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Earth Science17 Oct 2023

The earthworm effect: unraveling soil weathering dynamics

17 October 2023 The Geological Society of America Release No. 23-42 Contact: Justin Samuel +1-303-357-1026 jsamuel@geosociety.org For Immediate Release Contributed by Sarah Derouin Pittsburgh, Pa., USA: Earthworms, the hardworking invertebrates that grace the upper layers of soil, have long been considered helpful in our home gardens. Earthworms are prolific munchers, grinding up organic material and sediment grains that make up soils. Although they are very different animals, worms, like many poultry, have gizzards. “Worms will ingest some larger soil grains, and then they use the strongest and largest of those grains, retaining them in their gizzard,” ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

New dating of cave art reveals history of Puerto Rican people

17 October 2023 The Geological Society of America Release No. 23-40 Contact: Justin Samuel +1-303-357-1026 jsamuel@geosociety.org For Immediate Release Leer en español. Contributed by Sarah Derouin Pittsburgh, Pa., USA: In the karstic caves of Puerto Rico, cave art paints the rock walls. Previous research has assigned ages to this art based on the ages of nearby archaeological artifacts within the caves, but these ages are relative and may not reflect the true timing of the art creation. Now, a new study to be presented Wednesday at the Geological Society of America’s GSA Connects 2023 meeting shows that researchers have refined the age of this rupestrian ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

U.S. groundwater is getting saltier—what that means for infrastructure, ecosystems, and human health

17 October 2023 The Geological Society of America Release No. 23-41 Contact: Justin Samuel +1-303-357-1026 jsamuel@geosociety.org For Immediate Release Contributed by Sarah Derouin Pittsburgh, Pa., USA: Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have been monitoring groundwater quality in wells across the country for more than three decades, looking for harmful chemicals or residual substances that may cause harm to ecosystems or humans. In all, they have measured up to 500 chemical constituents, including major ions, metals, pesticides, volatile organic compounds, fertilizers, and radionuclides. Of ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Pathogen that plagues food processing plants eradicated by blue light

Washington, D.C. – Blue light kills both dried cells and biofilms of the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes, a frequent contaminant of food processing facilities. Demise of L. monocytogenes occurred quickest when cells or biofilms were placed on polystyrene, a widely used, transparent form of plastic. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “These results contribute to advancing our understanding of the potential of blue light to treat inert surfaces contaminated with L. monocytogenes,” said corresponding author ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

Public health interventions prevented transmission within BU most SARS-CoV-2 cases

(Boston)— SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, began impacting the U.S. in March 2020 with many schools and universities shifting to remote education by early April 2020 in response to the public health emergency. Despite public health interventions (increased ventilation, masking policies, surveillance testing, contact tracing of confirmed cases and quarantine procedures for infected students, faculty and staff) there were still concerns that institutes of higher education would be a hotbed of transmission, including transmission from students into surrounding communities. But, were these fears warranted? A ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

CastleVax Inc. receives BARDA project NextGen award valued at up to $338 million to advance intranasal NDV-based COVID-19 booster vaccine into phase 2b clinical efficacy testing

CastleVax, a clinical stage vaccine platform company, has received a Project NexGen award valued at up to $338 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to support the development of a next-generation, booster vaccine to protect against COVID-19 for years to come. The initial phase of the award provides approximately $8.5 million to plan a Phase 2b clinical trial that would compare CastleVax’s vaccine to currently ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

New cancer therapy target stops tumor cells from sharing resources

Researchers at University of California San Diego have discovered a process in which liver cells share molecules via vesicle exchange in order to multiply under conditions that would ordinarily suppress cell proliferation. They also found evidence that this process occurs in various types of cancer cells, paving the way for a new approach to tackling treatment resistance in cancer. The findings were published on October 17, 2023 in eLife. “Understanding cell proliferation is a fundamental issue in both cancer research and biomedical science as a whole,” said Gen-Sheng Feng, PhD, a professor of pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and of molecular biology ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

International team reveals source of largest ever Mars quake

A global team of scientists have announced the results of an unprecedented collaboration to search for the source of the largest ever seismic event recorded on Mars. The study, led by the University of Oxford, rules out a meteorite impact, suggesting instead that the quake was the result of enormous tectonic forces within Mars’ crust. The quake, which had a magnitude of 4.7 and caused vibrations to reverberate through the planet for at least six hours, was recorded by NASA’s InSight lander on May 4 2022. ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

