Science
press releases.

Science16 Aug 2024

Scottish and Irish rocks confirmed as rare record of ‘snowball Earth’

A rock formation spanning Ireland and Scotland may be the world’s most complete record of “snowball Earth”, a crucial moment in planetary history when the globe was covered in ice, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers. The study, published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London, found that the Port Askaig Formation, composed of layers of rock up to 1.1km thick, was likely laid down between 662 to 720 million years ago during the Sturtian glaciation – the first of two global freezes thought to have ...

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Science16 Aug 2024

Research provides a roadmap for improving electrochemical performance

Thomas Edison went through thousands of materials before he finally found the right tungsten filament to create a working lightbulb. This type of trial-and-error research continues today and is responsible for countless inventions that improve our world. Battery systems that help power our lives in many seen (and unseen) ways are one example. However, improving these materials and devices requires more than experimentation. Modern engineers must also form a deeper understanding of the general principles that govern material performance, from which they can design better materials to achieve challenging product requirements. In a paper ...

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Science16 Aug 2024

Females’ and males’ muscles differ in sugar and fatty acid handling

Females’ and males’ muscles differ in glucose and fatty acid handling – but regular physical activity quickly triggers similar beneficial metabolic changes in the muscles of both sexes, new research to be presented at this year’s Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) (Madrid, 9-13 September) has found. Exercise has a potent effect on skeletal muscle and is the most effective strategy to prevent weight loss-related muscle loss and type 2 diabetes. ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

USDA-NIFA awards $300K to study food safety, plant pathogens and pests in hydroponics

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — As controlled environment agriculture and vertical farming gain a greater foothold in modern agriculture, a new $300,000 grant aims to enhance hydroponic lettuce production. Kristen Gibson, director of the Arkansas Center for Food Safety and Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station faculty member, is the lead researcher on the grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Gibson says the grant provides an opportunity to meet the needs of the hydroponics industry. “The industry is always looking for what’s going to help them grow the best product, increase profit and ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Eyes on the field: How Texas A&M researchers are working to revolutionize NFL officiating

Hamza Memon and Nicholas Panzo, students at Texas A&M University School of Engineering Medicine (ENMED), are leading an innovative project at the intersection of sports and ophthalmology to improve National Football League (NFL) officiating . Rooted deeply in Houston’s vibrant sports culture, these Class of 2026 students combine their interest in ophthalmology and their love for sports to contribute significantly to a groundbreaking project with the NFL. The two students met during a summer engineering program and quickly bonded over their shared aspirations in sports and ophthalmology. This friendship led ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Blind cavefish have extraordinary taste buds

Over thousands of years, cavefish evolved and lost their vision, earning the moniker “the blind cavefish,” but some cavefish also developed an inordinate number of taste buds on the head and chin. In a new study, now published in the Nature journal Communications Biology, scientists at the University of Cincinnati have determined when the taste buds start to appear in areas beyond the oral cavity. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation. To begin, blind cavefish evolved in cave ponds in northeastern Mexico. They are pale pink and nearly translucent compared to their silvery counterparts ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

UTEP awarded $2.5 M NIH grant to study nicotine dependence in women

EL PASO, Texas (Aug. 15, 2024) — Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso will undertake a new study that could lead to improved nicotine cessation treatments for women. The work is supported by a new $2.5 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Principal investigator Laura O'Dell, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology at UTEP, will lead the multidisciplinary study into how stress produced by nicotine withdrawal is intensified by variations in ovarian hormones in women. The study ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

New technique prints metal oxide thin film circuits at room temperature

Researchers have demonstrated a technique for printing thin metal oxide films at room temperature, and have used the technique to create transparent, flexible circuits that are both robust and able to function at high temperatures. “Creating metal oxides that are useful for electronics has traditionally required making use of specialized equipment that is slow, expensive, and operates at high temperatures,” says Michael Dickey, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. “We wanted ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Solutions to Nigeria’s newborn mortality rate might lie in existing innovations, finds review

