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The reductions are important in helping to control China’s national emissions which could lead to an improvement in air quality and considerable health benefits. A team of experts from the UK and China analyzed emissions from coal, oil, natural gas, and biomass power plants, with a focus on coal-fired power plants as the major contributors to ambient air pollution. The study, published today in Nature Energy, analyzed data from 2014, when China introduced the ambitious Ultra-Low Emissions (ULE) Standards Policy for renovating coal-fired power stations to limit air pollutant emissions, to 2017....

“Our most important finding is a new mode of snake locomotion,” says co-senior author Julie Savidge of Colorado State University (CSU). “Only four major types have been recognized for nearly 100 years, and we have discovered a fifth mode.” The discovery of a fifth mode of locomotion — in additional to the known rectilinear, lateral undulation, sidewinding, and concertina modes — was a matter of serendipity. Savidge was working on a project aimed at protecting the nests of Micronesia starlings, one of only two native forest species still remaining on Guam....

Diamond is prized by scientists and jewelers alike, largely for a range of extraordinary properties including exceptional hardness. Now a team of Australian scientists has discovered diamonds can be bent and deformed, at the nanoscale at least. The discovery opens up a range of possibilities for the design and engineering of new nanoscale devices in sensing, defense, and energy storage but also shows the challenges that lie ahead for future nanotechnologies, the researchers say....

No nationwide program to recover these banned weapons; only state to do so is California. Around 100,000 convicted felons across the US still likely own a gun, despite being banned from doing so, concludes the first study of its kind, published online in Injury Prevention. There’s no nationwide program to recover these weapons, with California the only state to do so. But such an initiative might go some way to curbing firearm violence in the US, suggest the researchers....

When it comes to losing excess fat, it’s a given that dieting can help you burn off those extra pounds. However, while eating less can help you get a fitter body, many people find the process of counting calories and depriving themselves of their favorite foods taxing and, as such, find it hard to stick to a strict diet. Luckily, there are various proven ways to lose weight without dieting....

Shutting down a single protein forces the cancer cells to take on a new identity and behave like normal connective tissue cells, a dramatic change that reins in their growth. This discovery suggests researchers may be able to stop Ewing sarcoma by developing a drug that blocks the protein known as ETV6. Ewing sarcoma causes tumors to grow in bones or the soft tissues surrounding them. Once a tumor begins to spread to other parts of the body, it can be very difficult to halt the disease’s progression....

Published today (October 22, 2019) in the Astrophysical Journal, the discovery provides new insights into the first growing steps of some of the biggest galaxies in the universe. University of Arizona astronomer Christina Williams, lead author of the study, noticed a faint light blob in new sensitive observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, a collection of 66 radio telescopes high in the Chilean mountains. Strangely enough, the shimmering seemed to be coming out of nowhere, like a ghostly footstep in a vast dark wilderness....

Harnessing the unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic speed-up in information processing as compared to the fastest classical machines. Scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer – the boson sampling computer. The results are published in the upcoming issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Photonics....

Now scientists have shown that GRB 200415A came from another possible source for short GRBs. It erupted from a very rare, powerful neutron star called a magnetar. Previous detected GRB’s came from relatively far away from our home galaxy the Milky Way. But this one was from much closer to home, in cosmic terms. GRB explosions can disrupt mobile phone reception on earth, but they can also be messengers from the very early history of the universe....

The study, published in the journal iScience, discovered that male rats who received ifosfamide during adolescence had an increased incidence of disease in their offspring and grand-offspring. This is the first known study to show that the susceptibility to disease resulting from cancer treatment can be passed down to the third generation of unexposed offspring. Previous research has shown that cancer treatments can increase the risk of developing disease later in life for patients, but this study expands upon that understanding by demonstrating that the effects of chemotherapy can be passed down to future generations....

The new ‘COVID-19 Earth Observation Dashboard’ integrates multiple satellite data records from the three space agencies with analytical tools to allow users to track changes in air and water quality, climate change, economic activity and agriculture. The tri-agency platform gives the general public and policy-makers a unique platform to explore the short and long term impacts of the coronavirus lockdown. ESA’s Director for Earth Observation, Josef Aschbacher, comments, “The coronavirus pandemic has brought on unprecedented challenges with severe societal consequences....

Forty years ago, scientists theorized a new kind of low-mass particle that could solve one of the enduring mysteries of nature: what dark matter is made of. Now a new chapter in the search for that particle has begun. This week, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) unveiled a new result, published in Physical Review Letters, that places it in a category of one: It is the world’s first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions....

New research from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School suggests that gut bacteria at young age can contribute to Multiple Sclerosis (MS) disease onset and progression. In this study, published in the October 31 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sudhir Yadav Ph.D., a neuroimmunology post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Drs. Kouichi Ito, associate professor of neurology, and Suhayl Dhib-Jalbut, professor and chair of neurology, tested mice that were engineered to have a pre-disposition for MS....

Analysis of corruption cases among customs officers and border patrol agents reveals alarming trends depending on their years of service. When a customs officer in El Paso, Texas was arrested for conspiracy to smuggle marijuana into the U.S between 2003 and 2007, investigators found she had sought a job with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency mainly to enable the smuggling operation. This is but one example of how drug cartels infiltrate the agency....

How is omicron different from previous variants? There are two key differences between omicron and previous variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that emerged in late 2019. Early data suggests that omicron cases are milder than infections caused by the delta variant. On the flip side, omicron is far more transmissible – meaning it spreads easier – than previous variants. It can be confusing to think about the overall effects of a milder virus that is also far more infectious....

While rainfall levels gradually recovered in subsequent years, the damage to the forest canopy persisted all the way to the next major drought, which began in 2010. About half the forest affected by the 2005 drought – an area the size of California – did not recover by the time QuikScat stopped gathering global data in November 2009 and before the start of a more extensive drought in 2010. “The biggest surprise for us was that the effects appeared to persist for years after the 2005 drought,” said study co-author Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom....

A team led by UC Riverside geologists has discovered the first ancestor on the family tree that contains most familiar animals today, including humans. The tiny, wormlike creature, named Ikaria wariootia, is the earliest bilaterian, or organism with a front and back, two symmetrical sides, and openings at either end connected by a gut. The paper is published today (March 23, 2020) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

Microscopic tubes and filaments that resemble the remains of tiny creatures may have been formed by chemical reactions involving iron-rich minerals, the study shows. Previous research had suggested that such structures were among the oldest fossils on Earth. Mars Missions The new findings could aid the search for extraterrestrial life during future missions to Mars by making it easier to distinguish between fossils and non-biological structures. The discovery was made by a scientist from the University of Edinburgh who is developing techniques to seek evidence that life once existed on Mars....

They found that the pattern of thinning is evolving in complex ways both in space and time with thinning rates now highest along the slow-flow margins of the glacier, while rates in the fast-flowing central trunk have decreased by about a factor of five since 2007. This is the opposite of what was observed prior to 2010. Pine Island has contributed more to sea-level rise over the past four decades than any other glacier in Antarctica, and as a consequence has become one of its most intensively and extensively investigated ice stream systems....

New research has shown that the antidepressant sertraline helps to inhibit the growth of cancer cells. The substance acts on a metabolic addiction that allows different types of cancer to grow. This is shown by a study on cell cultures and lab animals performed by various research labs of KU Leuven. Their findings were published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Cancer cells use different biological mechanisms to stimulate their growth....