Nature

DeepMind has presented an AI application that makes it possible to predict protein structure with high accuracy. According to John Moult, a biologist at the University of Maryland, it is the first application of artificial intelligence "that has solved a serious problem".

Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops, and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution.

97 pilot whales and 3 bottlenose dolphins have died as a result of a mass stranding on the remote Chatham Islands, located 800 kilometers off New Zealand's east coast. New Zealand's Department of Conservation was notified of the incident on Sunday, however rescue efforts were thwarted by the remote location and rough sea conditions.

The British South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha has created the world's fourth-largest marine reserve and has banned deep-sea mining and fishing with beam trawls over an area of 627,000 km². This created the largest protected area in the Atlantic Ocean and the fourth largest in the world.

The protected area is part of the so-called blue belt, a protection program for British overseas territories, which the British government is funding with 27 million pounds (approx. 30 million euros). So far, a total of 11.1 million square kilometers have been protected - that is one percent of the world's ocean area.

Australian scientists have discovered two new mammal species. They belong to the marsupials and are assigned to the type of the Great Gliders. The marsupials are different in their size, fur color, distribution and physiology, which is why research teams of the James Cook University and the University of Canberra examined DNA-samples of Flugbeutler from 5 populations and found considerable differences in the genetic material.

In the famous Great Barrier Reef in Australia, researchers of the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) have discovered a new coral reef. It is the first new discovery after 120 years. The reef is 500 meters deep - and thus larger than the Empire State Building in New York City. The research team came across the reef by chance when they were making a 3D map of the seabed with the help of the underwater robot SuBastian.

The restored seagrass beds in the sea off the coast of the US state of Virginia ensure a rapid recovery of the ecosystem. A research team sowed about 70 million seagrass seeds off the coast of Virginia, which developed into seagrass beds of about 3.612 hectares.

In the 1930s, a hurricane and plant disease wiped out the seagrass, but now the important ecosystem, which is home to marine life, but also removes large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and cleans the ocean of pollutants, has been successfully restored.

The cultivation of the seagrass beds is not yet complete, but it is already clear that the rebuilding of seagrass can also help other regions to regenerate the coastal ecosystem.

Three months before the end, 2020 is also the year with the largest number of fire outbreaks in the Pantanal: from January 1 to September 30, there were 18,259 outbreaks.

Off the coast of Curaçao, at a depth of 60 feet, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau is looking to create the world’s largest underwater research habitat.

Fabien Cousteau's Proteus will be the first underwater research habitat built in decades. (Concept designs by Yves Béhar and fuseproject)

A geologist has discovered a pair of fossil footprints that researchers say are the oldest of their kind in the Grand Canyon, dating back 313 million years.

Researchers said the fossils show two animals passing at different times along the slope of a sand dune.

The findings were published on Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

According to a survey by the children's aid organization "Plan" among 1,000 respondents between 16 and 71 years of age, the fear of harassment, threats, and insults is great. Big cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne or Munich stand out here. One in five respondents stated in the survey that they had been the victim of a crime such as insults, threats or harassment. Girls and women feel most unsafe on the open street, followed directly by public transport and parks.

For decades scientists believed the reason for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and three-quarters of all life on earth 66 million years ago was a prolonged period of climate change caused by volcanic activity. A new study by researchers from the Imperial College London just disproved this theory: turns out it was an asteroid impact that struck Earth which also created the Chicxulub impact crater in southeast Mexico. According to the study, only an asteroid impact could have created conditions that made Earth uninhabitable.

“We show that the asteroid caused an impact winter for decades, and that these environmental effects decimated suitable environments for dinosaurs. In contrast, the effects of the intense volcanic eruptions were not strong enough to substantially disrupt global ecosystems,” so the lead researcher Alessandro Chiarenza in his statement. “Our study confirms, for the first time quantitatively, that the only plausible explanation for the extinction is the impact winter that eradicated dinosaur habitats worldwide.”

The Asian giant hornet, colloquially known as the murder hornet, has been spotted in Lower Mainland, British Columbia, miles away from Washington State where it was spotted first. Provincial Apiculturist Paul Van Westendorp confirmed the identity of the specimen, who will perform both an autopsy and a DNA sequencing to determine its origin.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have found evidence showing high levels of UV radiation, caused by a brief breakdown of the ozone layer, collapsed forest ecosystems and killed off many species of fish and tetrapods in an extinction event at the end of the Devonian geological period, 359 million years ago.

The ozone collapse occurred as the climate rapidly warmed pushing more naturally generated ozone-destroying chemicals into the upper atmosphere. Researchers suggest that the Earth today could reach comparable temperatures, possibly triggering a similar event.

A team of researchers found the highest levels of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor with up to 1.9 million particles per square meter.

Each year over 10 million tons of plastic waste finds its way into the oceans, though only 1% is found in shallower waters while 99% is thought to occur in the deep oceans, where microplastics and plastic fragments get transported by deep-sea currents where they are concentrated in 'microplastic hotspots'.

The Asian giant hornet, also called murder hornet, has been spotted in the US, mainly in Washington State. Beekeepers have reported thousands of dead bees with their heads ripped off. The hornets are over two inches (5 centimetres) long and can kill a beehive in hours. It's still unclear how the hornets came to the US.

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany has discovered fossil traces of a rain forest 90 million years old near the South Pole. The analysis of the findings such as preserved roots, pollen and spores have shown that the world was warmer during that time than previously expected. Professor Ulrich Salzman, a co-author and palaeoecologist at Northumbria University said that “The numerous plant remains indicate that the coast of West Antarctica was, back then, a dense temperate, swampy forest, similar to the forests found in New Zealand today".