Group items tagged

For example, researchers studying vitiligo, an autoimmune skin disorder, can directly assess how a potential intervention impacts autoimmune processes in skin tissue derived from people with vitiligo.

Scientists studying ultra-processed foods have created a new tool for assessing the rewarding and reinforcing properties of foods that make up 58 percent of calories consumed in the United States. The foods have been linked to a wide range of negative health outcomes.

provides a collection of carefully curated images of minimally processed and ultra-processed foods matched on 26 characteristics, including macronutrients, sodium, dietary fiber, calories, price, and visual characteristics such as a color and portion size

This year has already seen massive heatwaves around the globe, with cities in Mexico, India, Pakistan and Oman hitting temperatures near or past 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

In tests under the Arizona sun, the material kept 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.1 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than the broadband emitter fabric used for outdoor endurance sports and 8.9 degrees Celsius (16 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than the commercialized silk commonly used for shirts, dresses and other summer clothing.

"You can save a lot of cooling, electricity and energy costs because this is a passive process," Sui said.

researchers have designed a new wearable fabric to help people beat the heat in urban settings. The material, reported in the journal Science, could find use in clothing, cooling facades for buildings and cars, and for food storage and transport.

Existing cooling fabrics reflect sunlight and also wick away sweat to cool a person via evaporation. More recently, researchers have designed cooling fabrics that rely on the principle of radiative cooling: the natural phenomenon in which objects radiate heat through the atmosphere straight into outer space.

But radiative cooling fabrics made so far are designed to work when laid horizontally as opposed to vertically, as they would be when worn.

By using a carbonated -- rather than a still -- water-based solution during the concrete manufacturing process, a Northwestern University-led team of engineers has discovered a new way to store carbon dioxide (CO2) in the ubiquitous construction material.

Not only could the new process help sequester CO2 from the ever-warming atmosphere, it also results in concrete with uncompromised strength and durability.

"The cement and concrete industries significantly contribute to human-caused CO2 emissions,"

News Release 3-Jul-2024 Artificial light is a deadly siren song for young fish Reports and Proceedings Society for Experimental Biology image: Light pollution at night over aquatic habitats in French Polynesia. view more  Credit: Jules Schligler New research finds that artificial light at night (ALAN) attracts larval fish away from naturally lit habitats, while dramatically lowering their chances of survival in an “ecological trap”, with serious consequences for fish conservation and fishing stock management.

The experts selected onion plants to test out this idea, known for their high sensitivity to toxins in the environment. In beakers of water containing bentazone, they grew onion root tissue, called meristems, measuring its cell division and root growth as a sign of health. 

The previously hidden and diverse underwater acoustic world in British ponds has been revealed by a team of researchers at the University of Bristol.

Acoustic monitoring has been shown to effectively survey birds and monkeys in rainforests, and marine mammals in the oceans. However, freshwater environments have remained largely unexplored despite their diverse soundscapes.

analysis of the audio files revealed clear daily acoustic activity cycles in each pond

Heating an insecticide can give it new life.

Microwaving the insecticide deltamethrin rearranges its crystal structure but doesn’t change its chemical composition. The rearrangement renews deltamethrin’s ability to kill mosquitoes that have become resistant to the insecticide, researchers report April 21 in Malaria Journal.

The microwave worked just as well, but Kahr cautions that people shouldn’t use the same microwave for heating food and insecticides.

“It’s pure chemistry,” Umanzor says. “Positive with negative, and then it just collects.”