Researchers have developed a new deep learning AI tool that generates life-like birdsongs to train bird identification tools, helping ecologists to monitor rare species in the wild. The findings are presented in the British Ecological Society journal, Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Identifying common bird species through their song has never been easier, with numerous phone apps and software available to both ecologists and the public. But what if the identification software has never heard a particular bird before, or only has a small sample of recordings to reference? This is a problem facing ...

Oral nicotine pouches, a tobacco-leaf-free product marketed as an alternative to cigarettes, do little to curb current smokers’ nicotine cravings, according to a new study. Public health scientists with The Center for Tobacco Research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute report these findings in the medical journal Addiction.  Nicotine pouches are small pre-portioned bags filled with nicotine powder, flavorings, artificial sweeteners and other chemicals that extend shelf life. Marketed ...

Bottom Line: Over 10% of fecal immunochemical tests (FIT) used for routine colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in a safety-net health system contained unsatisfactory samples that could not be processed. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Authors: Rasmi Nair, MBBS, PhD, an assistant professor at the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health of UT Southwestern Medical Center, and Po-Hong Liu, MD, a gastroenterology fellow at UT Southwestern Medical Center Background: ...

Counterfeit Australian identity documents, especially driver’s licences, rank among some of the most frequently listed and sold identity documents on anonymous dark web marketplaces, according to new research from the Centre of Forensic Science at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). These documents are used by crime rings, terrorist organisations and other criminals for a wide range of illicit activities, including identity crime, money laundering, human and drug trafficking, illegal immigration, scams and ...

It’s one of the most famous taglines in film history, immortalising sharks as ruthless predators. But beyond the horror generated by Spielberg’s Jaws series, a persistent fear of sharks remains, with consequences that extend into reality.   Following human-shark interactions in South Australia, this fear has prompted the Education Department’s ban on school-based sea activities for at least the remainder of the term. And while safety is at the core of such decisions, we should be cautious of scaremongering, says UniSA shark ...

Researchers from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine have identified the role of iron in ocular toxoplasmosis (OT), a form of toxoplasmosis that causes blindness. They found reduced iron concentration in the clear gel part of the eye of human patients and iron accumulation in the retina of mice. Treatment of mice with a compound that decreases iron was successful in reducing their symptoms. Their findings show the important role of iron in the disease and that controlling it may lead to a successful treatment. Their ...

An international team of scientists has uncovered the vital role of microglia, the immune cells in the brain that acts as its dedicated defense team, in early human brain development. By incorporating microglia into lab-grown brain organoids, scientists were able mimic the complex environment within the developing human brain to understand how microglia influence brain cell growth and development. This research represents a significant leap forward in the development of human brain organoids and has the potential to significantly impact ...

Monocarboxylate transporter 1 (MCT1) plays a crucial role in the transport of lactate, pyruvate, ketone bodies, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), as well as MCT1-targeted drugs in various tissues. How MCT1 and lactate in the intestine modulate the physiology and pathophysiology of the body is unclear. A recent study published in Life Metabolism reveals that intestinal MCT1 regulates intestinal inflammation and metabolism in a sex-dimorphic pattern, which further confirms that metabolic homeostasis is ...

WASHINGTON — AGU congratulates the many members of our scientific community whose work contributed to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), which was published today. Climate reporting will remain essential as we close out a year of record global temperatures, wildfires in Canada, Hawaii and the U.S. Southeast, droughts in the Amazon and Mississippi river basins, and billion-dollar flooding disasters in the U.S Northeast and California, aggravated by human-driven climate change. AGU’s upcoming 2023 Annual Meeting, convening 11-15 December, will host authors from each of the NCA’s 32 chapters and feature deep ...

Xanthan gum, derived from plants like cabbage and known for its carbohydrate content, serves as a natural protective barrier in cosmetics to retain their benefits on the skin. In a recent development, this remarkable substance has been harnessed to create a protective shield for battery electrodes, rather than for the skin.   Professor Changshin Jo from the Graduate Institute of Ferrous & Eco Materials Technology and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Jooyoung Jang, a PhD candidate, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), have crafted a protective film by blending ...

The opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey describe its eponymous hero as polytropos, a man of many turns. It’s no coincidence that SFI co-founder Murray Gell-Mann invoked Homer’s crafty, long-voyaging hero when he envisioned the pinnacle of the scientific endeavor.  “Murray described his ideal scientist as an ‘Odyssean,’ one who lives somewhere between the analytical Apollonian and the intuitive Dionysian, one who loves to simplify yet is equally enamored of complication,” says David Krakauer, SFI President and Editor-in-Chief of the SFI Press. “Over the course of Murray’s life, he realized this ideal in his own ...

Peer-reviewed / Review and Analysis / People The Lancet: Alarming new projections reveal soaring health risks of persistent global inaction over the climate emergency New global projections in the 8th annual report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change reveal the grave and mounting threat to health of further delayed action on climate change, with the world likely to experience a 4.7-fold increase in heat-related deaths by mid-century. Report also highlights how climate inaction is costing lives and livelihoods today. In 2022, individuals were, on average, exposed to 86 days of health-threatening ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, genomic surveillance proved vital in helping understand the evolution and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Now, an international group of researchers is calling for its potential to be harnessed to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a major global challenge that could ultimately result in many more deaths than the coronavirus pandemic. AMR already causes substantial sickness and death worldwide, responsible for approximately 1.27 million deaths in 2019. Some estimates suggest that by 2050, it could kill as many as 10 million people each year. Professor Sharon Peacock at the University ...

