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VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a new high-volume production method for hot embossing microscopic channel structures onto large areas of plastic film at a low cost for use, for example, in wearable technology and cosmetic applications. One of VTT’s goals is to engineer a smart fabric adjustable with a mobile app for controlling the wearer’s temperature.

The Forty-spotted Pardalote (Pardalotus quadragintus), an endangered Tasmanian songbird, has been experiencing unexplained declines in its remaining habitat, and a new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications describes how competition with a related species for nest cavities may be putting extra pressure on these vulnerable birds. Amanda Edworthy of Australian National University spent two years monitoring nests of Forty-spotted Pardalotes and Striated Pardalotes at three sites around Tasmania, documenting that about 10% of Forty-spotted Pardalote nests were ultimately taken over by their bigger, more aggressive cousins.

A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has shown that a method they developed to improve the usefulness and precision of the most common form of the gene-editing tools CRISPR-Cas9 RNA-guided nucleases can be applied to Cas9 enzymes from other bacterial sources. In a paper receiving advance online publication in Nature Biotechnology, the team reports evolving a variant of SaCas9 – the Cas9 enzyme from the Streptococcus aureus bacteria – that recognizes a broader range of nucleotide sequences, allowing targeting of genomic sites previously inaccessible to CRISPR-Cas9 technology.

There is indeed a glamorous side to the star performer who “spends half his life in the air between New York and Singapore.” Then there is the reality of people who spend two hours every day in a train, bus or car. Sociologists call them ‘highly mobile’ people, whether or not they choose to commute so far and regardless of whether this brings them a big paycheck or career success

A team of astronomers is proposing that huge spiral patterns seen around some newborn stars, merely a few million years old (about one percent our sun’s age), may be evidence for the presence of giant unseen planets. This idea not only opens the door to a new method of planet detection, but also could offer a look into the early formative years of planet birth.

Substantial amount of documented occurrence records is awaiting publication stored in repositories and data indexing platforms, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD Systems), or Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio).

Using complementary microscopy and spectroscopy techniques, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) say they have solved the structure of lithium- and manganese-rich transition metal oxides, a potentially game-changing battery material and the subject of intense debate in the decade since it was discovered.

A consortium of 48 scientists from 50 institutions in the United States has called for an ambitious research effort to understand and harness microbiomes – the communities of microorganisms that inhabit ecosystems as varied as the human gut and the ocean, to improve human health, agriculture, bioenergy, and the environment.

Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) have demonstrated that RSA encryption keys, which are used by thousands of companies and organizations to protect the data and processes they entrust to cloud-based services, can be obtained using a sophisticated side-channel attack—despite recent efforts by cloud service providers and cryptography software developers to eliminate such vulnerabilities.

A chemistry PhD student from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has found a simple way for the first time of producing two chemical compounds that were first discovered in late 19th century, entirely by accident. The discovery could have implications for fighting disease and growing crops, where the sulfur containing compounds called sultones and sultines, play a significant role.