The dark side of the American lawn

The American residential lawn is, for many, an iconic landscape and about half of homeowners in the US use fertilizer to keep their yards green and lush. Some proportion of the nitrogen in this fertilizer enters the broader environment, with negative consequences including algal blooms and deoxygenated waters. Peter Groffman and colleagues studied residential landscapes in the Baltimore, Maryland metropolitan area, which drains to the Chesapeake Bay, seeking to identify locations (hotspots) or times (hot moments) with disproportionately high rates of nitrogen export. The authors went to lawns in exurban, ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

New study sheds light on the developmental mechanism of allergic conjunctivitis

When it comes to eye allergies, the transition from allergen contact to bothersome symptoms has always been quick, appearing within a span of a few minutes. The initial stage of allergic conjunctivitis involves the penetration of allergen through the epithelial cell layer (cells covering the outer surface of the body). However, the exact mechanism underlying the rapid allergen transfer has remained a mystery so far. Fortunately, in a new ground-breaking study published in the journal JCI Insight on October 11, 2023, researchers from Juntendo ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

Western University researchers reveal link between Alzheimer’s and sex hormones

LONDON, ON., CA: Alzheimer’s disease disproportionately affects women, who represent about two-thirds of those diagnosed with the late-onset type of the disease. Previous research has shown Alzheimer’s is also more severe and progresses more rapidly in women, and women with Alzheimer’s experience a steeper cognitive decline – loss of memory, attention, and the ability to communicate and make decisions – compared to men with the disease. The biological bases for these differences between men and women with Alzheimer’s disease are not well understood. ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

How to help save plants from extinction

Now is the time to identify the conditions that cause plants to die. Doing so will allow us to better protect plants by choosing conservation targets more strategically, UC Riverside botanists argue in a new paper. Published in the Oxford Academic journal Conservation Physiology, the paper demonstrates how scientists can learn the limits past which plants’ vital functions shut down, and makes the case that not doing so is a mistake in this era of increasing drought and wildfires. “We can measure the amount of water loss plants ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

Kennedy Krieger receives $5 million grant to expand reach of its pediatric post-COVID-19 clinic and support school students

BALTIMORE, October 17, 2023—Researchers at Kennedy Krieger Institute have received a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), to expand access to comprehensive care for children and adolescents with long COVID-19, particularly among underserved populations. During the five-year project, researchers at the Pediatric Post-COVID-19 Rehabilitation Clinic will receive up to $1 million annually to expand and strengthen its integrative services in Baltimore and the overall mid-Atlantic ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

Can lifestyle interventions benefit patients with advanced breast cancer?

MIAMI, FLORIDA (Oct. 17, 2023) – Can lifestyle interventions such as exercise and intermittent fasting help patients with advanced breast cancer better tolerate side effects from treatment? That is the question Tracy Crane, PhD, RDN, and Carmen Calfa, MD, at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and their collaborators will strive to answer with a $4-million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Crane, co-lead of Cancer Control and director of Lifestyle Medicine, Prevention and ...

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Technology17 Oct 2023

Unlocking nature's silent conversations: Real-time visualization of plant-plant communications through airborne volatiles

Saitama, Japan: Plants emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere upon mechanical damages or insect attacks. Undamaged neighboring plants sense the released VOCs as danger cues to activate defense responses against upcoming threats (Figure 1). This phenomenon of airborne communication among plants through VOCs was first documented in 1983 and has since been observed in more than 30 different plant species. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying VOC perception to defense induction remain unclear. Unveiling the Invisible Conversation The ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Critical step made for managing brushtail possums

Researchers say mapping the genetic code of the brushtail possum will benefit those working to both conserve and control the animal. In a five-year long study, just published in Nature Communications, an international group of researchers led by the University of Otago, has assembled the entire genetic code of the marsupial mammal. The work also uncovered where and when their genes are expressed, and revealed surprising details about their population diversity, reproduction, and origins. Study lead Associate Professor Tim Hore, of Otago’s Department of Anatomy, describes possums as “a fascinating animal that is loved ...

