When will J Soils and Sediments get assigned an Impact Factor?

Who will care for me when I get sick?

Will jams get worse when slow cars move over ?

– Motivated by an analogy with traffic, we simulate two species of particles ('vehicles'), moving stochastically in opposite directions on a two-lane ring road. Each species prefers one lane over the other, controlled by a parameter 0 ≤ b ≤ 1 such that b = 0 corresponds to random lane choice and b = 1 to perfect 'laning'. We find that the system displays one large cluster ('jam') whose size inc...

Strategies of vaccine production against COVID-19: when will an effective vaccine be produced?

There is a strong consensus globally that production of an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 is likely the most effective approach to sustainably controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. An unprecedented research effort and global coordination has resulted in a rapid development of vaccine candidates and initiation of trials. In this paper, we review vaccine candidate against COVID-19 and also cha...

Microtechnology in the clinical laboratory: will it solve analytical problems, and when will it make an impact?

The past two decades have seen a phenomenal investment in microtechnology in the biological sciences. But it is often difficult to discern what impact, if any, this diverse technology has had on the clinical laboratory. This difficulty is, in part, due to the almost transparent incorporation of microtechnology in large devices used in the clinical laboratory, or the lack of appreciation of the ...

When sparks get old

Sparks are transient local elevations of Ca ion concentration observed in different types of muscle cells. Such local Ca2+ signals can be provoked in skeletal muscle cells by altering the osmotic pressure of the extracellular solution. In this issue, Weisleder et al. (see p. 639) demonstrate that the Ca2+ response to osmotic stress is substantially altered in aged muscle. The study presents evi...