Latest News Releases 13 September

Doctoral student Jana Paju at Tallinn University School of Natural Sciences and Health defended her thesis entitled “Generation and Development of Damage of Plasma Irradiated Tungsten Materials Due to Synergistic Effects” on 10 September 2021.

In times of exacerbating biodiversity loss, reliable data on species occurrence are essential. Environmental DNA (eDNA) - DNA released from organisms into the water - is increasingly used to detect fishes in biodiversity monitoring campaigns. However, eDNA turns out to be capable of providing much more than fish occurrence data, including information on other vertebrates. A study, published in the open-access journal Metabarcoding and Metagenomics, demonstrates how comprehensively vertebrate diversity can be assessed at no additional costs.

Most astronauts are exposed to long-term microgravity, which causes a variety of health problems for which drugs are prescribed. However, microgravity also affects the pharmacokinetics of these drugs, which can lead to unexpected results. To shed some light on this problem, researchers studied the effects of simulated microgravity on the expression and functions of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and related proteins interacted with P-gp, which are important membrane proteins in the blood–brain barrier, in rats. Their findings pave the way to safer space travel.

According to a study by the Instituto de Radio Televisión Española and the UAB conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown, black and white images of SARS-CoV-2 make the virus seem more infectious. The results, published on PLoS ONE, demonstrate that colour and three-dimensional images of SARS-CoV-2 in the media has favoured the perception of the virus as a beautiful, but not quite realistic or contagious virus.

Transporting a single brick to Mars can cost more than a million British pounds – making the future construction of a Martian colony seem prohibitively expensive. Scientists at The University of Manchester have now developed a way to potentially overcome this problem, by creating a concrete-like material made of extra-terrestrial dust along with the blood, sweat and tears of astronauts.

Discovery: the destructive properties of white blood cells called eosinophils can be employed to kill cancer cells. Researchers found that eosinophils fight cancer in two ways: they can destroy the cancer cells directly, while also recruiting the immune system's cancer-fighting T-cells.

A study suggests that understanding and predicting Arctic polynya formation requires more precise knowledge of both the dynamic (e.g., wind-induced sea ice drift) and thermodynamic (e.g., upwell heat) processes during polynya development.

A new study led by scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys has shown that the protein RNF5 plays an unusual role in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Unlike its expected role, marking aberrant proteins for destruction, RNF5 binds with a second cell protein called RBBP4 to control expression of genes implicated in AML. These findings, published in Nature Communications, have important implications for improving AML patient outcomes.

By using artificial intelligence to mine big data related to artists, film directors and scientists, researchers have found that years of exploration (studying diverse styles or topics) immediately followed by years of exploitation (focusing on a narrow area to develop deep expertise) can lead to a career's greatest hits.