The review, led by Imperial College London’s Professor Hippolite Amadi, argues that Nigeria’s own discoveries and technological advancements of the past three decades have been “abandoned” by policymakers. The authors argue that too many Nigerian newborns, clinically defined as infants in the first 28 days of life, die of causes that could have been prevented had policymakers adopted recent in-country scientific breakthroughs. Led by Professor Amadi of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering, who received the Nigeria Prize ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Detecting machine-generated text: An arms race with the advancements of large language models

Machine-generated text has been fooling humans for the last four years. Since the release of GPT-2 in 2019, large language model (LLM) tools have gotten progressively better at crafting stories, news articles, student essays and more, to the point that humans are often unable to recognize when they are reading text produced by an algorithm. While these LLMs are being used to save time and even boost creativity in ideating and writing, their power can lead to misuse and harmful outcomes, which are already ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Nearly 25% of European landscape could be rewilded

Europe's abandoned farmlands could find new life through rewilding, a movement to restore ravaged landscapes to their wilderness before human intervention. A quarter of the European continent, 117 million hectares, is primed with rewilding opportunities, researchers report August 15 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. They provide a roadmap for countries to meet the 2030 European Biodiversity Strategy's goals to protect 30% of land, with 10% of those areas strictly under conservation. The team ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Emergency departments could help reduce youth suicide risk

A study of over 15,000 youth with self-inflicted injury treated in Emergency Departments (EDs) found that around 25 percent were seen in the ED within 90 days before or 90 days after injury, pointing to an opportunity for ED-based interventions, such as suicide risk screening, safety planning, and linkage to services. Nearly half of ED visits after the self-inflicted injury encounter were for mental health issues. “Self-inflicted injury is an important predictor of suicide risk,” said Samaa Kemal, MD, MPH, emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Adverse childhood experiences and adult household firearm ownership

About The Study: Consistent with prior research on adverse childhood experience (ACE; defined as abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction before age 18) exposure and presence of a firearm in the household during childhood, this study found that cumulative ACE exposure was associated with higher odds of household firearm ownership in adulthood. The relationship may be due to a heightened sense of vulnerability to physical violence and greater perceived threats to personal safety associated with a traumatic childhood, which lead individuals to seek self-protection. Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Alexander Testa, PhD, email alexander.testa@uth.tmc.edu. To ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Warning signs: National data indicate that autistic birthing people are at increased risk for postpartum anxiety and depression

American women have the highest rate of maternal deaths among high-income countries, with outcomes worse for minoritized groups. In an effort to understand the maternal health of pregnant people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism and intellectual disability, researchers from Drexel University’s Policy and Analytics Center in the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute examined Medicaid data to identify perinatal and postpartum outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The study was recently published in JAMA Network Open. “While ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

$1.2 million in federal funding to study women Veterans experiencing homelessness

A first-of-its-kind study led by Lawson Health Research Institute is receiving $1.2 million in funding from the federal government, delivered through the Veteran Homelessness Program, to better understand homelessness amongst women in Canada who are military Veterans. “This is an important and yet often invisible problem,” says Dr. Cheryl Forchuk, Lawson Assistant Scientific Director based at St. Joseph’s Health Care London’s Parkwood Institute and the study lead. “This is the first Canadian study to focus exclusively on women Veterans’ experience of homelessness. Gender matters, especially when we’re talking ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Zebrafish use surprising strategy to regrow spinal cord

Zebrafish are members of a rarefied group of vertebrates capable of fully healing a severed spinal cord. A clear understanding of how this regeneration takes place could provide clues toward strategies for healing spinal cord injuries in people. Such injuries can be devastating, causing permanent loss of sensation and movement. A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis maps out a detailed atlas of all the cells involved — and how they work together — in regenerating the zebrafish spinal cord. In an unexpected finding, the researchers showed that survival and adaptability of the severed neurons themselves is required for full spinal cord regeneration. ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Bone fracture rates vary dramatically by race

A new paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that bone fracture rates in older women differ by race, quite significantly. While researchers have known for years that the risk of bone fracture is highest for White women, this is the first study to show the real fracture rate for Asian and Hispanic women. Until recently researchers have had limited data on fracture rates by specific race and ethnicity beyond White people, and even less fracture data within race and ethnic groups. Hispanic and Asian populations are the ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Pioneering research sheds light on how babies and young children understand the art of pretence

