Modern hippos first dispersed in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene, according to a study published November 22, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Beniamino Mecozzi of the Sapienza University of Rome and colleagues. Modern hippos, Hippopotamus amphibius, arose from African ancestors during the Quaternary, a time when hippos were widespread in Europe. However, the details of the modern species’ origin and dispersal into Europe are unclear and highly debated. In this study, Mecozzi and colleagues provide new insights via analysis of a fossil hippo skull from the study area of Tor di Quinto in Rome. The skull of Tor di Quinto, currently housed at the ...

Status threat - the concern that outsiders will undermine your group's status - is associated with increased age, conservatism, conspiracy mentality, and paranoia, in study of 300 US adults ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293930 Article Title: Conspiracy mentality, subclinical paranoia, and political conservatism are associated with perceived status threat Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Transplanting gut microbes from an obesity-resistant shrew can improve microbiome diversity and decrease the weight of obese mice ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293213 Article Title: Gut microbiota of Suncus murinus, a naturally obesity-resistant animal, improves the ecological diversity of the gut microbiota in high-fat-diet-induced obese mice Author Countries: Japan, China Funding: This work (PONE-D-23-21281) was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the ...

Airborne virus infectivity can be reduced by up to 99.98% by commercially available NPBI-based air purifiers, per experiment using real-world concentrations of COVID-19 strains, flu and RSV viruses ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293504 Article Title: Bipolar ionization rapidly inactivates real-world, airborne concentrations of infective respiratory viruses Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. All research and 3rd party laboratory testing was funded entirely by GPS Air. Edward Sobek is an employee of GPS Air ...

7 in 8 homicide victims in South Africa are male, with homicide rates peaking on weekends and holidays, and firearms and sharp items being the most common murder weapons, in analysis of almost 20,000 2017 post-mortems. END ...

In Nepalese survey, 1 in 5 men who have sex with men report having attempted suicide, with over 40 percent experiencing some suicidal ideation. #### Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0002348 Article Title: Suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt among men who have sex with men in Nepal: Findings from a cross-sectional study Author Countries: Nepal, USA Funding: RS received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Award Number: K01DA051346). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision ...

Spurred by the current climate crisis, there has been a heightened attention within the scientific community in recent years to how past climate variation contributed to historic human migration and other behaviors.  Now, an international group of scientists — including archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, paleo-scientists, a volcanologist and others — are calling for a strengthened commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration to study past and present human-environmental interactions, which they say will advance our understanding of these complex, entangled histories. Their recommendations were published ...

WASHINGTON – Using a specialized device that translates images into sound, Georgetown University Medical Center neuroscientists and colleagues showed that people who are blind recognized basic faces using the part of the brain known as the fusiform face area, a region that is crucial for the processing of faces in sighted people. The findings appeared in PLOS ONE on November 22, 2023. “It’s been known for some time that people who are blind can compensate for their loss of vision, ...

Susceptibility to misinformation and disinformation likely to have played part in Leave vote New research from the University of Bath’s School of Management finds that higher cognitive ability was strongly linked to voting to Remain in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union Membership. The study shows that cognitive skills including memory, verbal fluency, fluid reasoning and numerical reasoning, were correlated with how people decided to vote.  Lead author Dr Chris Dawson, from the University of Bath’s School of Management, said: “This study adds to existing academic evidence showing that low ...

ETH Zurich researchers deployed an autonomous excavator, called HEAP, to build a six metre-high and sixty-five-metre-long dry-stone wall. The wall is embedded in a digitally planned and autonomously excavated landscape and park. The team of researchers included: Gramazio Kohler Research, the Robotics Systems Lab, Vision for Robotics Lab, and the Chair of Landscape Architecture. They developed this innovative design application as part of the National Centre of Competence in Research for Digital Fabrication ...

November 22, 2023 — Black pregnant individuals frequently experience more than one mental health concern, according to findings published by Susan Gennaro, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor in the William F. Connell School of Nursing at Boston College, and colleagues in The Nurse Practitioner. They say prenatal screening and treatment for stress is warranted in addition to care of depression and anxiety. The Nurse Practitioner is part of the Lippincott portfolio of Wolters Kluwer.  "Prenatal interventions for Black people should aim to address mental health distress and treat high depression, anxiety, and stress," the research ...

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded associate professor of physics Benjamin Jones a $540,000 grant to initiate a new collaborative research partnership between The University of Texas at Arlington and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. The project aims to prove a new atomic cooling approach required for the next generation of neutrino mass research. Neutrinos are the most abundant particles with mass in the universe. Every time atomic nuclei come together (in the case of stars like the sun) or break apart (such as in nuclear ...

In C. elegans, the protein SID1 plays a crucial role in the systemic RNA interference process by facilitating the transport of exogenous double-stranded RNA into the cytoplasm. Previously, Chen-Yu Zhang's group has already demonstrated that intact plant miRNA found in dietary sources can be absorbed through the mammalian digestive system and mediate cross-kingdom gene regulation. Mammalian SID-1 transmembrane family proteins, namely SIDT1 and SIDT2, have attracted considerable attention due to their role in facilitating the uptake of regulatory exogenous small RNAs, such as small interfering RNA (siRNA) and plant-derived ...

