Reporting world updates to you
New research by an international team of scientists explains what’s behind a stalled trend in Arctic Ocean sea ice loss since 2007. The findings indicate that stronger declines in sea ice will occur when an atmospheric feature known as the Arctic dipole reverses itself in its recurring cycle. The many…
Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB) and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior have converted a former barn into a cutting-edge technology lab for complex behavioral analysis. In it, they can now study the intricate behaviour of animal groups. The…
When fighting disease, our immune cells need to reach their target quickly. Researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) now discovered that immune cells actively generate their own guidance system to navigate through complex environments. This challenges earlier notions about these movements. The researchers’ findings, published in…
Berlin CNN — A 98-year-old former Nazi concentration guard has been indicted on charges of aiding and abetting the murder of more than 3,300 people during the Holocaust, German authorities said on Friday. The man’s name was not made public by prosecutors, in accordance with German privacy laws. The public…
A long-lived monocarpic species of bamboo, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, only flowers once every 120 years before it dies. The upcoming flowering event for this species does not bode well for its continued long-term survival, as most flowers are not producing viable seeds. Flowering for some plants is a yearly…
As global ice dams begin to weaken due to warming temperatures, a new study suggests that prior attempts to evaluate the mass of the huge floating ice shelves that line the Antarctic ice sheet may have overestimated their thickness. The research, recently published in the Journal of Glaciology, is the…
We are constantly exposed to phthalates in our environment through plastic products such as storage containers, medical devices, packages, fabrics, and toys. Specifically, di-isononyl phthalate is inevitably becoming a part of our lives. Unfortunately, the impact of DiNP on the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy is largely unknown. In a…
What initiates chemical intolerance (CI)? In a newly released survey of thousands of U.S. adults, respondents most frequently cited exposures to biological sources, such as mold and algae “blooms,” and/or fossil fuels, their combustion products and synthetic chemical derivatives such as pesticides, plastics and persistent organic pollutants. It’s an issue…
Health benefits that have resulted from reductions in fine particulate air pollution aren’t distributed equally among populations in the U.S., a new Yale-led study finds. Racial and ethnic minorities — and Black people in particular — still experience disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease-related deaths caused by exposure to fine…
A study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center sheds new light on why tumors that have spread to the brain from other parts of the body respond to immunotherapy while glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer that originates in the brain, does not. In people with tumors that…
Red blood cells exposed to oxygen deficiency protect against myocardial infarction, according to a new KI study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study also shows that the protective effect is enhanced by a nitrate-rich vegetable diet. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to all of…
People without a secure job contract can reduce their risk of premature death by 20 per cent if they gain permanent employment, a study from Karolinska Institutet published in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community reports. According to the researchers, the results indicate that job security on the Swedish labour…
Kyiv, Ukraine CNN — Kateryna Pylypenko prepared two backpacks for her youngest son’s first day of school on Friday. One with school supplies, and one for the bomb shelter. “The bag (for the shelter) will be kept in the classroom. We were told it should contain water, a toy… and…
CNN — Ambassadors from Russia and Belarus have been invited back to the Nobel Prize banquet after being excluded last year because of the invasion of Ukraine, the Nobel Foundation said. Iran has also been invited to the December event in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, after being left out…
CNN — A Russian military blogger who has written critically of Russia’s conduct in Ukraine was arrested in Moscow Thursday, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. The blogger, Andrey Kurshin, runs the Moscow Calling Telegram channel, which has some 87,000 subscribers. “A criminal case was opened against the administrator…
CNN — Ukraine has opened more than 3,000 criminal cases over Russia’s alleged crimes against children in the country, including dozens of torture cases, Ukrainian prosecutors said Thursday. The allegations include “murders, mutilations, abduction of children, forced displacement, deportation, sexual violence against children and kidnapping,” Yulia Usenko, head of the…
Ukrainian forces said they had penetrated the “first line” of Russian strongholds in the Zaporizhzhia region, in a sign that Kyiv is edging closer to Moscow’s sprawling network of fortified trenches along the southern front. The Ukrainian military claimed on Thursday that its units had advanced toward two villages to the south and…
Hydrogen spillover is exactly what it sounds like. Small metal nanoparticles anchored on a thermally stable oxide, like silica, comprise a major class of catalysts, which are substances used to accelerate chemical reactions without being consumed themselves. The catalytic reaction usually occurs on the reactive — and expensive — metal,…
Scientists have established the effectiveness of vaccines they developed to prevent the disfiguring skin disease leishmaniasis in animal studies, and Phase 1 human trial planning is in motion for the most promising candidate. But in new work, the research team has determined how these vaccine candidates, created using mutated disease-causing…
Case Western Reserve University biochemical researchers have identified a new function of a key protein that leads to cancer-a finding they believe could lead to more effective treatments for a range of cancers and other diseases. The protein is LSD1 (lysine-specific histone demethylase 1A), which functions as a type of…
The ability to accurately detect heat and pain is critical to human survival, but scientists have struggled to understand on a molecular level exactly how our bodies sense these potential risks. Now, University at Buffalo researchers have unraveled the complex biological phenomena that drive these critical functions. Their research, published…
Researchers from Trinity College Dublin have discovered some new and surprising ways that viral RNA and influenza virus are detected by human lung cells, which has potential implications for treating people affected by such viruses. Influenza viruses remain a major threat to human health and can cause severe symptoms in…
An international team of marine scientists, led by the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the Center for Coastal Studies in the USA, has studied the DNA of family groups from four different whale species to estimate their mutation rates. The results revealed much higher mutation rates than previously…
A broad new strategy could hold hope for treating virtually all blood cancers with CAR T cell therapy, which is currently approved for five subtypes of blood cancer. Scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the potential efficacy of this approach in preclinical…
Researchers have developed an automated version of the viral plaque assay, the gold-standard method for detecting and quantifying viruses. The new method uses time-lapse holographic imaging and deep learning to greatly reduce detection time and eliminate staining and manual counting. This advance could help streamline the development of new vaccines…
Cloud gaming, which involves playing a video game remotely from the cloud, witnessed unprecedented growth during the lockdowns and gaming hardware shortages that occurred during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, the burgeoning industry encompasses a $6 billion global market and more than 23 million players worldwide. However, interdevice…
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun the study of one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years,…
The mushroom body — the learning and memory region in the brains of arthropods — is responsible for the ability of insects to make abstract behavioural decisions, which are then carried out by downstream motor networks. That is the result of a study conducted by Professor Dr Martin Paul Nawrot…
The largest genetic study of its kind, coordinated by the International League Against Epilepsy, including scientists from FutureNeuro at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, has discovered specific changes in our DNA that increase the risk of developing epilepsy. The research, published today in Nature Genetics, greatly advances our…
Researchers at University of Manchester and the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, have revealed an innovative approach to track individual molecule dynamics within nanofluidic structures, illuminating their response to molecules in ways never before possible. Nanofluidics, the study of fluids confined within ultra-small spaces, offers insights into the…
