The University of Guam College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences has released Volume 11 of its peer-reviewed online journal "Pacific Asia Inquiry: Multidisciplinary Perspectives." The volume is available for download on the UOG website at http://www.uog.edu/pai. This latest volume includes manuscripts representing examples of historical, socio-cultural, and philosophical research. Topics range from the impact of climate change and food security in the Marshall Islands to the Jesuit presence in the Mariana Islands, among others. Inserted between the articles are ...

Researchers have been investigating how the brain controls habitual seeking behaviors such as addiction. A recent study by Professor Sue-Hyun Lee from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering revealed that a long-term value memory maintained in the ventral striatum in the brain is a neural basis of our habitual seeking behavior. This research was conducted in collaboration with the research team lead by Professor Hyoung F. Kim from Seoul National University. Given that addictive behavior is deemed a habitual one, this research provides new insights for developing therapeutic interventions for addiction. Habitual seeking behavior involves ...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.--If someone joins a church, mosque or synagogue, they may be seeking better emotional or spiritual health. But according to research out of West Virginia University, faith communities have the potential to promote physical wellbeing, as well. A new study led by Angel Smothers, Stephanie Young and Elizabeth Morrissey--researchers with the WVU School of Nursing--and James Thomas from the School of Medicine's Division of Exercise Physiology suggests that healthcare providers who work directly with a faith community can help congregants stick with an exercise program. Their results appear in the Journal of Interprofessional Education and Practice. "Even in Biblical texts, there were always caregivers who ...

In a recently published paper in the Journal of Hydrology, PhD student Mengzhu Chen and Dean of Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's Design School, Dr Konstantinos Papadikis, analysed historical flood series and meteorological data from 158 catchment areas across the UK. They found that flood series in most areas do not follow historical patterns. This finding directly challenges the use of a type of analysis that focuses on how often floods occurred in an area in the past. Flood frequency analysis has been the cornerstone of flood risk control, hydraulic structure design, and water resource management. "Conventional methods for flood frequency analysis fail to take into ...

Annapolis, MD; June 3, 2021--Amid the steady growth of solar energy production in the United States, pollinator conservation at solar installations has become an appealing secondary pursuit, but the long-term success of such efforts remains to be seen. Can the land within a solar farm be made a true resource for pollinating insects? Will solar developers see value in the extra investment to plant and maintain flowering vegetation? A group of entomologists tackles these questions in a new article published today in the journal Environmental Entomology. They say pairing solar energy with pollinator habitat offers great promise, but scientific evaluation and meaningful standards will be key to making it a true win-win ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - June 03, 2021 - When people think of microbiome, they typically think about the gut, but there's also a breast microbiome, and the role it plays in breast health and breast cancer isn't thoroughly understood. A microbiome is the collection of microorganisms that live in a particular environment in the body. In 2018, scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health, showed that diet can influence the breast microbiome, demonstrating that like the gut microbiome, the breast microbiota can respond to diet. Now, new research ...

A dash of milk could make all the difference to a healthy heart as new research from the University of South Australia finds that people who regularly consume milk have a lower risk of heart disease. Conducted in partnership with the University of Reading, the world-first study used a genetic-approach to investigate causal relationships between milk consumption and risk of cardiovascular disease. Assessing genetic biomarkers among 400,000+ people, the study found that greater milk consumption was associated with lower blood cholesterol, lower blood lipid levels, and a lower risk of heart disease. Cardiovascular diseases are ...

Almost half of the world's population currently lives in cities and that number is projected to rise significantly in the near future. This rapid urbanization is contributing to increased flood risk due to the growing concentration of people and resources in cities and the clustering of cities along coastlines. These urban shifts also result in more complex and interconnected systems on which people depend, such as transportation networks. Disruptions to urban traffic networks from flooding or other natural disasters can have serious socioeconomic consequences. In fact, what are defined as indirect impacts from these types of events, such as commute-related ...

