Kyoto, Japan -- As global temperatures rise to record highs, the pressure to curb greenhouse gas emissions has intensified. Methane is particularly targeted because its significant global-warming potential in the short term exceeds carbon dioxide by over 80-fold. However, monitoring methane emissions and compiling their quantities have been challenging due to limiting trade-offs with existing detection methods. Now, a research team including Kyoto University and Geolabe, USA has developed a method to automatically detect methane emissions at a global ...

DURHAM, N.H.—New Hampshire will boost its research leadership as an innovator in science and technology and increase its STEM workforce with investments across the state’s institutions of higher education, thanks to an $8 million grant to the University of New Hampshire from the National Science Foundation. The cooperative agreement award, one of just three of its type in the nation, aims to increase research opportunities, mentoring, training and partnerships between New Hampshire’s community colleges, four-year colleges and universities and industry. “With this support, UNH will collaborate ...

Even the most optimistic projections for the rapid build-out of solar, wind, and other low-carbon resources acknowledge that coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels will dominate the world’s energy mix for decades to come. If the vast greenhouse gas emissions from burning these fossil fuels continue to enter the planet’s atmosphere, global warming will not be limited to sustainable levels. The capture and geologic sequestration of carbon emissions (CCS) offer a promising solution to the world’s carbon conundrum.   Even with growing technological maturity ...

Scientists are one step closer to combatting coral-destroying crown-of-thorns starfish, following a University of Queensland study into the pest’s genetics. In a world first study, University of Queensland PhD candidates Marie Morin and Mathias Jönsson analysed the genetics of the toxic coral-eating invertebrates found on the Great Barrier Reef. “By understanding how crown-of-thorns (COTS) starfish genes work, we can unlock the mechanisms behind their key behaviours and find ways to stop them breeding,” Ms Morin said. “In this study we looked at ...

Bats, as the main predator of night-flying insects, create a selective pressure that has led many of their prey to evolve an early warning system of sorts: ears uniquely tuned to high-frequency bat echolocation. To date, scientists have found at least six orders of insects – including moths, beetles, crickets and grasshoppers – that have evolved ears capable of detecting ultrasound. But tiger beetles take things a step further. When they hear a bat nearby, they respond with their own ultrasonic signal, and for the past 30 years, no one has known why.                                               “It’s ...

UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 19:01 EDT TUESDAY 14 MAY 2024 An undue focus on diagnosing dyslexia is leaving many children without the help they urgently need, according to two leading educational and clinical psychologists. The experts are calling for educators, psychologists and policy makers to rethink approaches to assessment and support for children who are struggling to learn to read. In a new book, Professors Julian Elliott (Durham University, UK) and Elena Grigorenko (University of Houston, USA) argue that the clinical diagnosis of dyslexia is not only scientifically questionable, but current procedures are failing to serve the needs of many struggling readers, particularly ...

Researchers have found that heavily used shipping lanes pass through crucial whale shark feeding grounds, posing a threat to this endangered species. Research published today (Wednesday 15 May) in Science of the Total Environment has revealed areas where the sharks are at the highest risk of colliding with large shipping vessels by mapping the locations of whale shark aggregations and overlaying them with information on shipping traffic. “The almost ubiquitous overlap of at least some large shipping vessel traffic with whale shark aggregations underlines the magnitude of the threat the shipping industry ...

A new study from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa shows that chlorine mixed with petroleum in water can potentially produce inadvertent byproducts harmful to human health. Small amounts of chlorine, within safe industry standards, are added to disinfect Oʻahu’s drinking water by the Honolulu Board of Water Supply (BWS) and military installations, according to BWS. In late November 2021, a petroleum release from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility contaminated the Red Hill ...

(Memphis, Tenn. – May 14, 2024) Deaths from cancer or infections can occur when available treatments are ineffective. Once turned on, pregnane X receptor (PXR) activates the expression of genes encoding enzymes that metabolize external chemicals, including drugs. This causes a significant drop in the effectiveness of chemotherapy, antivirals and other pharmaceuticals. Blocking the PXR activity is notoriously difficult, as many drugs that bind the protein, whether intentionally or unintentionally, activate it. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research ...

(Wednesday, 15 May 2024, Basel, Switzerland) New research, presented today at the 10th European Stroke Organisation Conference (ESOC) 2024, has revealed that high-income individuals have a 32% lower risk of post-stroke mortality.1 Additionally, those with a higher education have a 26% lower risk of death post-stroke, highlighting striking disparities in stroke survival based on key social determinants of health (SDoH). The register-based study analysed data from 6,901 stroke patients in Gothenburg, Sweden between November 2014 to December 2019 to examine ...

About The Study: Among men with obesity, an intervention with text messaging with financial incentive significantly improved weight loss compared with a control group, whereas text messaging alone was not significantly better than the control condition. These findings support text messaging combined with financial incentives to attain weight loss in men with obesity. Quote from corresponding author Prof. Pat Hoddinott, M.B., B.S., Ph.D.: “Losing weight can make people feel better, reduce their risk of many health problems such as diabetes, and helps the health service with their aim to keep ...

About The Study: A wireless feedback system (Wi-Fi activity tracker and scale with smartphone app to provide daily feedback) was not noninferior to the same system with added coaching. Continued efforts are needed to identify strategies for weight loss management and to accurately select interventions for different individuals to achieve weight loss goals. Quote from corresponding author Bonnie Spring, Ph.D.: “With U.S. obesity prevalence projected to reach 49% by 2030, limited obesity treatment resources need to be spread across more of the ...

