(Press-News.org) Sea otters may be key drivers of changes in California's kelp forests, according to data spanning a century
#####
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Climate: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000290
Article Title: Sea otter recovery buffers century-scale declines in California kelp forests
Citation: Nicholson TE, McClenachan L, Tanaka KR, Van Houtan KS (2024) Sea otter recovery buffers century-scale declines in California kelp forests. PLOS Clim 3(1): e0000290. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000290
Author Countries: Canada, US
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
END
Sea otters may be key drivers of changes in California's kelp forests, according to data spanning a century
2024-01-18
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Norovirus outbreaks are detectable by wastewater monitoring earlier than by other surveillance methods depending on reporting practices, making this a potentially important public health tool
2024-01-18
Norovirus outbreaks are detectable by wastewater monitoring earlier than by other surveillance methods depending on reporting practices, making this a potentially important public health tool.
####
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/water/article?id=10.1371/journal.pwat.0000198
Article Title: Norovirus GII wastewater monitoring for epidemiological surveillance
Author Countries: USA
Funding: This study was supported by funding from the University of Michigan through the Public Health Infection ...
Climate change may reduce life expectancy by half a year, study suggests
2024-01-18
The cost of climate change may be six months off the average human lifespan, according to a study published January 18, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Amit Roy from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and The New School for Social Research, U.S.
Temperature and rainfall — two telltale signals of climate change — cause myriad public health concerns, from the acute and direct (e.g., natural disasters like flooding and heat waves) to the indirect yet equally devastating (e.g., respiratory and mental illnesses). While impacts like these are observable and well documented, existing research has not established a direct link between climate change and life ...
Remodeling the immune system to fight tuberculosis
2024-01-18
AMHERST, Mass. – Tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) kills upwards of 1.6 million people a year, making it one of the leading causes of death by an infectious agent worldwide—and that number is only growing larger. How, exactly, Mtb evades the immune system isn’t yet known, but a collaborative team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Seattle Children’s Research Institute recently discovered something surprising: prior exposure to a genus of bacteria called Mycobacterium seems to remodel the first-line defenders in the body’s immune system. Furthermore, how ...
6 in 10 sampled under-5s in India have micronutrient deficiencies, and 4 in 10 have anaemia, per survey of 17,230 children
2024-01-18
6 in 10 sampled under-5s in India have micronutrient deficiencies, and 4 in 10 have anaemia, per survey of 17,230 children.
####
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002095
Article Title: Prevalence and determinants of anemia due to micronutrient deficiencies among children aged 12–59 months in India–Evidence from Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey, 2016–18
Author Countries: India
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...
DNA becomes our ‘hands’ to construct advanced nanoparticle materials
2024-01-18
Evanston, IL In a paper to be published in Science Jan. 18, scientists Chad Mirkin and Sharon Glotzer and their teams at Northwestern University and University of Michigan, respectively, present findings in nanotechnology that could impact the way advanced materials are made.
The paper describes a significant leap forward in assembling polyhedral nanoparticles. The researchers introduce and demonstrate the power of a novel synthetic strategy that expands possibilities in metamaterial design. These are the unusual materials that underpin “invisibility cloaks” and ultrahigh-speed optical computing systems.
"We manipulate ...
Repeated sexual failures cause social stress in fruit flies
2024-01-18
Repeated failures to reproduce make fruit flies stressed and frustrated, which in turn makes them less resilient to other types of stress, Julia Ryvkin at Bar-Ilan University and colleagues report in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics, publishing January 18.
Animals are motivated to take actions that improve their survival and reproduction through reward systems in the brain, but failure causes stress. The reward systems have been extensively studied, but less attention has been paid to how animals respond to failure. To investigate, researchers compared ...
Complement system causes cell damage in Long Covid
2024-01-18
Most people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus recover after the acute illness. However, a significant proportion of infected individuals develop long-lasting symptoms with a wide range of manifestations. The causes and disease mechanisms of Long Covid are still unknown, and there are no diagnostic tests or targeted treatments.
Part of the immune system active for too long
A team of researchers led by Onur Boyman, professor of immunology at the University of Zurich (UZH) and Director of the Department of Immunology at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), has shown in a study that the complement system plays an important role in Long Covid. It is part of the innate immune system ...
Analysis of brain tumor blood vessels yields a candidate therapy—and a platform to find more
2024-01-18
JANUARY 18, 2024, NEW YORK – A Ludwig Cancer Research study has generated a granular portrait of how the cellular and molecular components of the blood vessels that feed brain metastases of melanoma and lung and breast cancers differ from those of healthy brain tissue, illuminating how they help shape the internal environment of tumors to support cancer growth and immune evasion.
Led by Ludwig Lausanne’s Leire Bejarano and Johanna Joyce, researchers also developed a platform to identify potentially targetable vulnerabilities in the vasculature of brain metastases. They report in the current issue of Cancer ...
UChicago, Caltech study suggests that physical processes can have hidden neural network-like abilities
2024-01-18
We tend to separate the brain and the muscle—the brain does the thinking; the muscle does the doing. The brain takes in complex information about the world and makes decisions, and the muscle merely executes. This has also shaped how we think about a single cell; some molecules within cells are seen as ‘thinkers’ that take in information about the chemical environment and decide what the cell needs to do for survival; separately, other molecules are seen as the ‘muscle,’ building structures needed for survival.
But a new study shows how the molecules that build structures, i.e, the muscle, can themselves do both the thinking and the doing. The ...
Wireless drug patch shows promise as chronic disease treatment delivery system
2024-01-18
CHAPEL HILL, NC – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists created a new drug delivery system, called the Spatiotemporal On-Demand Patch (SOP), which can receive commands wirelessly from a smartphone or computer to schedule and trigger the release of drugs from individual microneedles. The patch’s thin, soft platform resembles a Band-Aid and was designed to enhance user comfort and convenience, since wearability is a crucial factor for chronically ill patients.
The research team, led by Juan Song, PhD, professor of pharmacology ...