Researchers from Osaka University, Toyo University, and Kyushu Institute of Technology clarified the expression mechanism of semiconducting and metallic properties in graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) by analyzing the carrier transport properties in the field effect transistor (FET) with a multilayer GNR channel (Fig. 1). The research team fabricated multilayer GNRs with precisely controlled numbers of layers via a chemical vapor deposition method using a solid template. "This enabled us to compare the observed carrier transport properties in the FET using a multilayer ...

A recent study by a team of researchers led by Dr Vinod Kumar Saranathan from the Division of Science at Yale-NUS College has discovered a complex, three-dimensional crystal called the single gyroid within feathers of the blue-winged leafbird. Dr Saranathan and his team's breakthrough came from their investigation of the feather colours of leafbirds, an enigmatic group of perching birds endemic to South and Southeast Asia (including Singapore), one species of which has evolved the unique crystals in its plumage. By comparing the colour-producing nanostructures present in close relatives, the team reported that this species is able to directly synthesise single gyroid ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - College students who engaged in four or more high-impact practices such as study abroad or internships have a 70% chance of either enrolling in graduate school or finding a full-time job after graduating with a bachelor's degree, finds a new University at Buffalo study. Each additional high-impact practice increased a student's chance of attaining a bachelor's degree and a full-time job by 17% or enrolling in graduate school by 30%, according to the study. These practices - such as study abroad, internships, undergraduate research, community service, first-year ...

In the rapidly growing field of hybrid quantum photonics, the realization of miniaturized, integrated quantum-optical systems with intense light-matter interaction is of great importance for both fundamental and applied research. In particular, the development of methods for reliably generating, controlling, storing and retrieving quantum states with high fidelity through coherent interaction of light and matter opened up a wide field of applications for quantum information and quantum networks. These include, for example, optical switching, quantum memories, and quantum repeaters. One promising approach for efficient light-matter interaction is the integration of light-guiding platforms in a near-room-temperature alkali vapor. Several research groups have aimed to ...

Lithium is a vital element in the batteries that power electric vehicles, but soaring lithium demand is expected to exhaust land-based reserves by 2080. KAUST researchers have now developed an economically viable system that can extract high-purity lithium from seawater. The oceans contain about 5,000 times more lithium than the land but at extremely low concentrations of about 0.2 parts per million (ppm). Larger ions, including sodium, magnesium and potassium, are all present in seawater at much higher concentrations; however, previous research efforts to tease ...

Quantum computing and quantum communication are believed to be the future of information technology. In order to achieve the challenging and long-standing goal to make secure, wide-spread quantum communication networks a reality, high-brightness single-photon sources are indispensable. Single-photon emission from semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) has been shown to be a pure and efficient non-classical light source with a high degree of indistinguishability. However, the total internal reflection (TIR) as a result of the high semiconductor-to-air refractive index contrast severely limits the single-photon extraction efficiency. Another crucial step in the development ...

For decades, researchers have debated whether the buildup of certain electrical activities in the brain indicates that human beings are unable to act out of free will. Experiments spanning the 1960s and 1980s measured brain signals noninvasively and led many neuroscientists to believe that our brains make decisions before we do--that human actions were initiated by electrical waves that did not reflect free, conscious thought. However, a new article in Trends in Cognitive Science argues that recent research undermines this case against free will. "This new perspective on the data turns on its head the way well-known findings have been interpreted," said Adina Roskies, the Helman Family Distinguished Professor and professor of philosophy at ...

Durham, NC -- Type 2 diabetes patients who are not overweight and who have had the disorder for less than a decade can benefit from stromal stem cells transplanted from their own bone marrow, according to a study published today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine. In a randomized clinical trial at Vinmec Research Institute of Stem Cell and Gene Technology in Hanoi, Vietnam, researchers investigated the safety and potential therapeutic value of administering bone marrow stromal stem cells to patients with Type 2 diabetes. In each case, the cells were autologous, ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (June 3, 2021) -- Since arriving to the northern Atlantic Ocean less than 30 years ago, lionfish have quickly become one of the most widespread and voracious invasive species, negatively impacting marine ecosystems--particularly coral reefs--from the northeast coast of the United States to the Caribbean Islands. In a new study, an international research team including the California Academy of Sciences presents four new records of lionfish off the coast of Brazil, confirming the invasion of the predatory fish into the South Atlantic for the first time. Their findings, published today in Biological Invasions, discuss how the lionfish may have arrived in the ...

