Could arts and crafts help protect the public’s mental health? A new study in Frontiers in Public Health provides evidence that indulging our creative side could provide everyone with a significant wellbeing boost. Because arts and crafts are relatively affordable and accessible, promoting the public’s access to artistic activities could provide a major boost to public mental health. “Crafting and other artistic activities showed a meaningful effect in predicting people’s ...

Barely audible to human ears, healthy soils produce a cacophony of sounds in many forms – a bit like an  underground rave concert of bubble pops and clicks. Special recordings made by Flinders University ecologists in Australia show this chaotic mixture of soundscapes can be a measure of the diversity of tiny living animals in the soil, which create sounds as they move and interact with their environment. With 75% of the world’s soils degraded, the future of the teeming community of living species that live underground face a dire future without restoration, says microbial ecologist Dr Jake Robinson, from the Frontiers ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (August 16, 2024) – Building positive connections with teachers and peers in the classroom can be critical to the mental health and academic success of children and adolescents. Yet, a new national poll from The Kids Mental Health Foundation, conducted by Ipsos, finds half of parents believe spending too much time on technology and social media hinder children from making meaningful connections as they head into the upcoming school year.  The poll, conducted by Ipsos on behalf of ...

People who are homeless often endure constant and intrusive police interactions, leaving them feeling intimidated, harassed and stigmatised, a new study finds. More people of all ages and backgrounds are finding themselves homeless, often due to job loss or illness, as well as a lack of affordable housing. Between 2016 and 2021 homelessness increased by 5.2% in Australia.  Professor of Law Thalia Anthony from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) said the research aimed to give a voice to people experiencing homelessness ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

New Haven, Conn. — In humans, the process of learning is driven by different groups of cells in the brain firing together. For instance, when the neurons associated with the process of recognizing a dog begin to fire in a coordinated manner in response to the cells that encode the features of a dog — four legs, fur, a tail, etc. — a young child will eventually be able to identify dogs going forward. But brain wiring begins before humans are born, before they have experiences or senses like sight to guide this cellular circuitry. How does that happen? In a new ...

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 ...

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 ...

A technique that uses videos and machine learning to quantify motor symptoms in early-stage Parkinson’s disease could help reveal signs of the disease and other movement disorders earlier, which could lead to better treatment outcomes. In a study just published in Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, a team of researchers from the University of Florida and the Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases shows that video assessment can help detect early Parkinsonism in an individual by comparing the movement of the left and right sides of their body. The approach, researchers say, exploits the fact ...

Since its invention in the 1970s, the luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) has aimed to enhance solar energy capture by using luminescent materials to convert and concentrate sunlight onto photovoltaic (PV) cells. Unlike traditional concentrators that rely on mirrors and lenses, LSCs can harvest diffuse light and have been used in applications such as building-integrated photovoltaics, where their semitransparent and colorful nature offers aesthetic benefits. However, scaling up LSCs to cover large areas has been challenging due to issues like self-absorption of photoluminescent (PL) photons within the waveguide. Researchers ...

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 ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – To support vulnerable communities responding to continued and extreme climate effects, the Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $10 million in funding for innovative Climate Resilience Centers (CRCs) in 10 different states. University-led research teams will leverage the world class modeling, data and research capabilities from DOE national laboratories customized for their local regions with a focus on climate prediction of weather hazard risks to better prepare communities. The CRCs are part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Justice40 Initiative and are designed to ensure that all Americans are benefitting from scientific research.  “Every ...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER (FL), August 15, 2024—The International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory is collaborating with NASA on a solicitation for space-based research addressing some of the most significant diseases of our time—such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegenerative disease. ISS National Lab Research Announcement (NLRA) 2024-09: Igniting Innovation: Science in Space to Cure Disease on Earth, released in partnership with NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences division, is aimed at overcoming challenges hindering progress in disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. This NLRA ...

A new Yale study finds that the effects of long COVID have caused many Americans to miss extensive work time, and that 14% of study participants reported not returning to work in the months after their infection.  The findings, published recently in PLOS One, suggest that long COVID may have affected millions of Americans and generated steep economic costs, highlighting the need for policies to support those with the condition, researchers said. The study drew on a long-term survey of individuals who contracted COVID-19 — dubbed Innovative ...

In a Policy Forum, Brian Prest and colleagues discuss how new regulatory guidelines from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), known as Circular A-4, could impact the social cost of carbon (SCC). The new equity weighting approach recommended by the OMB, they say, leads to a dramatic increase in SCC estimates, and thus requires careful dialogue and discussion. The social cost of carbon is an estimate of the economic damage caused by emitting an additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It helps guide decisions about balancing the costs of reducing emissions with the benefits of mitigating climate change. Traditionally, ...

Scientists have pinpointed the origin and composition of the asteroid that caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago, revealing it was a rare carbonaceous asteroid from beyond Jupiter, according to a new study. The findings help resolve long-standing debates about the nature of Chicxulub impactor, reshaping our understanding of Earth's history and the extraterrestrial rocks that have collided with it. Earth has experienced several mass extinction events. The most recent event occurred 66 million years ago at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene eras (K-Pg boundary) and resulted in the loss of roughly 60% of the planet’s species, including non-avian dinosaurs. ...

A newly identified activity in the brain that occurs while we sleep – a barrage of action potentials, or a BARR – plays a crucial role in rebalancing the hippocampal neural network during memory consolidation. The findings offer fresh insights into how our brains preserve memories while maintaining stability, as we slumber. Memory consolidation – a process that stabilizes and strengthens our recent experiences into long-term memories – occurs when we sleep. During the non-rapid eye movement (NREM) phase of sleep, ...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have discovered how a hospital superbug  Clostridioides difficile (C.diff) can rapidly evolve resistance to vancomycin, the frontline drug used in the UK Scientists found that in less than two months the bacteria could develop resistance to 32 times the initial antibiotic concentration C.diff, a type of bacteria which often affects people who have been taking antibiotics, has been identified by the World Health Organisation as one of the top global public health threats, and is responsible ...

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 ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – While everyone knows that a good night’s sleep restores energy, a new Cornell University study finds it resets another vital function: memory. Learning or experiencing new things activates neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain vital for memory. Later, while we sleep, those same neurons repeat the same pattern of activity, which is how the brain consolidates those memories that are then stored in a large area called the cortex. But how is it that we can keep learning new things for a lifetime without using up all of our neurons? A new study, “A Hippocampal Circuit Mechanism ...

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan have discovered a region of the brain that encodes where an animal is planning to be in the near future. Linked to internal maps of spatial locations and past movements, activity in the newly discovered grid cells accurately predicts future locations as an animal travels around its environment. Published in Science on August 15, the study helps explain how planned spatial navigation is possible. It might seem effortless, but navigating the world requires quite a bit of under-the-hood brain activity. For ...

The ability to turn experiences into memories allows us to learn from the past and use what we learned as a model to respond appropriately to new situations. For this reason, as the world around us changes, this memory model cannot simply be a fixed archive of the good old days. Rather, it must be dynamic, changing over time and adapting to new circumstances to better help us predict the future and select the best course of action. How the brain could regulate a memory’s dynamics was a mystery – until multiple memory copies ...