INFORMATION:
Seismic surveys using fin whale songs
2021-02-11
(Press-News.org) Fin whale song - one of the strongest animal calls in the ocean - can be used as a seismic source for probing the structure of Earth's crust at the seafloor, researchers report. While the novel method produces lower-resolution results compared to the high-energy air-gun signals commonly used in seismic ocean surveys, the abundant and globally available fin whale calls could complement and enhance seismic studies where conventional techniques cannot be used. Surveying the structure of the ocean crust often requires powerful seismic waves. This is most commonly done using ship-based air-guns, which generate explosive, high-decibel pulses. Although effective, these blasts are among the loudest human-made sounds in the ocean and are potentially harmful to ocean life. However, fin whale songs, which can be as loud as large ships and last for hours, occur at frequencies known to travel well through the ocean floor, and are often captured by the ocean-bottom seismometer (OBS) stations used to record and monitor earthquake activity. Here, Václav Kuna and John Nábelek show that not only do OBS recordings capture the whale songs but, the powerful sound waves these songs produce reverberate and refract through the layers of rock beneath the station. Kuna and Nábelek analyzed a total of six fin whale songs recorded by OBS stations off the coast of Oregon and found that they were able to use the signals to constrain the thickness and seismic velocity of the oceanic sediment and the basaltic basement, as well as the P-wave velocity of the lower crust underlying the stations. "More generally, our study demonstrates that animal vocalizations are useful not only for studying the animals themselves but also for investigating the environment that they inhabit," write the authors.
For reporters interested in trends, a February 2020 Review in Science addressed how the rapidly changing soundscape of modern oceans impacts marine life worldwide. https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aba4658
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
No new mountains formed during Earth's middle age, halting life's evolution for an eon
2021-02-11
During the Proterozoic, Earth grew no taller - the tectonic processes that form mountains stalled, leaving continents devoid of high mountains for nearly 1 billion years, according to a new study. Because mountain formation is crucial to nutrient cycling, the prolonged shift in crustal activity may have resulted in the "boring billion," an eon in which the evolution of Earth's life stalled. Over geologic timescales, even mountains are ephemeral. The massive tectonic forces that drive vast swaths of the planet skywards are countered by the interminable processes of erosion. Because the thickness of Earth's crust is in constant flux, tracking mountain formation over deep time is challenging, yet crucial to understanding the evolution of the planet's surface and the life that lives upon it. ...
Neandertal genes alter neurodevelopment in modern human brain organoids
2021-02-11
Building modern human brain organoids with the Neanderthal variant of a gene has provided a glimpse into the way substitutions in this gene impacted our species' evolution. The ability to grow brain organoids with specific archaic genes provides a way to identify and evaluate the functional differences between the closely related genomes of hominin lineages and explore the evolutionary changes that underly the unique traits that set us as modern humans apart from our extinct relatives. While the genomes of modern humans and their archaic Neanderthal and Denisovan relatives are, in many respects, similar, the genetic differences between ...
The politics of synonyms
2021-02-11
Previous studies have shown people can identify the gender and race of a speaker based on the words chosen, but could a person identify something like political membership? A team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found people are more successful at identifying language associated with Republican speech than Democratic speech patterns. The results are available in the February issue of the journal PLOS.
"While other studies have shown that people can detect social categories like the race and gender of a speaker based word choice, ...
Risk factors associated with COVID-19 ICU admission or death in Argentina
2021-02-11
A nationwide analysis of data from the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Argentina has identified factors associated with increased risk of death or admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) due to the disease, including older age, male sex, coma, seizures, and underlying comorbidities. Daniel Schoenfeld of Centro Diagnostico San Jorge in Puerto Madryn, Argentina, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 11.
Argentina reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 3, 2020, and a national lockdown ...
Researchers find delirium in hospitalized patients linked to mortality, disability
2021-02-11
Delirium, a form of acute brain dysfunction, is widespread in critically ill patients in lower resourced hospitals, and the duration of delirium predicted both mortality and disability at six months after discharge, according to a study published in PLOS ONE.
Working with partners in Zambia, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers evaluated 711 hospitalized critically ill patients; delirium occurred in 48.5%. The findings shed light on the impact of delirium on a patient's recovery -- and even whether a patient is likely to live or die.
There have been limited data on the prevalence and outcomes of delirium ...
Gender gap: Women represent two-thirds of doctorates, only one-third of academic jobs
2021-02-11
Women today represent two-thirds of all Canadian doctorates in archaeology, but only one-third of Canadian tenure-stream faculty. While men with Canadian PhDs have done well in securing tenure-track jobs in Canada over the past 15 years, women have not, according to a new study from McGill University. The current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate these existing inequalities.
Published in American Antiquity, the study is the first to follow archaeologists from graduate school to faculty positions to determine when women are exiting the academic track. It's also the first to explore grant applications and the success rates of women in Canadian archaeology.
"A 'chilly climate' exists for women in academia. ...
US cities segregated not just by where people live, but where they travel daily
2021-02-11
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- One thing that decades of social science research has made abundantly clear? Americans in urban areas live in neighborhoods deeply segregated by race -- and they always have.
Less clear, however, is whether city-dwellers stay segregated when they leave home and go about their daily routines. That's a question to which Jennifer Candipan, an assistant professor of sociology at Brown University, was determined to find an answer.
By analyzing geotagged locations for more than 133 million tweets by 375,000 Twitter users in the 50 largest U.S. cities, Candipan and a team of researchers found that in most urban areas, people of different races don't just live in different neighborhoods -- they also eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel ...
Want to hire more women? Expand your short list
2021-02-11
ITHACA, N.Y. - As more male-dominated industries look for ways to hire women, new Cornell University research offers employers a simple solution - make your initial job candidate short list longer.
Many professional advancement opportunities - jobs, promotions, trainings and mentorships - are filled through informal recruitment practices. But these practices pose an unintended barrier to gender diversity in male-dominant workplaces because when hiring managers consult their "mental Rolodex," they are more likely to associate certain jobs with specific genders.
"Our research investigates informal short lists," said Brian Lucas, assistant ...
A new perceptually-consistent method for MSI visualization
2021-02-11
Skoltech scientists have proposed a Mass Spectrometry Imaging (MSI) method leveraging the unique features of human vision. The research was published in the journal Analytical Chemistry.
High-resolution mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that accurately measures the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of ions, produced from molecules by an ionization process, and the ion signal intensity (the relative number of ions). These measurements allow determining molecules' weights and structure, (by fragmenting them), thereby identifying various compounds, such as proteins, lipids, metabolites, ...
Facts on the ground: How microplastics in the soil contribute to environmental pollution
2021-02-11
Plastic, with its unabated global production, is a major and persistent contributor to environmental pollution. In fact, the accumulation of plastic debris in our environment is only expected to increase in the future. "Microplastics" (MP)--plastic debris END ...