Two-thirds of turtle injuries and strandings recorded in the Maldives across 12 years arose from entanglement with lost and discarded fishing gear

At one Antarctic research station, contaminant levels exceeding international guidelines across 18 years have resulted from historic practices that have polluted the local ecosystem ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288485 Article Title: Contamination of the marine environment by Antarctic research stations: Monitoring marine pollution at Casey station from 1997 to 2015 Author Countries: Australia, Canada Funding: This research was funded by a Australian Antarctic Science research grants to JSS (AAS 2201, 2948, 4127, 4180, 4633) by the Australian Antarctic Division ...

ChatGPT-authored Japanese writing can be stylistically distinguished with up to 100% accuracy from human-authored text by machine learning algorithms ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288453 Article Title: Distinguishing ChatGPT(-3.5, -4)-generated and human-written papers through Japanese stylometric analysis Author Countries: Japan Funding: This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP22K12726. The funders did not participate in this study design, data collection, analysis, or decision to publish, except their role in paying the English proofreading and Publication Fee. ...

While engaging in cell division research, Silke Hauf and members of her lab made a surprisingly quiet discovery. When cells express RNA, there is always some fluctuation, or noise, in how much RNA is produced. Hauf’s group found several genes whose noise dips below a previously established threshold, known as the noise floor, during expression. “We have solid data for this phenomenon,” said Hauf, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. “There are some genes that are different and can have super low noise.” Often upstaged by the more striking, well-publicized high-noise genes, Hauf and her team were intrigued by these ...

Philadelphia, August 9, 2023 – Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, researchers have been trying to determine why this virus creates such negative long-term effects compared with most coronaviruses. Now, a multi-institutional consortium of researchers led by a team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the COVID-19 International Research Team (COV-IRT) has found that the genes of the mitochondria, the energy producers of our cells, can be negatively impacted by the virus, leading to dysfunction ...

The surface of Mars, unlike the Earth's, is not constantly renewed by plate tectonics. This has resulted in the preservation of huge areas of terrain remarkable for their abundance in fossil rivers and lakes dating back billions of years. Since 2012, NASA's Curiosity, the first rover to ever explore such ancient remains, had already detected the presence of simple organic molecules which can be formed by geological as well as biological processes. However, the emergence of primitive life forms, as hypothesised by scientists, initially requires environmental conditions favourable to the spontaneous organisation ...

– By Christina Nunez In rooms where smoking has taken place regularly, tobacco's imprint lingers on indoor surfaces, even long after regular smoking has stopped. The leftover residues, known as thirdhand smoke, can be a long-term source of indoor pollutants. New research from a team led by the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) zeroes in on carpets as an especially potent – and difficult to clean – reservoir of tobacco contaminants. When thirdhand smoke settles into surfaces, it doesn't ...

A telecommunications fiber optic cable deployed offshore of Oliktok Point, Alaska recorded ambient seismic noise that can be used to finely track the formation and retreat of sea ice in the area, researchers report in The Seismic Record. Andres Felipe Peña Castro of the University of New Mexico and colleagues used distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, to identify seismic signals related to the motion of waves on open water and the sea ice that suppresses that wave action. The technique offers a way to track sea ice with increasing spatial and temporal resolution—on the scale of hours and kilometers--compared to satellite images that are updated ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Whether it’s work or play that prevents us from getting enough shut-eye during the week, assuming we can make up for it by sleeping in over the weekend is a mistake. New research led by Penn State reveals that cardiovascular health measures, including heart rate and blood pressure, worsen over the course of the week when sleep is restricted to five hours per night, and attempting to catch up on sleep over the weekend is insufficient to return these measures to normal. “Only 65% of adults in the U.S. regularly sleep the recommended seven hours per night, ...

LA JOLLA, CA—New research in the journal Nature Communications gives scientists an important window into how Ebola virus replicates inside host cells. The study, led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), reveals the inner workings of "viral factories," clusters of viral proteins and genomes that form in host cells. The research team, which included experts from Scripps Research and UC San Diego School of Medicine, found that Ebola virus's replication machinery forms fascinating microscopic ...

Simple home workouts using exercise apps can effectively reduce depressive symptoms in healthcare workers and could be a major tool to combat the global mental health crisis in the sector, says new University of British Columbia research. The study, published today in JAMA Psychiatry, divided participants into either a waitlisted control group or an exercise group who were given free access to a suite of home exercise apps called DownDog, that included yoga, cardio and strength training. They were asked to aim for at least 80 minutes of moderate-intensity ...