·  The need for low cost but effective obesity treatments has become urgent ·  ‘At this stage, treatment still needs a human because the tech alone doesn’t produce clinically acceptable weight loss for most people’ · Not previously known whether tech alone could produce clinically acceptable weight loss CHICAGO --- A new Northwestern Medicine study shows that technology alone can’t replace the human touch to produce meaningful weight loss in obesity treatment. “Giving people technology alone ...

Impact of age of onset, severity and duration of childhood obesity quantified for the first time Early onset obesity model finds that a child who is living with severe obesity at age 4 and doesn’t lose weight has a life expectancy of just 39. But weight loss can give back decades of life Childhood obesity is a life-threatening disease, say researchers New research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May) has, for the first time, quantified the impact of different aspects of childhood obesity on long-term health and life expectancy. The modelling by stradoo GmbH, a life sciences consultancy ...

Changes in body composition with ageing—increases in body fat and declines in muscle—mean that BMI is not accurate in predicting obesity in middle-aged and older adults. BMI identified half as many over 40s with obesity as predicted by body fat percentage. A new lower BMI cut-off for obesity based on body fat percentage (27kg/m²) in the over 40s may be more appropriate than the existing WHO BMI threshold (30 kg/m²). The authors say establishing this new lower BMI cut-off point for the over 40s in clinical settings and obesity guidelines potentially ...

Men in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland offered up to £400 for hitting weight loss targets lost more weight than those not given cash incentive Win-win strategy could pay for itself, say researchers *Note: this paper is being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) and is being published in JAMA. Please credit both the congress and the journal in your stories.* A new study presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice, Italy (12-15 May), and published simultaneously in JAMA, has concluded that text messages with financial incentives can help men who are living with obesity lose weight and could be a valuable alternative ...

Engineers at MIT, Nanytang Technological University, and several companies have developed a compact and inexpensive technology for detecting and measuring lead concentrations in water, potentially enabling a significant advance in tackling this persistent global health issue. The World Health Organization estimates that 240 million people worldwide are exposed to drinking water that contains unsafe amounts of toxic lead, which can affect brain development in children, cause birth defects, and produce a variety of neurological, cardiac, ...

Irvine, Calif., May 14, 2024 — A research team led by the University of California, Irvine has revealed the link between the frequency of sleep apnea events during the rapid-eye-movement stage and the severity of verbal memory impairment in older adults at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Verbal memory refers to the cognitive ability to retain and recall information presented through spoken words or written text and is particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer’s.   The study, recently published online in the journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, discovered a specific correlation between the severity of sleep apnea – when breathing pauses while ...

A recent study published in Analytical Science Journal conducted by Schmid College of Science and Technology Professor Rosalee Hellberg and students Calin Harris, Diane Kim, Miranda Miranda and Chevon Jordan, reveal that some supplement companies may mislead customers with unproven health claims and undeclared ingredients.  The researchers focused on supplements that have been associated with the purported treatment or prevention of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses. During the pandemic, the use of dietary supplements skyrocketed throughout the world. “There was a big spike in purchase and use of these types ...

A project led by the University of Washington to better understand our atmosphere’s complexity is a finalist for NASA’s next generation of Earth-observing satellites. The space agency this week announced the projects that will each receive $5 million to advance to the next stage and conduct a one-year concept study. STRIVE seeks to better understand the troposphere that we inhabit and the stratosphere above it, where the ozone layer is, as well as the interface where these two layers meet. That interface, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the surface, is where important ...

Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have recast diffusion in multicomponent alloys as a sum of individual contributions, called “kinosons.” Using machine learning to compute the statistical distribution of the individual contributions, they were able to model the alloy and calculate its diffusivity orders of magnitude more efficiently than computing whole trajectories. This work was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters. “We found a much more efficient way to calculate diffusion in solids, and at the same time, we learned more ...

As a student competing in track and field at his Parlier high school, Robert Leija was obsessed with how to improve his performance and, in particular, prevent the buildup of lactic acid in his muscles during training. Like many athletes, he blamed it for the performance fatigue and muscle soreness he experienced after intense workouts. But as a kinesiology student at Fresno State, he was handed an out-of-print textbook that told him he had it all wrong. Lactate wasn't a danger sign that athletes had depleted their body's supply of oxygen, but likely a normal product of the metabolic activity required to fuel the muscles during sustained exercise. Now, as a graduate student ...

More and more public services — such as affordable housing, public school matching and child welfare — are relying on algorithms to make decisions and allocate resources. So far, much of the work that has gone into designing these systems has focused on workers’ experiences using them or communities’ perceptions of them. But what about the actual impact of these programs have on people, especially when the decisions the systems make lead to denial of services? Can you design algorithms to help people make sense of and ...

Astronomers at MIT, the University of Liège in Belgium, and elsewhere have discovered a huge, fluffy oddball of a planet orbiting a distant star in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery, reported today in the journal Nature Astronomy, is a promising key to the mystery of how such giant, super-light planets form. The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density. The scientists found that the gas giant is 50 percent bigger than Jupiter, and about a tenth as dense — an extremely low density, comparable to that of cotton candy.  WASP-193b is the second lightest planet discovered to date, ...

DARIEN, IL – Leading sleep and circadian scientists, sleep clinicians, and industry innovators will gather June 2-5 in Houston at SLEEP 2024, the 38th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC. Thousands of sleep professionals will connect, explore, and grow at the world’s premier clinical and scientific sleep meeting, held jointly by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. “Every year, SLEEP brings together the world’s ...