-
COP28 live: Dangers of climate change are no longer distant risks, King tells COP28
King Charles has laid out a series of questions he says might inform the task ahead of the summit. Firstly, how can organisations – public, private, philanthropic, charities – be strengthened for the crisis the world faces. Secondly, the King says it is crucial “finance flows” to those developments which are most essential to a…
-
Book Review: The Ripple Effects of Climate Breakdown in Nature
There is a moment in Verdi’s Requiem when the hushed, somber tones that end the first movement give way to the lacerating chaos of the second. The Verdi scholar Julian Budden once described this second movement, the Dies Irae (literally, “day of wrath”), as “an unearthly storm,” with its “tutti thunderclaps” and swirling scales. It…
-
Writing dissected, and big answers to simple questions: Books in brief
Symbols Richard Sproat Springer (2023) Linguists differ on what counts as writing. Inclusivists use the term to cover mathematical symbols and emoji, whereas exclusivists accept only symbol systems with a phonetic element, such as European alphabets and Chinese characters. Computational linguist Richard Sproat is an exclusivist. His ambitious, in-depth book is the first systematic study…
-
Approaching 1.5 °C: how will we know we’ve reached this crucial warming mark?
The world is already more than 1 °C warmer on average than it was before industrial times, owing to greenhouse gases released from human activities. And that value is rising. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that there is at least a 50% chance that long-term global warming will overshoot 1.5 °C in…
-
Gravitational waves from mega black-hole collision reveal long-sought ‘ringing’
The largest black-hole merger ever detected seemed to produce a black hole 150 times the mass of the Sun, in defiance of some accepted theories. Researchers now say they’ve found, for the first time, evidence of the long-sought vibrations produced by the resulting black hole as it settled into a spherical shape. The findings provide…
-
Reshaping the training landscape by addressing cultural taxation
Minoritized doctoral students are subject to cultural taxation — disproportionate expectations and obligations based on their race or ethnicity — that negatively impacts their PhD studies. Faculty members and departments should counteract this taxation to support students of colour. Like every student attending a doctoral psychology program, students of colour attend graduate school to hone…
-
Endlings
The machine is dead. I will watch over it until it isn’t. I no longer remember when I started waiting for the tiny red bulb of the machine to light up. I do, however, remember thinking that it was a noble assignment. I cringe at the pride and the sense of urgency I assigned to…
-
Open-science drug discovery for COVID-19
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT 01 December 2023 Sarah Crunkhorn Sarah Crunkhorn The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) is an attractive antiviral target due to its indispensable role in viral replication, high degree of conservation across coronaviruses, and low homology with human proteases. Indeed, first generation oral Mpro inhibitors, such as nirmatrelvir, have demonstrated clinical efficacy. However, as co-dosing…
-
The association between the workload of emergency physicians and the outcomes of acute myocardial infarction: a population-based study
Abstract Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is the second leading cause of mortality in Taiwan. The correlation between the workload of emergency physicians and the outcome of AMI remains unknown. To determine the effects of the workload of emergency physicians on the outcomes of AMI. We included 17 661 patients (age > 18 years) with STEMI undergoing PCI, who visited…
-
New thermal decomposition pathway for TATB
Abstract Understanding the thermal decomposition behavior of TATB (1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene) is a major focus in energetic materials research because of safety issues. Previous research and modelling efforts have suggested benzo-monofurazan condensation producing H2O is the initiating decomposition step. However, early evolving CO2 (m/z 44) along with H2O (m/z 18) evolution have been observed by mass spectrometric…