How well do children know letters and their corresponding sounds? In Norway, the gender difference on these tasks when children start school is significant. The girls have a clear head start. “We see these differences in all categories – for upper case and lower case letters, for the names of the letters and for their corresponding sounds,” says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Psychology. Girls’ letter-sound knowledge is clearly better than that of boys,’ and girls remain far better readers than boys at age 15. Since reading is key for so many ...

In chemistry, a molecule or ion is said to be chiral if it cannot be superposed on to its mirror image by any combination of rotations, translations, or conformational changes. A chiral molecule or ion exists in two forms, called enantiomers, that are mirror images of each other; they are often distinguished as either ‘right-handed’ or ‘left-handed’ by their absolute configuration. Enantiomers exhibit similar physical and chemical properties, except when interacting with polarized light and reacting with other chiral compounds, ...

New Study Shows Robust Pandemic Preparedness Strongly Linked to Lower COVID-19 Mortality Rates   Preparedness matters: Accounting for age and national capabilities to diagnose COVID-19 deaths reveals that pre-pandemic investments in capacity saved lives—though U.S. remains an outlier.   The vast majority of countries that entered the COVID-19 pandemic with strong capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to disease threats achieved lower pandemic mortality rates than less prepared nations, ...

The 64th Supplement to the American Ornithological Society’s (AOS) Check-list of North American Birds, published today in Ornithology, includes numerous updates to the classification of North American bird species.  A few highlights from this year’s supplement, detailed below, include a species lump for the Western Flycatcher, species status for the goshawk of North America, and species splits in several Caribbean birds leading to five additional species.  The Check-list, published since 1886, is updated annually by the AOS’s North American Classification Committee (NACC), the official authority on the names and classification of the ...

There are more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States. In 2019, more than 608,000 individuals were released from prison. It is estimated that up to 55 percent of people released from prison will be re-incarcerated within five years. The cause of high recidivism or re-offense rates in the U.S. is multi-dimensional. Moreover, the relationship between employment and crime is complex. To combat an unstable work history and lack of interpersonal skills, some communities have implemented transitional employment programs, ...

Ongoing research by Prof. Lewis Halsey and his team at the University of Roehampton, UK has identified that an upper critical temperature (UCT) exists for humans and is likely to be between 40°C and 50°C. Further research is now underway to explain this rise in metabolic energy costs at high temperatures. Prof. Halsey and his team have found that resting metabolic rate, a measure of how much energy the human body consumes to keep ticking over, can be higher when people are exposed to hot and humid conditions. ...

Labile expression of sex was frequently reported by empirical observation in a variety of Populus species, but the underlying genetic mechanism remains largely unknown.  This article has been published on Horticulture Research with title: The proposed role of MSL-lncRNAs in causing sex lability of female poplars. In this study, we carried out a systematic study on a maleness promoting gene, MSL, detected in Populus deltoides genome. Our results showed that both strands of MSL contained multiple cis-activating elements, which generated long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) ...

A new study, published in PeerJ Life and Environment, conducted by Dr. Martina Lazzaroni (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Dr Joana Schar (University of Vienna) and colleagues, has shed light on the cognitive abilities of village dogs in understanding human communication. The research, which aimed to explore the impact of the domestication process on dogs' behavior and cognition, has yielded fascinating results, highlighting the importance of studying free-ranging dogs as representatives of the broader dog population.  Previous studies examining dogs' cognitive skills in understanding ...

HOUSTON – (July 6, 2023) – Songtao Chen, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, has won a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award to advance the development of quantum networks by leveraging imperfections ⎯ known as point defects ⎯ in silicon material. The grants are awarded each year to a selective cohort of about 500 early career faculty across all disciplines engaged in pathbreaking research and committed to growing their field through outreach and education. Chen ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. – The invasive Asian clam is more common in the lower Columbia River than its native habitat of southeast Asia, according to a study of the clam’s abundance in the river. The findings don’t bode well for potential future invasions by the even more destructive quagga and zebra mussels. So far, the Columbia is one of the only major U.S. rivers to remain free of these notorious ecology-destroying, equipment-clogging bivalves. To understand how new invaders might spread, a Washington State University-led ...

Karma Nanglu says his favorite animal is whichever one he’s working on. But his latest subject may hold first place status for a while: a 500-million-year-old fossil from the wonderfully weird group of marine invertebrates, the tunicates. “This animal is as exciting a discovery as some of the stuff I found when hanging off a cliffside of a mountain, or jumping out of a helicopter. It’s just as cool,” said Nanglu, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. In a new study in Nature Communications, Nanglu and coauthors describe the new fossil, ...

Halide perovskites are a family of materials that have attracted attention for their superior optoelectronic properties and potential applications in devices such as high-performance solar cells, light-emitting diodes, and lasers. These materials have largely been implemented into thin-film or micron-sized device applications. Precisely integrating these materials at the nanoscale could open up even more remarkable applications, like on-chip light sources, photodetectors, and memristors. However, achieving this integration has remained challenging because this delicate material can be damaged by conventional fabrication and patterning ...

EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has launched the Pathogens Portal – an online platform that enables researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to access the most comprehensive collection of biomolecular data about pathogens. The portal features data spanning over 200,000 pathogen species and strains and is set to become a key tool for infection biology and pathogen surveillance.  The list of pathogens featured in the portal was collated using the UK’s Health and Safety Executive’s ...

