Slow population declines might be going undetected, while later rates of extinction could increase exponentially

Simulation study of how body shapes and sizes affected energetic efficiency helps explain relative success of early Polynesian voyaging ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287290 Article Title: Estimated energetic demands of thermoregulation during ancient canoe passages from Tahiti to Hawaii and New Zealand, a simulation analysis Author Countries: USA, Australia, New Zealand Funding: AM received financial support from the Maritime Encounters (M21-0018) project funded by Sweden's Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. ...

Prosthetic limbs are the most common solution to replace a lost extremity. However, they are hard to control and often unreliable with only a couple of movements available. Remnant muscles in the residual limb are the preferred source of control for bionic hands. This is because patients can contract muscles at will, and the electrical activity generated by the contractions can be used to tell the prosthetic hand what to do, for instance, open or close. A major problem at higher amputation levels, such as above the elbow, is that not many muscles remain to command the many robotic joints needed to truly restore the function of an arm and hand. A multidisciplinary team of surgeons and engineers ...

On the Moon, there are raw materials that humanity could one day mine and use. Various space agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), are already planning missions to better explore Earth’s satellite and find minerals. This calls for appropriate exploration vehicles. Swiss researchers led by ETH Zurich are now pursuing the idea of sending not just one solitary rover on an exploration tour, but rather an entire team of vehicles and flying devices that complement each other. The researchers equipped three ANYmal – a type of legged robot developed ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, researchers have developed a model to estimate how much energy the original colonizers of New Zealand expended to maintain their body temperatures on the cold, harrowing ocean journey from Southeast Asia.   Results showed that people making the first voyages from Tahiti to New Zealand in sailing canoes would expend 3.3 to 4.8 times more energy on thermoregulation – the technical term for maintaining body temperature - than those making a trip of similar length to Hawaii.   The ocean route to New Zealand required much more energy for thermoregulation ...

AUKLAND, NZ and DURHAM, N.C. – Companion robots enhanced with artificial intelligence may one day help alleviate the loneliness epidemic, suggests a new report from researchers at Auckland, Duke, and Cornell Universities. Their report, appearing in the July 12 issue of Science Robotics, maps some of the ethical considerations for governments, policy makers, technologists, and clinicians, and urges stakeholders to come together to rapidly develop guidelines for trust, agency, engagement, and real-world efficacy. It also proposes a new way to measure whether a companion robot is helping someone. “Right now, all the evidence ...

Cognitive abilities not only vary among different species but also among individuals within the same species. It is expected that smarter individuals live longer, as they are likely to make better decisions, regarding habitat and food selection, predator avoidance, and infant care. To investigate the factors influencing life expectancy of wild gray mouse lemurs, researchers from the German Primate Center conducted a long-term study in Madagascar. They administered four different cognitive tests and two personality tests to 198 animals, while also measuring their weight and tracking their survival over several years. ...

Within the scope of a vast research program undertaken in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the University of Liège, an international team—including scientists from the CNRS, Sorbonne University, and Université Grenoble Alpes—has revealed the artistic license exercised in two ancient Egyptian funerary paintings (dating to ~1,400 and ~1,200 BCE, respectively), as evident in newly discovered details invisible to the naked eye. Their findings are published in PLOS ONE (12 July). The language of ancient ...

By combining multiple advanced technologies into a single system, EPFL researchers have made a significant step forward in diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). This novel device is known as the ImmunoSEIRA sensor, a biosensing technology that enables the detection and identification of misfolded protein biomarkers associated with NDDs. The research, published today in Science Advances, also harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) by employing neural networks to quantify disease ...

Schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that causes organ damage and death, affected more than 250 million people worldwide in 2021, according to the World Health Organization. One of the world’s most burdensome neglected tropical diseases, schistosomiasis occurs when worms are transmitted from freshwater snails to humans. The snails thrive in water with plants and algae that proliferate in areas of agricultural runoff containing fertilizer. People become infected during routine activities in infested water. Researchers from the University of Notre Dame, in a study recently published in Nature, found that removing invasive vegetation at water access points in and around several ...

Since the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) approved the use of ultrasound to promote the extraction of grape compounds back in 2019, its application for obtaining superior red wines has been studied extensively. Now researchers are turning their attention to rosé – an expanding market which has seen strong growth over the past 15 years. A team from the University of Castilla-La Mancha and the University of Murcia in Spain used high-power ultrasound technology to treat Monastrell crushed grapes – a process known as sonication ...