Overfishing of Atlantic cod likely did not cause genetic changes

BOSTON - Men and women whose mothers experienced stressful events during pregnancy regulate stress differently in the brain 45 years later, results of a long-term study demonstrate. In a unique sample of 40 men and 40 women followed from the womb into their mid-forties, the brain imaging study showed that exposure during fetal development to inflammation-promoting natural substances called cytokines, produced by mothers under negative stress, results in sex-associated differences in how the adult brain responds to negative stressful situations more than 45 years after ...

High levels of biodiversity in aquatic settings offers a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids crucial for human health, a range of nutrients that are lacking in ecosystems where the number of species have been reduced by overfishing, pollution, or climate change, researchers report April 5 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "What we found is that biodiversity is crucial to human health," said Yale's Joey Bernhardt, a G. Evelyn Hutchinson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author of the paper. While humans can achieve their protein requirements even with seafood from less-diverse systems, ...

A growing body of evidence suggests that biodiversity loss increases our exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens. Restoring and protecting nature is essential to preventing future pandemics. So reports a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper that synthesizes current understanding about how biodiversity affects human health and provides recommendations for future research to guide management. Lead author Felicia Keesing is a professor at Bard College and a Visiting Scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She explains, "There's a persistent myth ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Nine of the hottest years in human history have occurred in the past decade. Without a major shift in this climate trajectory, the future of life on Earth is in question, which poses a new question: Should humans, whose fossil fueled society is driving climate change, use technology to put the brakes on global warming? Michigan State University community ecologist Phoebe Zarnetske is co-lead of the Climate Intervention Biology Working Group, a team of internationally recognized experts in climate science and ecology that is bringing science to bear on the question and consequences of geoengineering a cooler Earth. The group's ...

BOSTON - Addiction is associated with social exclusion, loss of access to resources, and general disengagement from civic life. Now, a study recently published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors and led by David Eddie, PhD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital's Recovery Research Institute has found that the majority of Americans who have resolved an alcohol or other drug problem report achievements related to self-improvement, family engagement, and civic and economic participation since resolving their addiction. Additionally, it appears these achievements accumulate with time in addiction recovery. Incorporating data from the Recovery Research Institute's landmark 2017 National Recovery Study, which indicated ...

A new study by Stanford University biologists finds an explanation for the idea that physical characteristics such as skin pigmentation are "only skin deep." Using genetic modeling, the team has found that when two populations with distinct traits combine over generations, traits of individuals within the resulting "admixed" population come to reveal very little about individuals' ancestry. Their findings were published March 27 in a special edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology on race and racism. "When two founding groups first come together, a visible physical trait that differed between those founders initially carries information about the genetic ancestry of admixed individuals," says Jaehee Kim, a postdoctoral research fellow in biology at Stanford and first author ...

In the fight against cancers, activating mutations in the RAS family of genes stand in the way of finding viable treatment options. Now, scientists at the University of Missouri and Yale University have discovered that one of these mutations -- oncogenic RAS or RASV12 -- is also responsible for the regrowth of cancer cells following genotoxic therapy treatment, or drugs that cause damage to a cancer cell's DNA in order to eliminate it from the body. "Most of our knowledge of how cells respond to DNA damage is mainly derived from studies looking at the single cell level," said Yves Chabu, an assistant professor in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Therefore, we don't know much about how tumor cells respond to DNA damage in the broader ...

URBANA, Ill. ¬- If your day started with a cup of coffee, there's a good chance your morning brew came from Colombia. Home to some of the finest Arabica beans, the country is the world's third largest coffee producer. Climate change poses new challenges to coffee production in Colombia, as it does to agricultural production anywhere in the world, but a new University of Illinois study shows effects vary widely depending on where the coffee beans grow. "Colombia is a large country with a very distinct geography. The Andes Mountains cross the country from its southwest to northeast corner. Colombian coffee is currently growing in areas with different altitude levels, and climate impacts will likely be very different for low ...

Pregnancy can increase the risk of morbidity and mortality in women with cardiovascular disease; however, many cardiologists are not having pre-pregnancy contraception discussions with their patients of child-bearing age. There is a need to provide evidence-based guidance for contraceptive safety and effectiveness and pregnancy planning options for this high-risk patient group, according to a paper published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC). This paper is one of a five-part JACC focus seminar series addressing a wide range of topics in the emerging cardio-obstetrics field. Prior research has found that 68% of females have had sex at least once by the time they were 17, ...

A recent study proposed a three-dimensional LotusMenu that can "bloom in the palm". With this menu, even if you are not Nezha, you can also control your own lotus. The research paper is titled: "LotusMenu: A 3D Menu using Wrist and Elbow Rotation Inspired by Chinese Traditional Symbol". It's published in SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences recently, written by Associate Professor Lu Fei's human-computer interaction research team from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Based on the metaphor of the traditional lotus pattern, the researchers ...