Carbon-free fuels could have a dark side
As climate-friendly fuels, hydrogen (H
2
) and ammonia (NH
3
) are enticing. Because they lack carbon, they can be burned to produce nothing but environmentally benign water and nitrogen (N
2
). But if producers do not take care to prevent leaks or incomplete combustion, researchers are now warning, the fuels could generate pollutants that could harm human health and shrink or reverse the climate benefits.
For example, one analysis finds that, under a worst case scenario, using ammonia as a fuel could have a greenhouse gas footprint as bad as burning an equivalent amount of coal. “We c...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 15, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Huge variety of eye colors in today ’s cats may trace back to distant ancestor’s unusual peepers
If you get lost in the luminous orange peepers of housecats or the baby blues of white tigers, thank the granddaddy of all felines—an ocelotlike creature that lived more than 30 million years ago. A new study finds that this distant ancestor of lions, tigers, and housecats sported brown and gray eyes, the latter of which allowed its descendants to evolve a veritable rainbow of iris colors.
“I love this paper,” says Juan Negro, an evolutionary biologist at the Doñana Biological Station who has spent decades studying animal coloration. “Eye coloration in cats is something that, surprisingly, hasn’t been appr...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 13, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Medical education must include the field ’s Nazi past, expert panel urges
All health care students worldwide should learn the history of medicine during the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, according to a report published Wednesday by
The Lancet
. The journal
formed a commission in 2021
to explore how the lessons from that time could help improve medical education in the future. In its
50-page report
, the commission highlights the stories of victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and resisters of Nazi crimes in the practice of medicine. These include the use of concentration camp prisoners in heinous medical experiments, widespread forced steril...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 10, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Time for quantum leaps? Science ’s annual Ph.D. dance contest is now open!
An engaging blend of hand fans,
Lord of the Rings
, and chemistry won
Science
’s last Dance Your Ph.D. competition, and we can’t wait to see who takes the next crown. The latest edition of the contest, our 16th, is now open to entries.
As always, we’re challenging scientists to explain their research obsession with fancy footwork but no PowerPoint slides or jargon. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting your Ph.D. or you completed it decades ago; you just need imagination and the ability to keep a beat.
This year, the standard category winners—physics, biology, chemistry,...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 10, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
News at a glance: Fish family tree, AI safety research, and open access ’ next steps
TAXONOMY
Revised map of fish lineage illuminates family ties
Researchers are flocking to download a revised tree of life for ray-finned fishes, which account for half the living vertebrate species and 97% of all living fish. In the
first comprehensive synthesis of all the classification work of these animals
, ichthyologists Thomas Near of Yale University and Christine Thacker of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum covered most of the fish species consumed by humans and used as pets. Unlike earlier phylogenies that were based primarily on morphology, theirs incorporates extensive DNA da...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 9, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Scientists in Russia struggle in a world transformed by its war with Ukraine
Related podcast
The state of Russian science, and improving implantable bioelectronics
BY
Sarah Crespi
,
Olga Dobrovidova
Yuri Kovalev remembers how some of his older colleagues took offense when he moved to the United States in 2003 to take a postdoc position at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. He could have stayed in Russia where he got his Ph.D., at the Lebedev Physical Institute, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious science centers. Why ...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 9, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
New antifungal kills without toxic side effects
The antifungal Amphotericin B (AmB) is an old and effective drug—it saved many COVID-19 patients whose compromised immune systems failed to stop secondary fungal infections. But it sometimes causes life-threatening kidney damage. Now, after more than a decade of sleuthing into this toxicity, researchers have not only found an explanation, but used it and a robotic “chemist” to devise a powerful antifungal alternative without any obvious side effects in mice and human cells. And the strategy that led to the discovery of the compound, described today in
Nature
, may offer a route for detoxifying other antimic...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 8, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Synthetic yeast project unveils cells with 50% artificial DNA
A 17-year project to craft a synthetic genome for yeast cells has reached a watershed. Researchers revealed this week in 10 new papers that they have created designer versions of all yeast chromosomes and incorporated almost half of them into cells that can survive and reproduce. “It’s a milestone we have been working on for a long time,” says geneticist Jef Boeke of NYU Langone Health, director of the project.
