Wander around a desert most anywhere in the world, and eventually you'll notice dark-stained rocks, especially where the sun shines most brightly and water trickles down or dew gathers. In some spots, if you're lucky, you might stumble upon ancient art - petroglyphs - carved into the stain. For years, however, researchers have understood more about the petroglyphs than the mysterious dark stain, called rock varnish, in which they were drawn. In particular, science has yet to come to a conclusion about where rock varnish, which is unusually rich in manganese, comes from. Now, scientists at the California Institute of Technology, the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator ...

Neuroscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have demonstrated in new research that dopamine plays a key role in how songbirds learn complex new sounds. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the finding that dopamine drives plasticity in the auditory pallium of zebra finches lays new groundwork for advancing the understanding of the functions of this neurotransmitter in an area of the brain that encodes complex stimuli. "People associate dopamine with reward and pleasure," says lead author Matheus Macedo-Lima, who performed the research in the lab of senior author Luke Remage-Healey as a Ph.D. student in UMass Amherst's Neuroscience and Behavior graduate program. "It's a very well-known concept that dopamine is involved in learning. ...

In cancer research, it's a common goal to find something about cancer cells -- some sort of molecule -- that drives their ability to survive, and determine if that molecule could be inhibited with a drug, halting tumor growth. Even better: The molecule isn't present in healthy cells, so they remain untouched by the new therapy. Plenty of progress has been made in this approach, known as molecular targeted cancer therapy. Some current cancer therapeutics inhibit enzymes that become overactive, allowing cells to proliferate, spread and survive beyond ...

What The Study Did: Researchers in this study aimed to determine how each state and the District of Columbia planned to ensure equitable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Authors: Juan C. Rojas, M.D., of the University of Chicago, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.15653) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

What The Study Did: Changes in the use of women's preventive health services during the COVID-19 pandemic, including screening for sexually transmitted infections, breast and cervical cancer, and obtaining contraceptives from pharmacies are described by researchers in this study. Authors: Nora V. Becker, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.1408) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

What The Study Did: Researchers estimated the frequency and magnitude of surprise bills for deliveries and newborn hospitalizations, which are the leading reasons for hospitalization in the United States, to illustrate the  potential benefits of federal legislation that will protect families from most surprise bills. Potential surprise bills were defined as claims from out-of-network clinicians and ancillary service providers, such as an ambulance. Authors: Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.1460) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of ...

What The Study Did: This study investigates whether different risk factors identify the same hospitals caring for a high proportion of disadvantaged patients using seven definitions of social risk. Authors: Susannah M. Bernheim, M.D., M.H.S., of the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.1323) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support ...

PHILADELPHIA-- While more women are entering the field of academic medicine than ever before, they are less likely to be recognized as experts and leaders; they are less likely to receive prestigious awards, be promoted to full professorships, hold leadership roles, or author original research or commentaries in major journals. What's more, articles published by women in high-impact medical journals also have fewer citations than those written by men, especially when women are primary and senior authors, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, published today in JAMA Open Network. Researchers found that of the 5,554 articles published in 5 leading academic medical journals ...

The Mutriku wave power plant was built on the Mutriku breakwater, a site with great wave energy potential, and has been in operation since 2011. With 14 oscillating water columns to transform wave energy, it is the only wave farm in the world that supplies electricity to the grid on a continuous basis. In general, technologies that harness the power of the waves to produce electricity are in their infancy, and this is precisely what is being explored by the UPV/EHU's Research Group EOLO, which focusses on Meteorology, Climate and Environment, among many ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC - Migraine is one of the largest causes of disability in the world. Existing treatments are often not enough to offer full relief for patients. A new study published in The BMJ demonstrates an additional option patients can use in their effort to experience fewer migraines and headaches - a change in diet. "Our ancestors ate very different amounts and types of fats compared to our modern diets," said co-first author Daisy Zamora, PhD, assistant professor in the UNC Department of Psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine. "Polyunsaturated fatty acids, which our bodies do not produce, have increased substantially in our diet due to the addition of oils such as corn, soybean and cottonseed to many processed foods like chips, crackers and granola." The classes of polyunsaturated ...

