China's Ant Group facing regulatory pressure ahead of record IPO

Fintech giant Ant Group is facing growing Chinese pressure over potential risks in its online lending business, with co-founder Jack Ma and other executives summoned to an unusual meeting with regulators just ahead of its record-breaking IPO this week.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-china-ant-group-regulatory-pressure.html

Tunisian startup 3-D prints solar-powered bionic hands

A Tunisian startup is developing a 3-D-printed bionic hand, hoping the affordable and solar-powered prosthetic will help amputees and other disabled people across Africa.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-tunisian-startup-d-solar-powered-bionic.html

Not forever: world's biggest pink diamond mine closes

The world's largest pink diamond mine has shut its doors after exhausting its reserves of the expensive gems, global mining giant Rio Tinto said Tuesday.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-world-biggest-pink-diamond.html

Cat 4 Hurricane Eta threatens flooding in Central America

Hurricane Eta erupted quickly into a potentially catastrophic major hurricane Monday as it headed for Central America, where forecasters warned of massive flooding and landslides across a vulnerable region.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-cat-hurricane-eta-threatens-central.html

Walmart abandons shelf-scanning robots, lets humans do work

Walmart is laying off the robots it had deployed in about 500 stores to keep tabs on what's on and not on the shelves.

source https://techxplore.com/news/2020-11-walmart-abandons-shelf-scanning-robots-humans.html

Lizard skull fossil is new and 'perplexing' extinct species

In 2017, while browsing the fossil collections of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, University of Texas at Austin graduate student Simon Scarpetta came across a small lizard skull, just under an inch long.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-lizard-skull-fossil-perplexing-extinct.html

Two centuries of Monarch butterflies show evolution of wing length

North America's beloved Monarch butterflies are known for their annual, multi-generation migrations in which individual insects can fly for thousands of miles. But Monarchs have also settled in some locations where their favorite food plants grow year round, so they no longer need to migrate.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-centuries-monarch-butterflies-evolution-wing.html

Self-watering soil could transform farming

A new type of soil created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-self-watering-soil-farming.html

Biologists shed light on mystery of how microbes evolve and affect hosts

The era of COVID-19 and the need to constantly wash one's hands and sanitize things have brought microbes to new levels of scrutiny, particularly for their impact on an individual's health.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-biologists-mystery-microbes-evolve-affect.html

New protein nanobioreactor designed to improve sustainable bioenergy production

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have unlocked new possibilities for the future development of sustainable, clean bioenergy. The study, published in Nature Communications, shows how bacterial protein 'cages' can be reprogrammed as nanoscale bioreactors for hydrogen production.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-protein-nanobioreactor-sustainable-bioenergy-production.html

Short-term moisture removal can eliminate downy mildew of spinach

Downy mildew is the biggest threat to spinach production around the world. While the pathogen has a short life cycle (approximately a week), it can produce millions of spores during the spinach growing season. Overhead sprinkler irrigation systems and dew formation on cool nights leads to more moisture, which enables these spores to infect the spinach.

source https://phys.org/news/2020-11-short-term-moisture-downy-mildew-spinach.html