Some climate-smart agricultural practices may not be so smart

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As society reckons with climate change, there’s a growing call to keep fossil fuels right where they are, in the ground. But the impact of curtailing oil production will depend on the policies we implement to achieve this. An interdisciplinary team of researchers investigated the carbon emissions, labor and health implications of several policies to reduce oil extraction, with a special focus on how the effects vary across different communities in California. Their results, published in Nature Energy, ...

Biodiversity loss ranks among the top three risks to humanity, as stated in the 2023 World Economic Forum Global Risks Report. Understanding biodiversity's basic building blocks is essential to monitor changes, identify influencing factors, and implement appropriate policies. However, much of terrestrial animal diversity, including insects, remains unknown or "dark taxa." For example, the global biodiversity information portal GBIF has nine times more information on birds than insects and arthropods, despite birds only accounting ...

Climate change is likely to abruptly push species over tipping points as their geographic ranges reach unforeseen temperatures, finds a new study led by a UCL researcher. The new Nature Ecology & Evolution study predicts when and where climate change is likely to expose species across the globe to potentially dangerous temperatures. The research team from UCL, University of Cape Town, University of Connecticut and University at Buffalo analysed data from over 35,000 species of animals (including mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, corals, fish, cephalopods and plankton) and seagrasses from every continent and ocean basin, alongside climate projections running up to 2100. The ...

Up to eight percent of the sand in concrete and mortar used to make a single-story house could be replaced with shredded used disposable diapers without significantly diminishing their strength, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The authors suggest that disposable diaper waste could be used as a construction material for low-cost housing in low- and middle-income countries. Disposable diapers are usually manufactured from wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon, and plastics such as polyester, polyethylene, and polypropylene. ...

Globally, critical thinking (CT) is regarded as a highly desirable cognitive skill that enables a person to question, analyze, and assess an idea or theory from multiple perspectives. CT has become an integral and mandatory part of global educational curricula, but its definition varies across contexts and cultural backgrounds.   To assess the implementation of CT, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducts the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). In a 2018 survey (TALIS 2018), only 12.6% of lower secondary ...

Solar cells are a critical component to the transition to renewable energy sources, and enhanced power conversion efficiency (PCE), or amount of power captured with a given amount of sunlight, increases the practicality of solar power in a society with high energy demands.  Perovskite solar cells that use all-inorganic perovskite light-absorbing materials are more thermally stable than organic-inorganic hybrid counterparts, but suffer from lower PCE.  Researchers have overcome this hurdle in all-inorganic perovskite solar cells ...

Children’s Cancer Research Fund has awarded $250,000 to an innovative new approach to treating leukemia – blood cancer – being developed at UVA Cancer Center. The grant to John H. Bushweller, PhD, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, is part of the national nonprofit’s efforts to accelerate the development of new and better treatments for difficult-to-treat cancers. “This funding makes it possible to continue developing a novel approach to treatment for a form of pediatric leukemia with a very poor prognosis,” said Bushweller, of UVA’s Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. “For ...

INDIANAPOLIS – Every 40 seconds, someone in the U.S. has a stroke. Every 3.5 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of a stroke. Stroke patients have multifaceted needs, requiring complicated care delivered by multidisciplinary teams. In the journal Stroke’s annual review of quality improvement advances in stroke care studies, Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist Dawn Bravata, M.D., and colleagues update researchers, clinicians and healthcare administrators on advances in the field, highlighting the challenges of scalability and sustainability. “Quality improvement exists to ensure that every patient with stroke or at risk of stroke is getting the care ...

High-temperature shock (HTS) is an emerging synthesis method with kinetics-dominated non-equilibrium characteristics, which can achieve an ultrafast heating/cooling rate of ~10^5 K/s and a peak temperature larger than ~3000 K within a time scale of seconds or milliseconds, and is widely used in the preparation of high entropy content, thermodynamic metastable phase and defect-rich materials. Amongst these significant advances, nanoscale high entropy alloys (HEA) are particularly prominent in heterogeneous catalytic reactions with remarkable ...

DANVERS, Mass., May 18, 2023 – Abiomed, part of Johnson & Johnson MedTech[1], announces results of a third-party analysis showing that utilizing Impella during high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures may help physicians achieve a more complete revascularization compared to high-risk PCIs supported using an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP). Previous studies have shown that a more complete revascularization can lead to longer survival[2],[3], a greater reduction in heart failure and angina symptoms[4], and an improved quality of life for the patient[5]. This analysis shows ...