With states opening even as Covid-19 rages on, the president is rolling the dice on his career – and tens of thousands of lives Coronavirus – latest US updates C oronavirus – latest global updates On Monday the Republican governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts, a close ally of Donald Trump and frequent...

Scientists have observed the biggest supernova - stellar explosion - ever detected, the violent death of a huge star up to 100 times more massive than our sun in a faraway galaxy.

Dr Mah Hui Lim has been a university professor and banker, in the private sector and with the Asian Development Bank.
Dr. Michael Heng, Former professor in Management Science.

The post Pandemic Crisis May Trigger Societal Restructuring appeared first on Inter Press Service.

But this is also the time for us to refocus on farming as a national economic activity. Throughout the lockdown farmers have continued to work in their fields

Forcing people in the US to shelter at home during the coronavirus outbreak may have resulted in less death from Covid-19 infections but also fewer victims of mass shootings.The number of mass shootings in the US plunged 24 per cent in April from a year earlier as churches, malls, restaurants, schools and parks were shuttered and most businesses closed, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data from an organisation that tracks information about firearm-related violence. The decline occurred…

Hong Kong authorities have seized 34 tonnes of American ginseng worth HK$47 million (US$6 million) and arrested seven people in what is by far the biggest-ever bust of its kind in the city.The haul breaks a record set less than three months ago, when more than three tonnes of the traditional Chinese medicine valued at about $HK4.6 million were seized in February.Police and customs officers discovered a “suspicious-looking” fishing boat to the northeast of Hong Kong’s international airport on…

The biggest threat to Brazil's ability to successfully combat the spread of the coronavirus and tackle the unfolding public health crisis is the country's president, Jair Bolsonaro, according to British medical journal The Lancet.

Important changes are underway for Southeast Asia’s relationship with its biggest trading partner, the People’s Republic of China.

Asia’s economies have generally maintained sound macroeconomic policies that can help the region withstand this latest challenge and emerge even stronger.

Korea saw the biggest drop in private consumption on record last year even before the coronavirus epidemic struck.According to Statistics Korea on Thursday, the average monthly spending of households fell 3.2 percent to W2.46 million in 2019 (US$1=W1,226). That was the biggest decline since the gove...

Machine-learning algorithms are being used to tackle the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, one of the fiendishly difficult Millennium Prize Problems

Google's Sycamore quantum computer, which recently demonstrated its dominance over ordinary computers, is now breaking records in quantum chemistry

The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know – but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making

The worst invasion by desert locusts in decades has hit Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. The swarms are destroying crops and could cost millions of dollars to contain

The Permian extinction, which wiped out almost all complex life, may have been caused by the undersides of continents slipping off into Earth’s interior

Australia's most populous states held back from relaxing coronavirus restrictions on Saturday although other states began allowing small gatherings and were preparing to open restaurants and shops.

Reuters’ blogger Felix Salmon shares a surprising list of which companies over the last 90 years have generated the most wealth for shareholders, and which ones have destroyed it.

The "wave function collapse" transforms vague clouds of quantum possibilities into the physical reality we know – but no one knows how. New experiments are finally revealing reality in the making

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba set the stage for the biggest IPO ever as it looks to raise $21 billion sometime in September. Conway G. Gittens reports.

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Category: Health News
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Studies of the former NE England coalfield in Tyneside demonstrated that heat flow perturbations in boreholes were due to the entrainment and lateral dispersion of heat from deeper in the subsurface through flooded mine workings. This work assesses the influence of historical mining on geothermal observations across Greater Glasgow. The regional heat flow for Glasgow is 60 mW m^–2 and, after correction for palaeoclimate, is estimated as c. 80 mW m^–2. An example of reduced heat flow above mine workings is observed at Hallside (c. 10 km SE of Glasgow), where the heat flow through a 352 m deep borehole is c. 14 mW m^–2. Similarly, the heat flow across the 199 m deep GGC01 borehole in the Glasgow Geothermal Energy Research Field Site is c. 44 mW m^–2. The differences between these values and the expected regional heat flow suggest a significant component of horizontal heat flow into surrounding flooded mine workings. This deduction also influences the quantification of deeper geothermal resources, as extrapolation of the temperature gradient above mine workings would underestimate the temperature at depth. Future projects should consider the influence of historical mining on heat flow when temperature datasets such as these are used in the design of geothermal developments.