According to studies in recent years, air pollution affects the thyroid. Thyroid hormones are essential for regulating foetal growth and metabolism, and play an important role in neurological development. Thyroxine (T4) is the main thyroid hormone that is circulating and the thyroid-stimulating hormone is TSH. At 48 hours newborn babies undergo a heel prick test in which thyroxine and TSH levels in the blood are measured. In fact, if the balance of these thyroid hormones is not right, the risk of developing serious diseases increases. That is why, "this study set out to analyse the relationship between atmospheric pollution during pregnancy and the level ...

When the analysis of digital data reaches its limits, methods that focus on observations made by individuals can be useful. In contexts such as the coronavirus pandemic, a method called human social sensing can elicit information that is difficult to obtain from digital trace data. Prof. Frauke Kreuter at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich is now using this method with the global "Covid Trends & Impact Survey" to predict the course of the pandemic. Despite today's researchers in the social sciences having access to historically unparalleled amounts of data, many aspects of contemporary social developments have proven difficult to predict. National elections and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic are highly visible examples ...

The seasonal flu kills up to 600 000 people a year worldwide and has a century-long history of pandemics. Examples include the Spanish flu in the late 1910's or the H1N1 in 2009, which together claimed more than 50 million lives. "The way the stage is set tells us that it is not a matter of if but rather of when there will be a next pandemic. And preparing ourselves for that demands intensive fundamental research and constant accumulation of knowledge about these viruses and the diseases they cause", says Maria João Amorim, IGC principal investigator and leader of the team that conducted the study. When a virus like influenza enters our lungs, it is quickly faced with cocktails of ...

An international study has elucidated the structure of a protein that is required for the assembly and stability of photosynthetic membranes. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria convert carbon dioxide and water into biomass and oxygen with the aid of photosynthesis. This process forms the basis of most forms of life on Earth. Global warming is exposing photosynthetic organisms to increasing levels of stress. This reduces growth rates, and in the longer term presents a threat to food supplies for human populations. An international project, in which Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet ...

Researchers based in Munich and Tuebingen have developed an open-source camera system that images natural habitats as they appear to rodents. During the course of evolution, animals have adapted to the particular demands of their local environments in ways that increased their chances of survival and reproduction. This is also true of diverse aspects of the sensory systems that enable species to perceive their surroundings. In the case of the visual system, these adaptations have shaped features such as the positioning of the eyes and the relative acuity of different regions of the retina. However, our knowledge of the functional evolution of visual systems in mammals has remained relatively sparse. "In the past 10 or 15 years, the mouse has become the favored model ...

Elisa Cordero, a doctor at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, researcher at the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBiS) and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Seville, led a study involving researchers from 12 Spanish hospitals to study the clinical characteristics and facilitate the prognosis of solid organ transplant recipients with COVID-19. The study provides a more precise description of the complications caused by Covid-19 in organ transplant recipients and has provided useful clinical indicators to identify the disease early. This makes it possible to determine therapeutic and care measures ...

There are plenty of negatives associated with smart technology -- tech neck, texting and driving, blue light rays -- but there is also a positive: the digital age is not making us stupid, says University of Cincinnati social/behavioral expert Anthony Chemero. "Despite the headlines, there is no scientific evidence that shows that smartphones and digital technology harm our biological cognitive abilities," says the UC professor of philosophy and psychology who recently co-authored a paper stating such in Nature Human Behaviour. In the paper, Chemero and colleagues at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of ...

A new study disputes the prevailing hypothesis on why Mercury has a big core relative to its mantle (the layer between a planet's core and crust). For decades, scientists argued that hit-and-run collisions with other bodies during the formation of our solar system blew away much of Mercury's rocky mantle and left the big, dense, metal core inside. But new research reveals that collisions are not to blame--the sun's magnetism is. William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland, and Takashi Yoshizaki from Tohoku University developed a model showing ...