Trans-vaccenic acid (TVA), a long-chain fatty acid found in meat and dairy products from grazing animals such as cows and sheep, improves the ability of CD8+ T cells to infiltrate tumors and kill cancer cells, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Chicago. The research, published this week in Nature, also shows that patients with higher levels of TVA circulating in the blood responded better to immunotherapy, suggesting that it could have potential as a nutritional supplement to complement clinical treatments for cancer. “There are many studies trying to decipher ...

Drug overdose deaths rose markedly between January to June 2018 and July to December 2021 among 10- to 44-year-old girls and women who were pregnant or pregnant within the previous 12 months, according to a new study by researchers at National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health. Overdose mortality more than tripled among those aged 35 to 44 during the study period, from 4.9 deaths per 100,000 mothers aged 35 to 44 with a live birth in the 2018 period to 15.8 in the 2021 period. Over 60% of these pregnancy-associated overdose deaths occurred outside healthcare settings, ...

In Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, cognitive decline is driven by the overaccumulation of a normal brain protein known as tau. Wherever tau builds up, nearby brain tissue starts to degenerate and die. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found — in mice — that Alzheimer’s-like tau deposits in the brain lead to the accumulation of a form of cholesterol known as cholesteryl esters, and that lowering cholesteryl ester levels ...

About The Study: This study of Medicare claims data for 4,386 hospitals found that higher segregation of hospital care was associated with poorer health outcomes for both Black and white patients, with significantly greater negative health outcomes for Black populations, supporting racial segregation as a root cause of health disparities. Policymakers and clinical leaders could address this important public health issue through payment reform efforts and expansion of health insurance coverage, in addition to supporting upstream efforts to reduce racial segregation in hospital ...

About The Study: This study showed that during the Omicron-dominant period, patients with solid cancer and COVID-19 had higher mortality and hospitalization risks following COVID-19 infection versus patients without solid cancer with COVID-19, and that COVID-19 vaccination in the patients with cancer mitigated this risk.  Authors: Salomon M. Stemmer, M.D., of Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, Israel, 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/jamaoncol.2023.5042) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional ...

About The Study: Longer cumulative duration of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication use was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly hypertension and arterial disease, compared with nonuse in this study of 278,000 individuals in Sweden ages 6 to 64 who had an incident ADHD diagnosis or ADHD medication dispensation. These findings highlight the importance of carefully weighing potential benefits and risks when making treatment decisions about ...

About The Study: In this study of 103,000 individuals with early-stage breast cancer, Black patients had a higher mortality risk compared with white patients among those with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. This highlights the need for personalized treatment strategies for Black patients to help them attain pathologic complete response.  Authors: Shipra Gandhi, M.D., of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed ...

When you eagerly dig into a long-awaited dinner, signals from your stomach to your brain keep you from eating so much you’ll regret it – or so it’s been thought. That theory had never really been directly tested until a team of scientists at UC San Francisco recently took up the question.     The picture, it turns out, is a little different.    The team, led by Zachary Knight, PhD, a UCSF professor of physiology in the Kavli Institute for Fundamental ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report in the journal Nature that they have found a way to get antibacterial drugs through the nearly impenetrable outer membrane of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that – once it infects a person – is notoriously difficult to treat. By bombarding P. aeruginosa with hundreds of compounds and using machine learning to determine the physical and chemical traits of those molecules that accumulated inside it, the team discovered how to penetrate the bacterium’s defenses. They used this information ...

Cell and organ transplants can be lifesaving, but patients often encounter long waiting lists due to the shortage of suitable donors. According to donatelife.net, in 2021 6,000 people died in the U.S. alone while waiting for a transplant. One day, transplants generated from stem cells may alleviate the constant organ donor shortage, making transplants available to a larger group of patients. An issue with donation, whether it’s with solid tissues or cells from deceased or living donors, is immune rejection. Unless the donor material is carefully matched to the recipient’s immune system, the transplant will be rejected. However, stem cell research ...

Effective management of land, whether for agriculture, forests, or settlements, plays a crucial role in addressing climate change and achieving future climate targets. Land use strategies to mitigate climate change include stopping deforestation, along with enhancing forest management efforts. Countries have recognized the importance of the land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector, with 118 of 143 countries including land-based emissions reductions and removals in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are at the heart of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of its long-term goals. A new study, published in Nature, demonstrates that estimates of current land-based ...

The aim of the B-GOOD project (Giving Beekeeping Guidance By Computational-Assisted Decision Making) was to pave the way towards healthy and sustainable beekeeping within the European Union by following a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach. By merging data from within and around beehives, as well as wider socioeconomic conditions and by developing and testing innovative tools to perform risk assessments, B-GOOD provided guidance for beekeepers and helped them make better and more informed decisions. The communication of scientific information and the transformation of scientific ...