“Anomalous” heat flow, which at first appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics, gives physicists a way to detect quantum entanglement without destroying it.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 551
300,000-year-old genomes: History of the Schöningen horses deciphered
For the first time, a research team from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and the Schöningen Research Center have reconstructed the genomes of an extinct horse species, Equus mosbachensis, from the archaeological site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony, which is approximately 300,000 years old.
Thanks to exceptionally favorable preservation conditions, the researchers were able to identify the oldest DNA yet discovered from an open-air site. Their analyses show that the Schöningen horses belong to a lineage that is considered to be the origin of all modern horses. The study is published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Domestic and wild horses, donkeys and zebras all belong to the sole genus of the family Equidae still in existence today. But a look into the fossil record shows that more than 35 different genera and hundreds of now extinct equine species occurred throughout the past.
Kirigami parachute suitable for humanitarian missions stabilizes quickly and doesn’t pitch
A team of engineers from Polytechnique Montréal report a new and unique parachute concept inspired by the Japanese art of kirigami today in Nature. This simple, robust and low-cost approach has a wide variety of potential applications ranging from humanitarian aid to space exploration.
Kirigami is a technique that modifies the mechanical properties of a sheet of material by making precise folds and cuts to it. Children use it to make snowflakes out of paper, and engineers have used it to create extensible structures, flexible medical devices and deployable spatial structures. However, kirigami techniques have never been applied to parachute production.
The Polytechnique Montréal research team has now changed all that.
Outdoor air exposure to industrial solvent trichloroethylene may raise risk of Parkinson’s disease
Long-term exposure to the industrial solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) outdoors may be linked to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, according to a large nationwide study published in Neurology.
TCE is a chemical used in metal degreasing, dry cleaning and other industrial applications. Although TCE has been banned for certain uses, it remains in use today as an industrial solvent and is a persistent environmental pollutant in air, water and soil across the United States. The study does not prove that TCE exposure causes Parkinson’s disease, it only shows an association.
“In this nationwide study of older adults, long-term exposure to trichloroethylene in outdoor air was associated with a small but measurable increase in Parkinson’s risk,” said study author Brittany Krzyzanowski, Ph.D., of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. “These findings add to a growing body of evidence that environmental exposures may contribute to Parkinson’s disease.”