Ibaraki, Japan - The flavor of a tomato is an interaction between its taste and aroma. Now, researchers from Japan and the United States have revealed that the pigments that determine the colors of tomatoes also affect their flavor. In a study published this month, researchers from University of Tsukuba developed a new method to rapidly measure the pigment profiles of tomatoes and used the technique to explore how pigments affect the taste and aroma of different tomato varieties. The color of tomatoes is produced by combinations of different types of pigments, including carotenoids and chlorophylls. These pigments can also affect the accumulation of flavor-related compounds such as sugars, which affect the taste of tomatoes, and volatile ...

A surprising study by UNSW on the behaviour of unrelated lizards in very different parts of the world has demonstrated how evolution can lead to different species learning the same skills. The study in Ecology Letters documents how the Anolis lizard species in the Caribbean, and the Draco lizard species in Southeast Asia, have solved the challenge of communicating with one another to defend territories and attract mates. It found males from both species perform elaborate head bob and push up displays, and rapidly extend and retract their often large and conspicuously coloured dewlap, or ...

The muskrat, a stocky brown rodent the size of a Chihuahua - with a tail like a mouse, teeth like a beaver and an exceptional ability to bounce back from rapid die-offs - has lived for thousands of years in one of Earth's largest freshwater deltas, in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Today, this delta lies within one of the largest swaths of protected land in North America: a national park five times the size of Yellowstone that's home to the planet's biggest herd of free-roaming bison and the last natural nesting ground for the endangered whooping crane. It's also central to the culture ...

Guadalupe fur seals (Arctocephalus townsendi) have established a large resting colony in the Gulf of California--bringing the total number of sites where this endangered species now occurs to just four. This new haul-out was discovered on El Farallón de San Ignacio Island, along the mainland coast of Mexico, according to researchers from Mexico and the University of British Columbia. Guadalupe fur seals were hunted for their furs and declared extinct in the late 1800's. However, 14 individuals were discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1950--and the population has grown since then. While still designated as vulnerable to extinction, according to IUCN, the population is believed to total 41,000 individuals and is growing ...

In an Australian world-first, researchers have successfully repurposed two existing medications to reduce the severity of sleep apnoea in people by at least 30 per cent. Affecting millions around the world, sleep apnoea is a condition where the upper airway from the back of the nose to the throat closes repetitively during sleep, restricting oxygen intake and causing people to wake as often as 100 times or more per hour. Those with untreated sleep apnoea are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression, and are two to four times more likely to crash a car than the general population. Despite almost thirty years of research, there are no approved drug therapies to treat the condition. Professor Danny Eckert, Principal ...

Fukuoka, Japan--Medical researchers led by Kyushu University have revealed a possible underlying genetic pathway behind the neurological dysfunction of Rett syndrome. The team found that deficiencies in key genes involved in the pathology triggers neural stem cells to generate less neurons by producing more astrocytes--the brain's maintenance cells. The researchers hope that the molecular pathology they identified, as reported in the journal Cell Reports, can lead to potential therapeutic targets for Rett syndrome in the future. Rett syndrome is a progressive neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in cognition and coordination--with varying severity--and occurs in roughly one in every 10,000 to 15,000 female births. However, it ...

Japanese astronomers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) technique to remove noise in astronomical data due to random variations in galaxy shapes. After extensive training and testing on large mock data created by supercomputer simulations, they then applied this new tool to actual data from Japan's Subaru Telescope and found that the mass distribution derived from using this method is consistent with the currently accepted models of the Universe. This is a powerful new tool for analyzing big data from current and planned astronomy surveys. Wide area survey data can be used to study the large-scale structure of the Universe through measurements of gravitational lensing patterns. In gravitational lensing, the ...