ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

Eighteen months ago, stickers began to dot the floors of most shops, spaced about six feet apart, indicating the physical distance required to avoid the COVID-19 virus an infected person may shed when breathing or speaking. But is the distance enough to help avoid infectious aerosols?

A novel chip automates the reaction cascades occurring between molecules inside DNA to carry out complex mathematical calculations.

Plants respond to mild nitrogen deficiency by elongating their lateral roots. In this way, more nitrogen can be absorbed than before. Researchers have now discovered a hormonal regulatory module that mediates the molecular processes of this adaptation. Brassinosteroids and auxins play a central role in this.

At present-day, more than ten percent of all global marriages occur among first or second cousins. While cousin-marriages are common practice in some societies, unions between close relatives are discouraged in others. In a new study, researchers investigated how common close parental relatedness was in our ancestors.

So many climate models, so little time ... A new way of measuring ocean temperatures helps scientists sort the likely from unlikely scenarios of global warming.

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 demonstrates how comprehensively vertebrate diversity can be assessed at no additional costs.

Usually, the individuals of a population of marine species that have the potential to disperse over long distances all share a similar genetic composition. Yet every now and then, at small, localized sites, small groups of genetically different individuals suddenly appear within populations for a short period of time. A new study explains how this chaotic formation of genetic islands can occur in marine molluscs.

A new, location-specific agricultural greenhouse gas emission study is the first to account for net carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions from all subsectors related to food production and consumption. The work could help identify the primary plant- and animal-based food sectors contributing to three major greenhouse gas emissions and allow policymakers to take action to reduce emissions from the top-emitting food commodities at different locations across the globe.

Urbanization trends in the Himalaya are exposing more people to risk from compound hazards such as flooding, landslides and wildfires, a new study has found.

The effects of monsoon rainfall on food insecurity in Nepal vary by earthquake exposure, with regions that experienced both heavy earthquake shaking and abundant rainfall more likely to have an inadequate supply of nutritious food, according to new research.

A decades-long study of introduced voles on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard is helping to answer a longstanding puzzle of Arctic ecology -- what drives the well-established population cycles of small Arctic mammals, such as voles and lemmings. These plant-eating rodents are among the most populous Arctic mammals. The results suggest the importance of predators as a primary factor driving the cycles, and shows that bottom-up, herbivore-plant interactions fail to generate their usual population cycles.

CD8+ T cells -- known as "killer" T cells -- are the assassins of the immune system. Once they are primed, they seek out and destroy other cells that are infected with virus or cells that are cancerous. Priming involves dendritic cells -- sentinels of the immune system. In an influenza infection in the lungs, for example, lung-migratory dendritic cells capture a piece of the viral antigen, and then migrate out of the lung to the place where naïve T cells reside, to present that antigen to the CD8+ T cells. This primes the T cells to know which cells to attack. The place for the priming in influenza had long been thought to be restricted to a single anatomical site -- the lung-draining, mediastinal lymph nodes that lie between the lungs and the spine. This lymph node-centric paradigm now has been challenged.

Large carnivore populations are expanding across Europe and experts are calling for increased support for communities to encourage harmonious relationships with their new neighbors.

The increasing use of photoinitiators, especially in medical settings, has raised concerns about their adverse effects on human health. Now, scientists have shown that three photoinitiators -- 1-HCHPK, MBB, and MTMP -- show estrogen-like activity in mice and increase the growth of breast cancer tumors in these animals. Their results warn against the use of such chemicals in medical instruments like containers and call for the prompt development of safer alternatives.

Scientists report a vampire fish attached to the body of an Amazonian thorny catfish. Very unusually, the candirus were attached close to the lateral bone plates, rather than the gills, where they are normally found. Since the hosts were not badly harmed, and the candirus apparently derived no food benefit, scientists believe this association is commensalistic rather than parasitic.

Researchers have imaged the atoms at the surface of the light-absorbing layer in a new type of next-generation solar cells, made from a crystal material called metal-halide perovskite. Their findings have solved a long-standing mystery in the field of solar power technology, showing how power-boosting and stability-enhancing chlorine is incorporated into the perovskite material.