From Italy and the World

A new international study led by Queen Mary University of London has shown mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) infections to be less severe among those who are vaccinated or had a previous infection in 2022, underlining the importance and effectiveness of vaccination. The research, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases,…

The school year has hardly begun and the first exams are already approaching. According to findings by researchers from the University of Basel, school children cope better with the stress if they get plenty of daily exercise. “Get some exercise!” It’s one suggestion adults frequently hear when they complain about…

Opposites don’t actually attract. That’s the takeaway from a sweeping CU Boulder analysis of more than 130 traits and including millions of couples over more than a century. “Our findings demonstrate that birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together,” said first author Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral…

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) provide our portable devices like tablets and mobiles — and increasingly also vehicles — with power. As the share of volatile renewable energy needing electricity storage increases, more and more LIBs are needed, lithium prices rise, resources dwindle, and the amount of depleted batteries that contain toxic…

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoTs) refers to a technology that combines wireless sensors, controllers, and mobile communication technologies to make every aspect of industrial production processes intelligent and efficient. Since IIoTs can involve several small battery-driven devices and sensors, there is a growing need to develop a robust network for…

Using a standardized assessment, researchers in the UK compared the performance of a commercially available artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm with human readers of screening mammograms. Results of their findings were published in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Mammographic screening does not detect every breast…

Resistant starch is a nondigestible fiber that ferments in the large intestine, and consumption of it has previously been shown to have a positive effect on metabolism in animal studies. Now, a 4-month randomized controlled trial in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) indicates that daily intake of resistant…

Traveling to faraway places is a great way to seek out new experiences, but jet lag can be an unpleasant side effect. Adjusting to a new time zone is often accompanied by fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and a host of other problems that can turn an otherwise exciting adventure into a…

While conventional silicon-based solar cells have had an unmistakable impact on the buildout of renewable energy resources around the world, additional performance improvements have become increasingly difficult to make as the devices approach their practical efficiency limits. This constraint has prompted scientists to seek out new technologies that can be…

The US continues to face stark inequalities in preterm birth and mortality rates between mothers of differing socioeconomic status and race, finds a new report led by UCL researchers. The study, published in JAMA Paediatrics, examined data from the US National Centre for Health Statistics Birth Infant/Death Dataset, of over…

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new type of material that could offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution to clean pollutants from water. Dubbed an “engineered living material,” it is a 3D-printed structure made of a seaweed-based polymer combined with bacteria that have been genetically…

What is snail mucus? That was the question posed by researchers in a new study that examines the molecular composition of snail mucus. When analyzing the mucus of a common garden snail, they found it contained a complex collection of proteins, some identified as entirely novel. In a newly published…

CNN  —  Greece is being lashed with torrential rains which have flooded homes, businesses and roads and left at least one person dead after a wall collapsed in the extreme weather. Hundreds of millimeters of rainfall have been dumped over some areas in the last 24 hours as a strong…

CNN  —  A 10-year-old boy has been rescued near Madrid after spending the night clinging to a tree to escape severe flooding as Storm Dana lashed the country with torrential rains in recent days, killing at least three people. The boy disappeared with his mother, father, and sister when their…

Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine CNN  —  The T0408 was once a country lane that led peacefully southward through the open fields of Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, from Orikhiv through Robotyne and on to Tokmak. Now, the men of Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade have renamed it “the road to hell” and the…

Dmytro Kuleba gives his remarks at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on July 18. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/VIEWpress Russia’s conditions to revive the Black Sea grain deal amount to “blackmail,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told national news agency Ukrinform on Monday.  The deal “must be restored,” but not “at the…

When it comes to global warming trends, the Arctic is a troubling outlier. The Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the global average, and aerosols play an important role in that warming. Scientists have long known that pollutants from other regions can accumulate in the Arctic atmosphere where they…

More than 100 years of observations in nature have revealed a universal pattern of species abundances: Most species are rare but not very rare, and only a few species are very common. These so-called global species abundance distributions have become fully unveiled for some well-monitored species groups, such as birds.…

Hot and dry conditions resulted in increased tree death Evidence that most forest areas withstand periods of severe drought Greatest impact in forests with drier climates Tropical forests in South America lose their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere when conditions become exceptionally hot and dry, according to new…

CNN  —  A Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine last month has revealed details of the daring operation to fly across the border in his Mi8 combat helicopter, in an interview published by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence. The pilot, named by Ukrainian officials as Maxim Kuzminov, explained in the interview…

ChatGPT could help to increase vaccine uptake by debunking myths around jab safety, say the authors of a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics. The researchers asked the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot the top 50 most frequently-asked Covid-19 vaccine questions. They included queries based on myths…

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have discovered two new genes that cause head and neck cancer patients to be resistant to chemotherapy, and that silencing either gene can make cancer cells previously unresponsive to chemotherapy subsequently respond to it. The two genes discovered actively ‘work’ in most human…

Digital information exchange can be safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly with the help of a new type of random number generator for encryption developed at Linköping University, Sweden. The researchers behind the study believe that the new technology paves the way for a new type of quantum communication. In…

The Qing Dynasty in China, after over 250 years, crumbled in 1912. Led by the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), an international research team has pinpointed key reasons behind the collapse, revealing parallels to modern instability and offering vital lessons for the future. China is considered today to be the world’s…

A new cancer therapy developed by Purdue University researchers attacks tumors by tricking cancer cells into absorbing a snippet of RNA that naturally blocks cell division. As reported today in Oncogene, tumors treated with the new therapy did not increase in size over the course of a 21-day study, while…