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Every time you wash your clothes, thousands of tiny microfibres from the fabric are released into rivers, the sea and the ocean, causing marine pollution. Scientists have speculated for some time that these microfibres may cause more harm than microbeads, which were banned from UK and US consumer products in recent years. Researchers from Northumbria University worked in partnership with Procter & Gamble, makers of Ariel, Tide, Downy and Lenor on the first major forensic study into the environmental impact of microfibres from real soiled household laundry. Their forensic analysis revealed an average of 114 mg of microfibres were released per kilogram of fabric in each wash load during a standard washing cycle.

"America is in the very early stages of a big pedagogical experiment based on old ideas given new life by digital technology and the techies' money. There isn't enough evidence yet to conclude that this blend of technology and personalised learning serves pupils better than the status quo, but the revolution is gathering pace. It could, Rose acknowledges, "go horribly, horribly wrong". If it does, a lot of children's lives will have been damaged; but then it is hardly as though the existing system is releasing the full potential of America's young people. For Rose, giving children more control over what they learn and how they learn it is central to achieving that. Ultimately, he says, "you should have a right to know who you are.""

If a COVID-19 vaccine went on the market before Election Day, Kamala Harris said she's not sure she'd take it. And she's not alone. In a recent poll, a majority of Americans - 62 percent - said they were worried that the Trump administration would pressure the Food and Drug Administration to release a vaccine before it's ready, and 54 percent said they simply wouldn't take that hypothetical vaccine at all, even if it were free.

Aside from filtering, warming, and humidifying the air you breathe, the nose is your first line of defense against allergens and pathogens. The mucus and cilia inside are designed to block these outside invaders from going farther down the respiratory tract and making you sick. And NO, which is what the sinuses release when you breathe through your nose, is a vasodilator, meaning it relaxes the blood vessels and lowers blood pressure.

Carbonyl sulfide (OCS) is the most stable and abundant sulfur-containing gas in the atmosphere. It is derived from both natural and anthropogenic sources and is of key interest to scientists investigating how much carbon dioxide (CO2) plants take out of the atmosphere for photosynthesis. Measuring CO2 alone cannot provide estimates of photosynthesis (taking up CO2) because plants also release CO2 through respiration. In contrast, OCS is taken up like CO2 but is not released by respiration, and can therefore provide valuable information about the rate of global photosynthesis.

Case isolation and contact tracing can contribute to the control of COVID-19 outbreaks1,2. However, it remains unclear how real-world social networks could influence the effectiveness and efficiency of such approaches. To address this issue, we simulated control strategies for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in a real-world social network generated from high-resolution GPS data that were gathered in the course of a citizen-science experiment3,4. We found that tracing the contacts of contacts reduced the size of simulated outbreaks more than tracing of only contacts, but this strategy also resulted in almost half of the local population being quarantined at a single point in time. Testing and releasing non-infectious individuals from quarantine led to increases in outbreak size, suggesting that contact tracing and quarantine might be most effective as a 'local lockdown' strategy when contact rates are high. Finally, we estimated that combining physical distancing with contact tracing could enable epidemic control while reducing the number of quarantined individuals. Our findings suggest that targeted tracing and quarantine strategies would be most efficient when combined with other control measures such as physical distancing.