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Nearly all of the atoms that make up the our planet and us were forged in stars and the carbon most important to life as we know it was made by the triple-alpha process. The process starts with alpha particles, cores of helium atoms, with each alpha particle is made up of two protons and two neutrons. The triple alpha process is just what it sounds like; three alpha particles are fused inside a star, creating a new particle with six protons and six neutrons - the most common form of carbon in the universe - with a surplus of energy, a Hoyle state. That Hoyle state can split back into three alpha particles or relax to the ground state of stable carbon by releasing gamma rays.

Dolutegravir, the HIV wonder drug and current first-line treatment, is less effective in sub-Saharan Africa, and the reason is as old as evolution itself - mutation. As HIV copies itself and replicates, its genetic code (RNA) can change. While a drug may initially be able to suppress or even kill a virus, certain mutations can allow the virus to develop resistance to its effects. If a mutated strain begins to spread within a population, it can mean once-effective drugs are no longer able to treat people.

A new paper finds that widely available retinal imaging techniques may help reveal more about brain disease and monitor treatment efficacy, including a currently untreatable form of childhood-onset dementia, Sanfilippo syndrome.Sanfilippo syndrome is one of a group of about 70 inherited conditions which collectively affect 1 in 2800 children in Australia, and is more common than cystic fibrosis and better known diseases. Around the world 700,000 children and young people are living with childhood dementia. The researchers studied Sanfilippo syndrome in mouse models, discovering for the first time that advancement of retinal disease parallels that occurring in the brain. 

Modern science can tell us so much about the hazards of the world that it has become difficult for most people to understand absolute and relative risk. Environmentalists claim they need money to pay lawyers to ban chemicals, even if they are a drop in 160 Olympic-sized swimming pools while epidemiologists can statistically link any common food or product to cancer.

The 10+ Wheat Genomes Project, led by University of Saskatchewan Professor Curtis Pozniak, and the International Barley Pan Genome Sequencing Consortium, led by Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research Professor Nils Stein, have sequenced a suite of genomes of wheat and barley, opening up genetic variations for both.

Alternative Chinese medicine harms endangered species like pangolins, tigers and rhinos, but deniers of evidence-based medicine are often part of the same political tribe as professional conservationists. That confirmation bias about alternative medicine has limited conservation gains.
The use of endangered species in traditional Chinese medicine threatens species' survival. Noting inefficacy and providing various forms of scientific evidence are not influencing decisions and behaviors. Especially because environmentalists often use the same anti-corporate tropes that convince deniers of vaccines that science is a conspiracy.

Most of Ireland’s rocks are the wrong age for dinosaur fossils, either too old or too young. That doesn't mean dinosaurs weren't there, it means fossilization is a true anomaly and finding fossils makes it even more challenging to have hard evidence.That has now been achieved. Two fossil bones found by the late citizen scientist Roger Byrne, and donated along with many other fossils to Ulster Museum, have been confirmed as early Jurassic rocks found in Islandmagee, on the east coast of County Antrim.

In 2013, the U.S. government told the World Bank they would not help fund centralized energy in developing nations unless it used their pet projects, wind and solar. Which developing nations could not use much less afford.We set back sanitation and hygiene in places that need it most and forced them to continue doing what they had been doing; burning wood and dung for energy, including in home for cooking. Billions of people still do that because they lack centralized energy and the environmental costs are enormous. Even if those people had been allowed to switch to coal, emissions would plummet and they would be healthier.

After originating in Wuhan, China in late 2019, the latest form of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and its third pandemic of the last 17 years, has spread COVID-19 across the globe. Some countries claim fewer cases, like China, while some can't know figures, like Brazil, but one thing is clear; the half the world that interacts with China even indirectly has it, and it has mutated along the way. The California version which came from Asia is different than the New York version that came from Europe.Fortunately, none of the mutations have increased transmissibility, according to a new paper which looked at virus genomes from over 46,000 people with COVID-19 from 99 countries.

Fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are being deployed worldwide and promise mass connectivity, ultra-reliability, and guaranteed low latency. It sounds great for 2020 but people of 2030 are likely to want that, plus enhanced spectral/energy/cost efficiency, better intelligence level, and security - all over the world. For that, they will need 6G air interface and transmission technologies and novel network architecture, such as waveform design, multiple access, channel coding schemes, multi-antenna technologies, network slicing, cell-free architecture, and cloud/fog/edge computing. 

In humans, if we spend time beneath the ocean and then travel to the surface, we can suffer decompression sickness, known as "the bends" - when the nitrogen in compressed air that dissolved into our blood during a dive does not have time to clear and forms bubbles in tissues. 

While the world recovers from the third coronavirus pandemic of the last 17 years, it's important to be mindful that nature is always evolving new ways to kill. It's why scientists need to create a new influenza vaccine each year.