University of Queensland researchers have found improving timber production efficiencies by just 5% could unlock supply for an extra 8,000 homes to be built in Australia each year.
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Death Toll Shows Extreme Air Pollution Events a Growing Urban Threat
New Curtin University-led research has estimated that 1454 avoidable deaths (one person every five days) occurred in Australian capital cities in the past 20 years because of fine particle air pollution from extreme events such as bushfires and dust storms, wood-heater smoke or industrial accidents.
Engineering viruses to kill deadly pathogens
Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent and growing global crisis. Researchers are exploring phages, viruses that infect bacteria, as a possible solution. In the new study, researchers successfully modified DNA from four types of phages to kill a deadly pathogen. The process can also be used to produce more phage variants...
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side in Northern Europe 45,000 years ago
Archaeologists have debated whether Neanderthals or modern humans made stone tools that are found at sites across northern Europe and date from about 40,000 years ago. A new excavation at one site in Germany turned up 45,000-year-old bone fragments that, when analyzed for mitochondrial DNA, proved to be from Homo...
When and how immune cells decide to form pathogen memories
During infection, reversible switch permits flexible formation of memory T cells, long-lived blood cells that can remember pathogen encounters and respond upon reinfection.
Saharan Dust Blows Toward Europe
A large plume of dust from the Sahara Desert blew west over the Atlantic Ocean and then curled north toward Europe in late January 2024.
How the Balearic Shearwater Is Adaptive to Climate
How individual animals respond to climate change is key to whether populations will persist or go extinct.
AI-powered app can detect poison ivy
To find poison ivy before it finds you, scientists have published a new study in which they show how they used artificial intelligence to confirm that an app can identify poison ivy. The app is not yet commercially available, nor is there a timetable for it to be available.
Black summer bushfires in Australia wiped $2.8 billion from tourism supply chain
First input-output economic analysis of the 2019-20 Australian fires also found 7300 jobs were lost. The study highlights economic vulnerabilities to extremes of climate change.
Using computers to design proteins allows researchers to make tunable hydrogels that can form both inside and outside of cells
New research demonstrates a new class of hydrogels that can form not just outside cells, but also inside of them. These hydrogels exhibited similar mechanical properties both inside and outside of cells, providing researchers with a new tool to group proteins together inside of cells.