Supplementary material: Background information on the chronology of historical mining at each borehole location and a summary of groundwater flow in mine workings beneath Glasgow are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4681100

Thematic collection: This article is part of the ‘Early Career Research’ available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/SJG-early-career-research

Key Points

In 2015, the M_w 7.8 Gorkha earthquake struck Nepal, triggering thousands of landslides across the central and eastern Himalayas. These landslides had many adverse effects, including causing widespread damage to low-grade transport routes (e.g. tracks, footpaths) in rural regions that depend on tourism for survival. Langtang Valley is a glacial–periglacial landscape located 60 km north of Kathmandu. It is one of the most popular trekking regions in Nepal and has been severely affected by Gorkha earthquake-triggered and monsoon-triggered landsliding. Here, qualitative and quantitative observations from fieldwork and remote sensing are used to describe the materials and geomorphology of the landslides across Langtang Valley, and to quantify the extent to which coseismic and monsoon-triggered landslides have affected Langtang's trekking infrastructure. The dominant bedrock materials involved within Langtang landslides are found to be a range of gneisses and intruded leucogranites. In total, 64 landslides are found to have intersected trekking paths across Langtang, with coseismic and monsoon-triggered landslides having an impact on c. 3 km and 0.8 km of path respectively. It is observed that the practice of reconstructing paths through unstable landslide deposits is leaving the trekking infrastructure across Langtang increasingly vulnerable to future failure.

Proteinase-activated receptors (PARs) are a four-member family of G-protein–coupled receptors that are activated via proteolysis. PAR4 is a member of this family that is cleaved and activated by serine proteinases such as thrombin, trypsin, and cathepsin-G. PAR4 is expressed in a variety of tissues and cell types, including platelets, vascular smooth muscle cells, and neuronal cells. In studying PAR4 signaling and trafficking, we observed dynamic changes in the cell membrane, with spherical membrane protrusions that resemble plasma membrane blebbing. Since nonapoptotic membrane blebbing is now recognized as an important regulator of cell migration, cancer cell invasion, and vesicular content release, we sought to elucidate the signaling pathway downstream of PAR4 activation that leads to such events. Using a combination of pharmacological inhibition and CRISPR/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9)–mediated gene editing approaches, we establish that PAR4-dependent membrane blebbing occurs independently of the Gα_q/11- and Gα_i-signaling pathways and is dependent on signaling via the β-arrestin-1/2 and Ras homolog family member A (RhoA) signaling pathways. Together these studies provide further mechanistic insight into PAR4 regulation of cellular function.

Although treatment with the glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor–related protein (GITR) agonistic antibody (DTA-1) has shown antitumor activity in various tumor models, the underlying mechanism is not fully understood. Here, we demonstrate that interleukin (IL)-21–producing follicular helper T (Tfh) cells play a crucial role in DTA-1–induced tumor inhibition. The administration of DTA-1 increased IL21 expression by Tfh cells in an antigen-specific manner, and this activation led to enhanced antitumor cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity. Mice treated with an antibody that neutralizes the IL21 receptor exhibited decreased antitumor activity when treated with DTA-1. Tumor growth inhibition by DTA-1 was abrogated in Bcl6^fl/flCd4^Cre mice, which are genetically deficient in Tfh cells. IL4 was required for optimal induction of IL21-expressing Tfh cells by GITR costimulation, and c-Maf mediated this pathway. Thus, our findings identify GITR costimulation as an inducer of IL21-expressing Tfh cells and provide a mechanism for the antitumor activity of GITR agonism.

Clostridioides difficileDiagnosticsMetabolomicsMicrobiome

Artist DIY is a series of videos made by artists in collaboration with FACT in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. FACT edits each episode remotely, while the artist shoots at their home or studio with whatever equipment they have available. In this episode, drummer, producer and DJ Iggor Cavalera records an improvised modular synth performance […]

The post Artist DIY: Iggor Cavalera appeared first on FACT Magazine.

Whether it was driverless cars, lab-grown meat or faster-than-light neutrinos, some things just didn't live up to the hype in the 2010s

A huge black hole in a distant galaxy caused the largest explosion we have ever seen, with the energy of 10 billion suns – and it isn't clear why it was so big

A new computational method allows robotic characters to perform fast motions without excessive vibrations

Supporting long-range communications inside of a mine is extremely difficult, so DARPA SubT teams are trying out some creative approaches

Startup Cerebras has built a wafer-size chip for AI, but it isn’t the only one possible

Cerebras aims to speed deep learning at supercomputing centers

To avoid arsenic contamination, many Bangladeshi households access water via private wells drilled to 300 feet or less, beneath impermeable clay layers. Such clay layers have been thought to protect groundwater in the underlying aquifers from the downward flow of contaminants. However, a new study suggests that such clay layers do not always protect against arsenic, and could even be a source of contamination in some wells.

To campaigners’ dismay, the UK’s biggest hubs, Heathrow and Gatwick, are pushing on with plans to increase capacity

Christine Taylor has lived her entire life in the shadow of London’s Heathrow airport, her childhood bedroom affording a view of one of its two runways. She grew up in Sipson, a village that can trace its history back more than 1,000 years, but now sits immediately north of Britain’s busiest airline hub.

Now living a mile to the east in Harlington, Taylor, 62, is experiencing a rare moment of quiet, thanks to the dramatic reduction in air traffic caused by the coronavirus pandemic.