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Environment17 Oct 2023

Surprising discovery about coral’s resilience could help reefs survive climate change

The factors affecting coral’s resilience — its ability to adapt to and survive environmental changes — seem to be more nuanced than scientists believed. In a study published Oct. 18 in the journal Global Change Biology, researchers reveal surprising findings about a species common to Caribbean waters. The discovery may help improve efforts to save corals from bleaching and other consequences of climate change. A team led by Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Carly Kenkel at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Ushering in the era of light-powered 'multi-level memories'

We live in an era of data deluge. The data centers that are operated to store and process this flood of data use a lot of electricity, which has been called a major contributor to environmental pollution. To overcome this situation, polygonal computing systems with lower power consumption and higher computation speed are being researched, but they are not able to handle the huge demand for data processing because they operate with electrical signals, just like conventional binary computing systems. The Korea Institute of Science ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Staggering increase in opioid-related deaths among people experiencing homelessness, new study finds

London, ON, October 17, 2023 – People experiencing homelessness accounted for an increasing proportion of fatal opioid-related deaths in Ontario, Canada, reaching one in six such deaths by 2021, according to new research from ICES, Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute. In one of the first reports to track the continuous increase in opioid-related mortality in the province among people experiencing homelessness, researchers found that the quarterly proportion of opioid-related overdose ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Subalpine forests in the Northern Rockies are fire resilient—for now

Over 4,800 years in the Northern Rockies during wet periods and dry periods, subalpine forests consistently recovered from wildfires, growing back vegetation and leaving evidence of their resilience in lake sediment cores. Kyra Clark-Wolf, now a CU Boulder postdoc with the North Central Climate Adaptation Center (NC CASC), led the study as part of her dissertation research. NC CASC is a partnership of CU Boulder and the United States Geological Survey. “I thought we might see different ecosystem responses to past fires between wet and dry periods,” said Clark-Wolf. “But ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Unique marimo threatened by rising lake temperatures

Rising lake water temperatures threaten the survival of marimo, unique algal balls found only in cold lakes. Kobe University researchers clarified that the warmer it gets, the more the inward decomposition outpaces the outward growth of these life forms, making them increasingly fragile. Moss balls, or “marimo” in Japanese, are popular pet water plants that are not a moss but a special growth form of filamentous algae. They are found naturally in lakes in northern Japan and cold lakes of ...

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Environment17 Oct 2023

How to scientifically, efficiently, and cost-effectively treat the wastewater generated from anaerobic digestion?

The resource utilization of waste is an important means to implement the construction of ecological civilization. Agricultural waste contains rich renewable resources and has high potential value in fertilization and energy conversion. Anaerobic digestion technology is a promising technology for treating agricultural waste. Anaerobic digestion refers to the digestion technology in which organic matter is decomposed into CH4, CO2, H2O and H2S by facultative bacteria and anaerobic bacteria under anaerobic conditions, which can transform solid organic matter into soluble organic matter. Not only does it have the advantages of stable process and low operation cost, the biogas produced can also ...

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Science17 Oct 2023

Novel hydrogel finds new aptamers, or ‘chemical antibodies,’ in days

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — One double-helix strand of DNA could extend six feet, but it is so tightly coiled that it packs an entire sequence of nucleotides into the tiny nucleus of a cell. If that same DNA was instead split into two strands and divided into many, many short pieces, it would become trillions of uniquely folded 3D molecular structures, capable of bonding to and possibly manipulating specifically shaped molecules — if they’re the perfect fit. These short, single-stranded segments of DNA or RNA are called aptamers, also known as “chemical antibodies.” According to Penn State researchers, ...

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Technology17 Oct 2023

Virtual reality helps people with hoarding disorder practice decluttering

Many people who dream of an organized, uncluttered home à la Marie Kondo find it hard to decide what to keep and what to let go. But for those with hoarding disorder — a mental condition estimated to affect 2.5% of the U.S. population — the reluctance to let go can reach dangerous and debilitating levels. Now, a pilot study by Stanford Medicine researchers suggests that a virtual reality therapy that allows those with hoarding disorder to rehearse relinquishing possessions in a simulation of their own home could help them declutter ...

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Medicine17 Oct 2023

Fluctuating blood pressure: a warning sign for dementia and heart disease

A new study by Australian researchers has shown that fluctuating blood pressure can increase the risk of dementia and vascular problems in older people. Short blood pressure (BP) fluctuations within 24 hours as well as over several days or weeks are linked with impaired cognition, say University of South Australia (UniSA) researchers who led the study. Higher systolic BP variations (the top number that measures the pressure in arteries when a heart beats) are also linked with stiffening of the arteries, associated with heart disease. The findings have been published in the journal Cerebral Circulation – Cognition and ...

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