Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The COVID-19 pandemic not only gave us a global health crisis but also an infodemic, a term coined by the World Health Organization (WHO) to describe the overwhelming flood of information—both accurate and misleading—that inundated media channels. This information complicated the public understanding and response to the pandemic as people struggled … Read more
Credit: Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels Even moderate levels of school absence, not just extreme absences, can have a negative impact on exam results and career prospects, but they are frequently overlooked, according to a University of Strathclyde report. In England, pupils with consistently moderate absences across schooling were found to account for more than a … Read more
Location of the sampled conventional (white circles), young organic (1–11 years since transition, gray circles) and old organic farms (20–35 years since transition, black circles) in southern Sweden. Credit: Journal of Applied Ecology (2024). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.14650 It takes a long time, up to several decades, before the benefits of organic farming take full effect on land that … Read more
Sustainable and biodegradable: packaging made from mycelium. Credit: Fraunhofer IAP/Jadwiga Galties Fungi have more to offer than meets the eye. Their thread-like cells, which grow extensively and out of sight underground like a network of roots, offer huge potential for producing sustainable, biodegradable materials. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP in … Read more
(A) Origin of the different SLC and SP founders selected for the ToMAGIC population development represented with the different colour codes. (B) The funnel breeding design to develop the 354 ToMAGIC lines. The eight founders with a different colour to represent their genomic background are represented at a scale based on the real fruit size. … Read more
Cellular elongation at the tips of the filamentous bacteria Corynebacterium matruchotii. Credit: Chimileski, Scott et al, PNAS, 2024. One of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet is closer than you think—right inside your mouth. Your mouth is a thriving ecosystem of more than 500 different species of bacteria living in distinct, structured communities called … Read more
Credit: eScience (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.esci.2023.100208 Water contamination by pharmaceuticals and heavy metals poses severe environmental and health risks. Traditional methods like biodegradation and filtration often lack efficiency and sustainability. Photocatalysis, using solar energy to degrade pollutants, offers a promising alternative but faces challenges such as weak redox capacity and low catalytic performance. Due to these … Read more
Swimming bacteria experience larger changes in concentration over time, whereas twitching bacteria experience larger changes in concentration over the lengths of their bodies. Credit: Nature Microbiology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01729-3 Scientists from the University of Sheffield have discovered a new sensory capability in bacteria which could transform treatments for bacterial infections. It was previously thought that … Read more
Workflow of evaluating the density of Aedes aegypti breeding container detections for modeling immature mosquito abundance at flight range scale in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The mapping of Aedes aegypti breeding containers was carried out using satellite and street view imagery by applying and fine-tuning single-stage object detection networks (left). Container densities … Read more
Plot of the pair density correlation function, a quantity that characterizes crystallization, in the quantum anomalous Hall crystal. Arrows on the boundary denote the topological edge states. Credit: Sheng et al. Moiré superlattices, structures that arise when two layers of two-dimensional (2D) materials are overlaid with a small twist angle, have been the focus of … Read more