Babies recognise pretence and around half of children can pretend themselves by 12 months, new research has found. The study, led by the University of Bristol, shows for the first time how children’s awareness and grasp of pretence in its various forms develops from birth to three years. Lead author Prof Elena Hoicka, Professor of Psychology in Education at the University’s School of Education, said: “Our findings highlight how pretending is a complex, evolving process which begins very early on in life, helping their cognitive and social skills to advance. Pretence ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Khojandi, Zhao selected for prestigious AAAS STPF fellowships

Anahita Khojandi and Xiaopeng Zhao have been selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to participate in the 2024-25 Science & Technology Policy Fellowship (STPF). Khojandi, a Heath Endowed Faculty Fellow in Business & Engineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Zhao, a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering and founding director of the Applied AI Program ...

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Science15 Aug 2024

Singing from memory unlocks a surprisingly common musical superpower

New research from UC Santa Cruz is finally giving you the go-ahead to sing in the shower as loud as you want. Because, as it turns out, you probably sound pretty darn good. Psychologists wanted to study “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. So they asked people to sing out any earworms they were experiencing and record them on their phones when prompted at random times throughout the day. When researchers analyzed the recordings, they found that a remarkable proportion of them perfectly matched the pitch of the original songs they were based upon. More specifically, 44.7% of recordings had a pitch error of 0 semitones, ...

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Science14 Aug 2024

Venting your frustrations can make friends like you better – if you do it right

Key takeaways Venting about your frustrations with one friend to another may feel good, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce anger. Experiments showed that people who listened to a friend vent liked and supported that person more than those who were vented about — but only if the person venting didn’t derogate or seem aggressive toward the other friend. Venting might be an effective tool of competition for listeners’ affections precisely because it is not readily recognized as a tool of competition. Venting about your frustrations with one friend to another isn’t necessarily cathartic, but it can make the friend you’re talking to like and ...

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Science14 Aug 2024

Manard chosen for Society of Applied Spectroscopy’s Lester W. Strock Award

Benjamin Manard, an analytical chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will receive the 2024 Lester W. Strock Award from the Society of Applied Spectroscopy. The prize is named for the late Lester W. Strock, a crystal chemist and pioneer in applied spectroscopy. The annual award recognizes researchers who produce outstanding publications in analytical atomic spectrochemistry. “Manard’s publications over the last five years demonstrate a clear focus on the elemental and isotopic analysis of nuclear materials using a variety ...

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Science14 Aug 2024

First participant enrolled in NIH-Funded Access for All in ALS Consortium

The Access for All in ALS Consortium (ALL ALS) announced the successful enrollment of the first participant. Established in the autumn of 2023 with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), ALL ALS is a multi-institutional effort, and aims to disrupt the ALS clinical research landscape using open science methods to build broadly accessible resources to advance ALS research. The consortium brings together research scientists from across the country, combining their efforts to collect clinical and biomarker data from people with ALS symptoms, asymptomatic individuals at risk of developing inherited forms of ALS, and control participants. The ALL ALS ...

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Science14 Aug 2024

Researchers unveil mysteries of ancient Earth

A team of researchers has made strides in understanding the formation of massif-type anorthosites, enigmatic rocks that only formed during the middle part of Earth’s history. These plagioclase-rich igneous rock formations, which can cover areas as large as 42,000 square kilometers and host titanium ore deposits, have puzzled scientists for decades due to conflicting theories about their origins. A new study published in Science Advances on Aug. 14 highlights the intricate connections between Earth’s evolving ...

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Science14 Aug 2024

UNC-Chapel Hill launches the Institute for Risk Management and Insurance Innovation

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is launching the Institute for Risk Management and Insurance Innovation, a new interdisciplinary research and innovation hub that will leverage the expertise of faculty and students from various disciplines across campus to address complex challenges in risk management and insurance. “The institute will address the financial risks arising from a growing number of threats to our state and beyond, ranging from extreme weather to cybersecurity,” explains Vice Chancellor for Research Penny Gordon-Larsen. “UNC-Chapel Hill is a world leader in translating extreme environmental events into financial risk and now seeks to expand ...

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