The processes through which soil microbes can aid management of desertification. Credit: Islam et al. 2024. Desertification is a significant problem for arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions of Earth, whereby grasslands and shrublands become a comparatively barren desert as vegetation disappears over time. This poses an extreme hazard to local ecosystems, as well as … Read more
Saving chocolate: Israel scientist Ellen Graber. Israeli scientist Ellen Graber has spent years researching ways to save chocolate crops from climate change. But with the government slashing spending to fund the war in Gaza, her project is one of hundreds now hanging in the balance. Graber’s research had already been hit by the war—she had … Read more
Acetylene is widely used in across many industries, including the production of resins and plastics like PVC. Realizing an environmentally friendly technique to synthesize it would represent a massive step towards building sustainable societies. Credit: Yuta Suzuki from Doshisha University, Japan Reaching sustainability is one of humanity’s most pressing challenges today—and also one of the … Read more
Tobacco hornworm, ie, final instar caterpillar of the Carolina sphinx moth. Credit: Konstantin Kornev Blood is a remarkable material: it must remain fluid inside blood vessels, yet clot as quickly as possible outside them, to stop bleeding. The chemical cascade that makes this possible is well understood for vertebrate blood. But hemolymph, the equivalent of … Read more
A dwarf species of rock-wallaby, the nabarlek. Credit: Ian Morris, WA Australian rock-wallabies are “little Napoleons” when it comes to compensating for small size, packing much more punch into their bite than larger relatives. Researchers from Flinders University made the discovery while investigating how two dwarf species of rock-wallaby are able to feed themselves on … Read more
Credit: CC0 Public Domain The shifting landscape of post-COVID-19 employment highlights a reduction in the gender employment gap among individuals with disabilities, a trend not observed among those without disabilities, according to last Friday’s National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) Deeper Dive Lunch & Learn Webinar. While men and women with disabilities have similar rates … Read more
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Rabbits are popular family pets, with around 1.5 million in the UK and it is important that owners recognize when their animal is in pain, and know when to seek help to protect their rabbit’s welfare. New research by the University of Bristol Veterinary School has found that the majority of … Read more
The new Integrated Classifier Pipeline system uses genetic fingerprints to identify unintended bystander CRISPR edits. A confocal microscope image of an early blastoderm-stage nucleus in a Drosophila (fruit fly) embryo uses colorful fluorescent markers to highlight the homothorax gene undergoing transcription from two separate parental chromosomes (two distinct signal clusters). Credit: Bier Lab, UC San … Read more
As shown on this non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) plot, researchers found that Streptococcus and Pedobacter bacteria species were the most prevalent microbes in healthy eyes (blue) while more Acinetobacter species were present in their eye microbiome of people with dry eye (red). Credit: Pallavi Sharma, Stephen F. Austin State University Researchers have used advanced sequencing … Read more
(a) Overpotential volcano projected on the ΔGOH description. Triangles denote the DFT-calculated overpotentials for single-site M–N–C catalysts, whereas circles represent those for dual-site M–N–C with curvature. Dashed and dotted lines highlight the apex of these overpotential volcanoes. (b) Timeline with outstanding, experimentally measured ORR and OER potentials for both platinum-group metals and metal–carbon–nitrogen (M–N–C) catalysts. … Read more