When animals suffer from acute or chronic stress, they produce more hormones causing shifts in the nervous system, immune response, and behavior. Some animals, if they are in the presence of a conspecific, can modulate their response to buffer stress. This is known as social buffering. There is some research suggesting that snakes can exhibit complex social behavior. Nevertheless, social buffering in reptiles, as well as in other asocial organisms and solitary foragers, hasn’t been studied extensively. Now, researchers in the US have examined if rattlesnakes inhabiting Southern California use social buffering to alleviate acute stress. “We showed that when ...

Every year in Belgium, 1,600 people wait for a transplant. Of these, in 2021, only 939 received an organ. Thus more than 40% of patients often have to wait more than a year before hoping to receive a transplant. When a transplant is possible, it is essential to ensure its success so as not to “waste” an organ. One of the keys to successful transplants is an anti-rejection drug, tacrolimus, which patients must take for life. But it is extremely difficult to dose this drug correctly, which can lead to significant risks of transplant failure in the event of underdosing and significant side effects in the event of overdosing (diabetes, hirsutism, hair loss, neuropathy or nephrotoxic ...

UCL press release Under embargo until Thursday, 6 July 2023, 00:01 London time   Giant stone artefacts found on rare Ice Age site in Kent Researchers at the UCL Institute of Archaeology have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in Britain. The excavations, which took place in Kent and were commissioned in advance of development of the Maritime Academy School in Frindsbury, revealed prehistoric artefacts in deep Ice Age sediments preserved on a hillside above the Medway Valley. The researchers, from UCL Archaeology South-East, discovered 800 stone artefacts thought to be over 300,000 years old, buried in sediments which filled a sinkhole and ...

UNVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A new type of ferroelectric polymer that is exceptionally good at converting electrical energy into mechanical strain holds promise as a high-performance motion controller or “actuator” with great potential for applications in medical devices, advanced robotics, and precision positioning systems, according to a team of international researchers led by Penn State.  Mechanical strain, how a material changes shape when force is applied, is an important property for an actuator, which is any material that will change or deform when an external force such as electrical energy is applied. Traditionally, these actuator ...

The Consortium for Additive Manufacturing Research and Education (CAMRE) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) achieved the first successful demonstration of in-flight 3D printing aboard a U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft on June 21 in Southern California. CAMRE’s operational demonstration, which involved the printing of a medical cast aboard an airborne Osprey, was part of larger-scale exercise support provided by CAMRE and the Marine Innovation Unit (MIU) to forces participating in an integrated training exercise (ITX) at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif., from June 10-22. This successful test of in-flight ...

The time of year when eggs are collected from women’s ovaries during fertility treatment makes a difference to live birth rates, according to new research published today (Thursday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals.   Researchers in Australia have found that transferring frozen then thawed embryos to women’s wombs from eggs collected in the summer resulted in a 30% higher likelihood of babies born alive, than if the eggs had been retrieved in the autumn.   Dr Sebastian Leathersich, an obstetrician, gynaecologist and Fellow in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Fertility Specialists of Western Australia, ...

International migrants in Australia and beyond are at increased risk of HIV infection due to reduced access to a highly effective prevention measure, a world-first global review led by Monash University has found. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is up to 99 per cent effective in preventing HIV. The antiretroviral tablet is available by prescription and taken to prevent HIV infection.  Published in The Lancet Public Health, the study identified barriers that migrant populations in Australia and around the world face to access PrEP. Multiple barriers included ...

CABI scientists have carried out a study which reveals invasive non-native species (INNS) – such as the aquatic water weeds floating pennywort and Japanese knotweed as well as signal crayfish – cost the UK economy an estimated £4bn a year. However, when species only covered by the GB Non-native Species Strategy are considered – for instance with fungi excluded from the estimate – the total cost was estimated to be £1.9bn. Researchers working from CABI’s centres in Egham, UK, as well as Switzerland and Kenya, found a 135% increase in comparable costs since the last assessment was conducted in 2010. Annual estimated costs in 2021 were £3.02bn, ...

Heavy wildfire smoke drifting from Canada to U.S. cities hundreds of miles away is a stark reminder that no community is immune from climate change-fueled hazards. A Stanford-led study published recently in Environmental Research Letters provides a blueprint for empowering  people in frontline communities – those that experience the “first and worst” consequences of climate change – to better understand and deal with wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and other hazards. The research – done in four predominantly low-income, ...

New drugs are often used not only for one disease (first approved indication) but also for other diseases (supplemental indications).  But a study published by The BMJ today finds that less than half of approved first indications for new drugs in the US and Europe between 2011 and 2020 add substantial therapeutic value over existing treatments and only around a third of supplemental approvals add substantial therapeutic value compared with first approvals.  The researchers argue that when first or supplemental indications do not offer added benefit over existing treatments, this information should be clearly communicated to patients and reflected in the price of ...

Lack of sleep lessens cognitive benefits of physical activity Regular physical activity may protect against cognitive decline as we get older, but this protective effect may be diminished for people who are not getting enough sleep, according to a new study by UCL researchers. The study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, looked at cognitive function over 10 years in 8,958 people aged 50 and over in England. The research team investigated how different combinations of sleep and physical activity habits might affect people’s cognitive function over time. They found that people who were more physically ...

Through the use of eHealth application ikHerstel, patients recover from major abdominal operations 30% faster than patients who do not use the app. That is the main conclusion of research led by Amsterdam UMC across eleven Dutch hospitals.  The app aims to empower patients to feel more in control of their recovery process. The results were published today in Lancet Digital Health.  Patients are being discharged from the hospital quicker after treatment. Where patients used to receive care, information and support in the hospital for a number of days, they are now often ...