Science Daily April 12, 2021 A team of researchers in the US (University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, Boston University, Harvard University) discovered that deep-sea bacteria dissolve carbon-containing rocks, releasing excess carbon into the ocean and atmosphere. They studied sulfur-oxidizing bacteria — a group of microbes that use sulfur as an energy source — in methane seeps on the ocean floor. The seeps contain collections of limestone that trap large amounts of carbon. The sulfur-oxidizing microbes live on top of these rocks, in the process of oxidizing sulfur, the bacteria create an acidic reaction that dissolves the rocks. This releases the carbon […]
Tag Archives: National security
Widening political rift in U.S. may threaten science, medicine
Science Daily March 22, 2021 According to a team of researchers in the US (Washington University, Stanford University), in the United States, the wide ideological divergence in public confidence in science poses a potentially significant problem for the scientific enterprise. They examined the behavioral consequences of this ideological divide for Americans’ contributions to medical research. Based on a mass survey of American adults, they found that engagement in a wide range of medical research activities is a function of a latent propensity to participate. The propensity is systematically higher among liberals than among conservatives. A substantial part of this ideological […]
Army working on new cyber, electromagnetic weapons after large-scale test event
Fedscoop March 15, 2021 Cyber Quest 2021 https://uscc.cyberquests.org/ , was hosted by Army Futures Command and brought in users from across the service to test 15 new technologies. Many of the lessons learned from the 13-day event will be put into procurement requirements documents for new technologies the Army is focused on as part of its broader strategy to deter great power conflict. One of the new parts of the annual exercise was a close partnership with the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning in Georgia. The Army also tested the use of an offensive cybersecurity measure of […]
Reemergence of Human Monkeypox and Declining Population Immunity in the Context of Urbanization, Nigeria, 2017–2020
Global Biodefense March 9, 2021 Using the monkeypox outbreak in Nigeria during 2017–2020 researchers in Australia built a statistical model to simulate declining immunity from monkeypox at 2 levels: At the individual level, they used a constant rate of decline in immunity of 1.29% per year as smallpox vaccination rates fell. At the population level, the cohort of vaccinated residents decreased over time because of deaths and births. By 2016, only 10.1% of the total population in Nigeria was vaccinated against smallpox; the serologic immunity level was 25.7% among vaccinated persons and 2.6% in the overall population. The substantial resurgence […]
Psychological ‘signature’ for the extremist mind uncovered
Science Daily February 21, 2021 Using an unprecedented number of cognitive tasks and personality surveys, along with data-driven analyses including drift-diffusion and Bayesian modelling, an international team of researchers (UK, USA – Stanford University) has uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious, and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. The data-driven analyses revealed that individuals’ ideological attitudes mirrored their cognitive decision-making strategies. Conservatism and nationalism were related to greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and to reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism […]
US Must Unify Atmospheric Biology Research or Risk National Security
Global Biodefence January 30, 2021 According to a team of researchers in the US (American University, NASA Ames Research Center) due to its interdisciplinary dependencies and broadness of scales from nanometers to kilometers, atmospheric biology research is highly fragmented in the U.S. science community. It lacks shared paradigms and common vocabulary. This deficit calls for recognizing atmospheric biology as a research community, thereby linking human health to climate change. While it makes sense for each department or agency to carry out research relevant to its responsibilities and interests, the lack of coordination and information-sharing can effectively cripple the U.S. response […]
A New Institutional Approach to Research Security in the United States
Georgetown University January 2021 Most U.S. research and development (R&D) takes place in the private sector. To truly protect U.S. R&D, the government needs to empower frontline researchers as true partners. That means investing more in supporting security-informed decision making in business, philanthropy, and academia, and relying less on mandates and punitive tactics. To achieve these results, in a report “A New Institutional Approach to Research Security in the United States” researchers at Georgetown University propose a new, public-private research security clearinghouse, with leadership from academia, business, philanthropy, and government have a presence in the most active R&D hubs across […]
World’s largest lakes reveal climate change trends
Science Daily January 21, 2021 Researchers at Michigan Technological University studied the five Laurentian Great Lakes bordering the U.S. and Canada; the three African Great Lakes, Tanganyika, Victoria, and Malawi; Lake Baikal in Russia; and Great Bear and Great Slave lakes in Canada. These 11 lakes hold more than 50% of the surface freshwater that millions of people and countless other creatures rely on. The rate of carbon fixation, that is the rate at which the algae photosynthesize, indicates change in the whole lake and that has ramifications all the way up the food chain, from the zooplankton to the […]
Expert prognosis for the planet – we’re on track for a ghastly future
Science Daily January 13, 2021 An international team of researchers (Australia, USA – Stanford University, Virginia Tech, UC Berkeley, industry, Oregon State University, UCLA, Mexico) outlines clearly and unambiguously the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption, planetary toxification, all tied to human consumption and population growth to demonstrate the near certainty that these problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come. It also explains the impact of political impotence and the ineffectiveness of current and planned actions to address the ominous scale of environmental erosion…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Researchers propose process to detect and contain emerging diseases
Science Daily December 18, 2020 To date, the main pre-emptive response to zoonotic diseases outbreaks has been extensive, cost-heavy efforts to document virus diversity in wildlife. To enable fast detection of new zoonotic disease outbreaks, an international team of researchers (USA – University of Arkansas, George Washington University, University of South Carolina, Kenya, Canada, France Gabon, Republic of Congo, Rwanda) proposes a system of procuring and screening samples from hospital patients with fevers of unknown origin, analyzing samples from suspicious fatalities of unknown cause, testing blood serum in high-risk or sentinel groups and analyzing samples that have already been collected […]