“It’s a very impressive body of work,” says synthetic biologist Sanjay Vashee of the J. Craig Venter Institute, who wasn’t connected to any of the studies.
Researchers have tinkered with th...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 8, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
‘Deeply troubling.’ Indian scientists slam teaching materials on Moon mission
Official educational materials aimed at teaching India’s students about Chandrayaan-3, the nation’s third lunar exploration mission, are drawing sharp criticism from some of the nation’s scientists. The teaching guides contain technical errors, misleading content, and pseudoscientific claims rooted in religious texts, the critics say.
“This is a great disservice to science and technology, to education, and the scientific temper,” says Satyajit Rath, president of the
All India People’s Science Network
(AIPSN), a network of science organizations that has called on India’s Ministry of Education t...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 7, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
New space telescope embarks on biggest 3D map of the universe
The European Space Agency (ESA) today
released the first pictures of galaxies
taken by its new space telescope, Euclid, which aims to help researchers understand the dark components that make up 95% of the universe. The telescope’s image of the Perseus Cluster (above), one of the most massive structures in the universe, shows 1000 of its galaxies 240 million light-years from Earth, as well as 100,000 more distant ones, some as far away as 10 billion light-years.
Over its 6-year mission, Euclid, launched in July, is
expected to take 30,000 such images
, cataloging 1 billion galaxies across one-th...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 7, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
‘Why are we naming birds after people?’ Behind the plan to scrap many bird names
This week,
the American Ornithological Society (AOS) announced
that, “in an effort to address past wrongs,” it was moving to change the common English names of up to 80 species of birds found in the United States and Canada that are named after people.
The society, a scientific group which maintains the official list of bird names for North America, said the changes are needed because many names are “clouded by racism and misogyny.” For example, some species are named after men who owned slaves, endorsed white supremacy, or participated in activities now seen as unjust. The Scott’s oriole (
...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 3, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Looters continue to pillage Afghanistan ’s rich archaeological heritage
Looting of archaeological sites in Afghanistan is continuing, despite vows by the Taliban government to protect the nation’s cultural treasures, a recent analysis finds.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to help comb through a trove of satellite images, researchers at the University of Chicago’s (UC’s) Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation found that looters are still actively pillaging at least 3 dozen sites that had been targeted before the Taliban came to power in August 2021. Researchers say the finding suggests the Taliban government, like its predecessor, is having difficulty cracking down on l...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 3, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Heart-brain link offers new potential explanation for fainting
Fainting, a temporary loss of consciousness, affects almost 40% of people, yet scientists and physicians don’t know exactly why it happens. A drop in heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate—a trio of symptoms long known as the Bezold-Jarisch reflex—can contribute to fainting, researchers have hypothesized. Now, neuroscientists have pinpointed a nerve pathway between the heart and brain that triggers the reflex and can prompt fainting in mice. The findings prove the once-debated reflex exists, and they could one day point toward treatments for fainting in humans.
The study is “an elegant tour de force,...
Source: ScienceNOW - November 1, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
U.K. funding agency suspends diversity panel following pressure from science minister
The United Kingdom’s national funding agency today suspended operations of its newly formed diversity advisory panel “with immediate effect” after science minister Michelle Donelan expressed “disgust and outrage” that members of the panel had publicly posted opinions about the Israel-Hamas conflict that she viewed as “extremist.”
Today’s move came after Donelan publicly released on X (formerly Twitter) a 28 October letter to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) head Ottoline Leyser. In it, Donelan wrote that after seeing social media posts from two panelists, her “strong preference would be that [UKRI]...
Source: ScienceNOW - October 31, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
A chikungunya vaccine is nearing approval. Who will get it?
The first vaccine against the mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya will likely come to market next month. With the debilitating disease now afflicting more than half the countries in the world and threatening to spread further, the imminent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the vaccine is “great news,” says Scott Weaver, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch whose own lab started to work on a chikungunya vaccine nearly 2 decades ago.
The vaccine, made by the French company Valneva, will likely be recommended mainly to U.S. travelers at first. But many expect an FDA approval ...
Source: ScienceNOW - October 30, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
