SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Scientists from EPFL in Switzerland and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy are developing technology for the blind that bypasses the eyeball entirely and sends messages to the brain. They do this by stimulating the optic nerve with a new type of intraneural electrode called OpticSELINE. Successfully tested in rabbits, they report their results in Nature Biomedical … Read more
Optical fibres are our global nervous system, transporting terabytes of data across the planet in the blink of an eye. As that information travels at the speed of light across the globe, the energy of the light waves bouncing around inside the silica and polymer fibres create tiny vibrations that lead to feedback packets of … Read more
When driving across country, people can only make it so far before stopping off to rest. Likewise, most migratory songbirds must make stops during their long-distance journeys to sleep along the way. Now, researchers have evidence that songbirds tuck themselves in differently depending on just how worn out they really are. As reported in the … Read more
In 2005, INTERFACE (An Integrated Network for Terrestrial Ecosystem Research on Feedbacks to the Atmosphere and ClimatE) created and released a global distribution map of GCMEs (Fig. 1). The map showed a clear message that compared with the United States and Europe, China is relatively backward in global change research using the methodology of manipulative … Read more
To better understand how tissues and organs develop, fail to function, and regenerate over time, researchers would like to visualize their constituent cells’ repertoires of molecules within 3D space. Ambitious efforts like the “Human BioMolecular Atlas Program”, the “Human Cell Atlas Project”, and several brain atlas projects are underway to map the presence and abundance … Read more
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have successfully created personalized digital replicas of the upper chambers of the heart and used them to guide the precise treatment of patients suffering from persistent irregular heartbeats. These simulations accurately identified where clinicians need to destroy tissue to restore the heart’s normal rhythm. The proof-of-concept study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on … Read more
Bacteria found in muddy marshes, estuaries and coastal sediment synthesise one of the Earth’s most abundant climate cooling gases – according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) is an important nutrient in marine environments with billions of tonnes produced annually by marine phytoplankton (microscopic plant-like cells), seaweed, corals and … Read more
According to a new study by geologists at Dalhousie University, Carleton University and the Geophysical Laboratory, the Moon’s repository of precious metals may still be locked inside. “We have been able to link the sulfur content of lunar volcanic rocks to the presence of iron sulfide deep inside the Moon,” says James Brenan, of the … Read more
Why do languages sound so different, when people across the world have roughly the same speech organs (mouth, lips, tongue and jaw)? Does the shape of our vocal tract explain some of the variation in speech sounds? In extreme individual cases, it clearly does: when children are born with a cleft palate, the roof of … Read more
Scientists from Russia demonstrated a novel approach leveraging the combination of high-resolution mass spectrometry and chemoinformatics to identify biologically active molecular components of humic substances extracted from coal, and discovered substances with antiviral activity against the tick-borne encephalitis virus. The results of their study were published in the Scientific Reports journal. Natural multicomponent mixtures, such as humic … Read more