be protective against hypochlorite - a chemical generated by the body during inflammation - and so act as a kind of antioxidant in blood plasma. "Our team found that fibrinogen, which forms extraordinarily large assemblies when it reacts with hypochlorite, doesn't harm cells in the same way as hypochlorite-modified albumin which exacerbates kidney and heart disease, ...

Researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research have discovered that three patients with a severe genetic immunodeficiency spontaneously repaired the harmful variants in their DNA and restored normal immune function over time. As cells grow and divide to produce new cells, DNA is copied from the parent cell to provide instructions for the new daughter cells. Random changes that occur as the DNA is copied are usually harmless but in some cases are associated with the development of diseases like cancer. However, the Garvan-led Clinical Immunogenomics Research Consortium Australasia (CIRCA) found three patients with DOCK8 deficiency had repaired the faulty genes through a ...

New research from the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation examines whether recreational marijuana legalization in Oregon and marijuana and alcohol retail outlet density levels are associated with co-use and beliefs supportive of use of each among teens. Using data from 11th graders who participated in the Student Wellness Survey from 2010-2018, researchers assessed past-30-day co-use changes in counties with low, medium, and high densities of licensed marijuana and alcohol outlets. Findings include: A significant post-legalization increase ...

Australians love their beaches, and now a new study also confirms the broad appeal of other coastal assets such as tidal wetlands, nature trails and protected areas including bird and dolphin sanctuaries. In one of the first studies of its kind in Australia, ahead of World Wetlands Day (2 February), Flinders University environment and marine ecology experts have conducted an Adelaide-based survey of how residents connect with and rate the attributes of Adelaide's northern metropolitan coastal wetlands. The findings, just published in the journal Environmental Science and Policy, report strong appreciation of the natural features of these coastal places, with study participants ...

Soil temperature has a significant impact on land-atmosphere interaction within the Earth system, affecting surrounding ecology, agriculture, and much more. This influence is a primary component of what is called a "thermal regime" of land, or a regular pattern of temperature change within the soil. Climatologists are intrigued by fluctuating soil temperatures, especially during the first decade of the 21st century where global surface warming has slowed down. The thermal regime, according to scientists, is greatly influential on climate, particularly seasonal climate prediction. Now, ...

Humoral and cellular adaptive immunity are two immune mechanisms that act against pathogens. Humoral immunity is mediated by antibodies, while cellular immunity does not involve antibodies and is, instead, facilitated by T cells. Studying how these immune mechanisms mediate SARS-CoV-2 infections could be beneficial in controlling the progression of the disease. However, their roles in viral control or disease pathogenesis is not fully understood and only a few studies have thoroughly monitored COVID-19 patients longitudinally, especially during the acute phase of infection. To fill this knowledge gap, the team of ...

Correct, or native, protein folding is essential for correct protein function. Protein misfolding can lead to the formation of amyloid fibrils, and amyloidosis, which is implicated in various human neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's diseases. In this study Yuji Goto and colleagues describe, for the first time, a dynamic link between protein folding and misfolding, and the threshold that must be overcome for the formation of amyloid fibrils. Technological advances are at the forefront of many scientific discoveries. The atomic structures of some amyloid fibrils were recently revealed as a result of advances in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance and cryogenic electron microscopy. While an important step forward for the ...

The honor of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to those who developed lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. These batteries have become an essential energy source for electronic devices ranging from small IT devices to electric vehicles. Tesla, a leading U.S. automaker, recently emphasized the need to establish an innovative production system and reduce battery cost. The price of batteries accounts for a large portion of electric vehicles and cost reduction is vital to popularizing them. A joint research team, led by Professor Soojin Park and Ph.D. candidate Hye Bin Son ...

HOUSTON - (Feb. 1, 2021) - Rice University engineers have discovered technology that could slash the cost of semiconductor electron sources, key components in devices ranging from night-vision goggles and low-light cameras to electron microscopes and particle accelerators. In an open-access Nature Communications paper, Rice researchers and collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) describe the first process for making electron sources from halide perovskite thin films that efficiently convert light into free electrons. Manufacturers spend billions of dollars each year on photocathode electron sources ...