A team of scientists led by Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and Rice University in the US, has uncovered the key to the outstanding toughness of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). h-BN can withstand ten times the amount of force that graphene can, which is known as one of the toughest materials on Earth. A two-dimensional (2D) material, h-BN has a thickness of just one atom. First used in cosmetics in the 1940s, it was soon abandoned due to its high price, making a resurgence in the late 1990s after technology made its production cheaper. Today, it is used by nearly all leading producers of cosmetic products because of its ability to absorb excess facial sebum and disperse pigment evenly, ...

Mangrove vegetation, which grows naturally in subtropical shorelines, provides a wide range of ecosystem functions such as reducing coastal erosion, promoting biodiversity, and removing nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon dioxide. These vital ecological functions are influenced by the water flow around the intricate mangrove roots, which create a complex energetic process that mixes up sediments and generates a depositional region behind the roots. How these mangrove roots interact with water flow is believed to be a key element in mitigating coastal erosion. Accurately projecting hydrodynamic erosion and the essential amount of mangrove species has been a challenge for managers and restoration experts to forecast a successful component of project designs. That is because ...

WASHINGTON (June 3, 2021) - Nearly three-quarters of breast cancer patients (73%) report using at least one type of complementary medicine after cancer diagnosis, while oncologists believe that less than half (43%) of patients are using these approaches during cancer care. These and other findings from a national survey of oncologists and breast cancer patients were released in conjunction with the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting. The study found that doctors report discussing integrative health with only about half of patients, leading patients to seek information outside the clinic. "Cancer is a complex ...

Astronomers studying the fast-moving jet of material ejected by a still-forming, massive young star found a major difference between that jet and those ejected by less-massive young stars. The scientists made the discovery by using the U.S. National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to make the most detailed image yet of the inner region of such a jet coming from a massive young star. Both low- and high-mass young stars, or protostars, propel jets outward perpendicular to a disk of material closely orbiting the star. In stars with masses similar to the Sun, these jets are narrowed, or focused, relatively tightly near to the star in a process called collimation. Because most high-mass protostars are more distant, studying ...

New research into Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggests that secondary infections and new inflammatory events amplify the brain's immune response and affect memory in mice and in humans - even when these secondary events occur outside the brain. Scientists believe that key brain cells (astrocytes and microglia) are already in an active state due to inflammation caused by AD and this new research shows that secondary infections can then trigger an over-the-top response in those cells, which has knock-on effects on brain rhythms and on cognition. In the study, just published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, the journal ...

Facing the triple threat of climate change, loss of nature and pollution, the world must deliver on its commitment to restore at least one billion degraded hectares of land in the next decade - an area about the size of China. Countries also need to add similar commitments for oceans, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), launched as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 gets underway. The report, #GenerationRestoration: Ecosystem restoration for People, Nature and Climate, highlights that humanity is using about 1.6 times the amount of services that nature can provide sustainably. That ...

June 3, 2021 - LA JOLLA, CA--Mining the world's most comprehensive drug repurposing collection for COVID-19 therapies, scientists have identified 90 existing drugs or drug candidates with antiviral activity against the coronavirus that's driving the ongoing global pandemic. Among those compounds, the Scripps Research study identified four clinically approved drugs and nine compounds in other stages of development with strong potential to be repurposed as oral drugs for COVID-19, according to results published June 3 in the journal Nature Communications. Of the drugs that prevented the coronavirus from replicating in human cells, 19 were found to work in concert with or boost the activity of remdesivir, an antiviral therapy approved ...

MIT researchers have created the first fiber with digital capabilities, able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. Yoel Fink, who is a professor of material sciences and electrical engineering, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and the senior author on the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection. Or, you might someday store your wedding music in the gown you wore on the big day -- more on that later. Fink and his colleagues describe the features of the digital fiber in Nature Communications. Until now, electronic fibers ...