ENVIRO AONE

A small fungal enzyme could play a significant role in simplifying the development and manufacture of drugs, according to scientists. The Rice lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Xue Sherry Gao and collaborators isolated a biocatalyst known as CtdE after identifying it as the natural mechanism that controls the chirality — the left- or right-handedness…

252 million years ago, volcanic eruptions led to massive climate changes. Around the globe, roughly 75 percent of all land-based organisms and roughly 90 percent of all marine organisms died out as a result. Researchers have now used a new form of machine learning to unravel the causes of the mass extinction in the oceans.…

Changes in temperature and precipitation have already impacted the amount of nitrogen introduced into US waterways. This can lead to toxin-producing algal blooms or low-oxygen dead zones called hypoxia. Nitrogen from agriculture and other human activities washes into waterways, which, in excess, creates a dangerous phenomenon called eutrophication. This can lead to toxin-producing algal blooms…

Writing evolves to become simpler and more efficient, according to a new study based on the analysis of an isolated West African writing system. But despite its impact on daily life, we know little about how writing evolved in its earliest years. With so few sites of origin, the first traces of writing are fragmentary…

Global weather fluctuations called El Nino events are likely to become more frequent by 2040, a new study shows. El Nino — the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean -affects climate, ecosystems and societies worldwide. The study examined four possible scenarios for future carbon emissions, and found increased risk of…

Inspired by the same modeling and mathematical laws used to predict the spread of pandemics, researchers have created a model to accurately forecast the spread and recession process of floodwaters in urban road networks. With this new approach, researchers have created a simple and powerful mathematical approach to a complex problem. «We were inspired by…

Pre-modern energy-intensive industries have had long-lasting impacts on macro-ecological patterns. A new study revealed that the impact of pre-modern ironwork starting over 1000 years ago can still be seen in the distributions of small mammals in Japan today. The study offers insights into the history of biodiversity and provides practical knowledge that can be used…

Why magma flowed along a curved pathway during the 2018 eruption of a Galapagos volcano is explained by a new model. Even before the eruption, the geoscientists in California had seen in radar satellite data that the surface of the flank of the 1140-metre-high Sierra Negra volcano had bulged to a height of about two…