New Technology Sees Underground to Assess Crop Roots

For crops or houseplants, shrubs or grasses, the early-warning signs of stress from drought or any other stressor are out of sight, out of mind in the last place anyone ever looks: underground in the plant’s hidden half, or its roots. Still, there’s not yet a way to inspect these roots without digging a plant […]

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Emissions Reductions Now Could Yield Dramatic U.S. Health Benefits by 2030

Acting now to reduce fossil fuel emissions will result in improved air quality and dramatic reductions in pollution-related deaths, illnesses and economic losses across the United States by 2030, a new study by scientists at Duke University, NASA and Columbia University shows. About 4.5 million premature deaths, 1.4 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits, 300 […]

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Whales Eat a Lot More than We Thought

Baleen whales eat two to three times more prey than previously estimated, a new study by an international team of scientists finds. But while the amount of prey individual baleen whales eat is greater than we thought, the study suggests that the amount of prey these species collectively consume and excrete back into the oceans […]

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Gallium helps sneak antibiotic payload into bacterial cells

Scientists in the US have developed a compound that exploits bacteria’s need for iron to trick them into transporting an antibiotic agent into their cells via their iron uptake and metabolism pathway. Galbofloxacin contains gallium, which ‘looks like iron but cannot be used by the bacteria,’ says PhD student Apurva Pandey, who led the research […]

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Vegetable fat may decrease stroke risk, while animal fat increases it

Eating higher total amounts of red meat, processed red meat and non-dairy animal fat increased the risk of stroke, while consuming more vegetable fat or polyunsaturated fat lowered it, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2021. The meeting will be fully virtual, Saturday, November 13 through Monday, November […]

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Single molecule controls unusual ants’ switch from worker to queen-like status

Depending on the outcome of social conflicts, ants of the species Harpegnathos saltator do something unusual: they can switch from a worker to a queen-like status known as gamergate. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell on November 4th have made the surprising discovery that a single protein, called Kr-h1 (Krüppel homolog 1), responds to socially regulated hormones to […]

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Brightest ever X-ray shows lung vessels altered by Covid-19

Scientists from UCL and the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) used a new revolutionary imaging technology called Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), to scan donated human organs, including lungs from a Covid-19 donor. HiP-CT enables 3D mapping across a range of scales, allowing clinicians to view the whole organ as never before by imaging it as a […]

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Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions: supporting Europe’s best and brightest researchers for 25 years

About 145,000 individuals and organisations have benefitted from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the flagship funding programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral training since 1996. On the 25th anniversary, we speak to key actors about the MSCA’s achievements and former recipients who have gone on to distinguished careers. Several decades ago, the European Union (EU) […]

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