african

African effort to sequence continent’s biodiversity seeks $1 billion over 10 years | Science

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When ThankGod Echezona Ebenezer left southeast Nigeria to start a biochemistry Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 2013, he soon realized little information on the genomes of plants and animals from Africa were in existing global sequencing databases. To help protect the continent’s biodiversity and aid its agriculture, he and colleagues founded the African … Read more

Geologists Have Closely Analyzed Two Bizarre ‘Blobs’ Detected Deep Inside Earth

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Earth’s interior is not a uniform stack of layers. Deep in its thick middle layer lie two colossal blobs of thermo-chemical material. To this day, scientists still don’t know where both of these colossal structures came from or why they have such different heights, but a new set of geodynamic models has landed on a possible answer … Read more

Wild boars: African swine fever outbreak led to more oak trees in Polish forest

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An outbreak of African swine fever in 2015 reduced the wild boar population by 90 per cent in Białowieża primeval forest, so more acorns grew into trees Life 2 March 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu Oak trees in Białowieża forest, Poland Aleksander Bolbot / Alamy An outbreak of African swine fever led to the growth … Read more

News at a glance: African vaccine factories, centipede-inspired robots, and Antarctic pollution | Science

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COVID-19 Africa builds mRNA vaccine capacity The drive to help African countries produce vaccines with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology got big boosts last week from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the company BioNTech. The success of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines made by the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Moderna led to intense global demand, but African countries … Read more

African heritage: 190 sites threatened by rising seas this century

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As sea levels rise due to climate change, heritage sites all around the African coast will come under increasing risk of flood damage – including Carthage and sites linked to the Ancient Egyptian civilisation Humans 10 February 2022 By Michael Marshall Sabratha, an ancient Roman town in what is now Libya Sklifas Steven/Alamy Stock Photo … Read more

Major African Radio Telescope Will Help to Image Black Holes

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Astronomers across Africa and Europe have reacted with delight to news that Africa’s first millimetre-range radio telescope is to be built. The Africa Millimetre Telescope will fill a gap in the coverage of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of telescopes that can receive and analyse radio waves of around 1 millimetre in … Read more

Major African Radio Telescope Will Help to Image Black Holes

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Astronomers across Africa and Europe have reacted with delight to news that Africa’s first millimetre-range radio telescope is to be built. The Africa Millimetre Telescope will fill a gap in the coverage of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of telescopes that can receive and analyse radio waves of around 1 millimetre in … Read more

Scientists Identify Specific Gene Variant That Protects Against Severe COVID-19

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Researchers have discovered a protective gene variant that seems to shield people from severe cases of COVID-19, and the finding could lead to new breakthroughs in fighting the coronavirus.   Since much earlier in the pandemic, scientists have been busily investigating how patient genetics influence the severity of a SARS-CoV-2 infection, exposing the inherited factors … Read more

How Well Does Pfizer Protect From Omicron? New Preliminary Results Give Us an Idea

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Two doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine shot offered about 70 percent protection against hospitalization during a recent surge in Omicron cases in South Africa, preliminary real-world data found.   This was a drop from about 92 percent in a previous Delta wave, the researchers from Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest insurer and South Africa’s Medical Research Council, said … Read more