The UK soft drinks industry levy introduced in 2018 may have reduced the number of under 18s having a tooth removed due to tooth decay by 12%, suggests research published in the open access journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health.  The fall in hospital admissions may have saved more than 5,500 hospital admissions for tooth decay alone and the largest reductions were in children aged up to nine years old. Sugar-sweetened drinks account for around 30% of the added sugars in the diets of children aged one to three years and over 50% by late ...

High-intensity interval training in water, often called aquatic HIIT (AHIIT) improves exercise capacity in adults with chronic conditions and has a similar impact as land based training (LBHIIT), suggests research published in the open access journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. The researchers say AHIIT may provide a safe and valuable alternative for people with chronic conditions who are unable to perform LBHIIT. HIIT is a type of interval training exercise that involves brief bursts of high intensity movements followed by short recovery periods of lower intensity movements. HIIT is considered to have more health benefits than moderate-intensity ...

Peer-reviewed / Systematic review and meta-analysis / People The Lancet: Deferred clamping of umbilical cord reduces risk of death in premature babies by at least a third, suggest two studies with the most comprehensive analysis to date Meta-analysis of 3,292 infants across 21 studies finds premature babies whose umbilical cord is clamped 30 seconds or more after birth are less likely to die before leaving the hospital, compared to those whose cord is clamped immediately after birth. A second companion meta-analysis of 47 trials including 6,094 babies suggests waiting at least ...

Monitoring brain injury biomarkers and glucose variation in patients who have suffered an acute cranial injury during the entire first week of hospitalisation can provide a more accurate picture of the pathological process. This is according to a paper by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in The Lancet Neurology. It is hoped that their findings can eventually lead to more personalised treatment. After samples of brain injury markers and glucose have been taken over the entire first week of intensive care, patients with traumatic brain injury can be divided into different groups with different disease trajectories ...

Waiting for two minutes or longer to clamp the umbilical cord of a premature baby soon after birth could help reduce the risk of death, compared with immediately clamping the umbilical cord, or waiting a shorter time before doing so. Delaying clamping could decrease the child's risk of death by more than half relative to immediate clamping. The new findings, published today in two companion papers in The Lancet, examined clinical trial data and outcomes of thousands of premature babies which had delayed cord clamping compared to those whose cord was clamped immediately after birth. Delaying clamping of the umbilical cord allows ...

Richard Haynes, a former research forester and program manager at the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, received the 2023 Marcus Wallenberg Prize at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. Awarded annually, the international prize is bestowed by the King of Sweden in recognition of scientific achievements that contribute to forestry and forest industries. Haynes was recognized for his work developing the Timber Assessment Market Model (TAMM), a spatial model that projects volumes and prices in the solidwood products and sawtimber stumpage ...

Animal offspring may survive better when their groups are in greater conflict with rival factions, research from the University of Bristol has shown for the first time. Battles between competing groups can lead to serious injury or death and intergroup conflict has always been thought to have a negative effect on reproductive success. But findings published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B turn that long-held belief on its head.  Using a decade of life-history data from a wild population of dwarf mongooses, University of Bristol researchers found that ...

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed previous gains made in controlling HIV blood levels and worsened health disparities, according to UC Francisco researchers leading the largest U.S. evaluation of the impact of the public health crisis on people with HIV. While the country had been making progress on its goals to reduce HIV before COVID-19, the researchers found the pandemic compromised those gains by leveling off improvements in the overall population and worsening outcomes among Black patients and people who inject illicit drugs. “Equity in HIV outcomes likely worsened during the pandemic, with decreased ...

Dr. Sonia Hernández, professor in the Department of History at Texas A&M University, has published an article in the September issue of the Journal of American History, the leading scholarly publication in the field of American history and the official academic journal of the Organization of American Historians. Her article, titled "Gendering Transnational State Violence: Intertwined Histories of Intrigue and Injustice along the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1900-1913,” ...

We’ve known for more than a century that women outlive men. But new research led by UC San Francisco and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that, at least in the United States, the gap has been widening for more than a decade. The trend is being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, among other factors. In a research paper, published Nov. 13, 2023, in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors found the difference between how long American men and women live increased to 5.8 years in 2021, the largest it’s been since 1996. This ...

As more research reveals how many microplastic particles humans are ingesting and absorbing in their bloodstreams, Duke and Appalachian State researchers led by Joana Sipe and Christine Hendren have examined a source for microplastic absorption many would not have considered: sex toys. In a study originally published in Microplastics and Nanoplastics in March 2023, researchers will discuss the risks of sex toys at the 2023 Society for Risk Analysis Annual Conference. The majority of American adults report having used sex toys, which, ...

CAR T cell therapy, a powerful type of immunotherapy, has begun to revolutionize cancer treatment. Pioneered at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), the therapy involves engineering a patient’s T cells so they recognize and attack cancer cells. These CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) T cells are then multiplied in a lab and given back to the patient to be a continual fighting force against the cancer. New research from the lab of physician-scientist Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, shows that disrupting a single ...