An extraordinary discovery in the Gulf of Eilat: Researchers from Tel Aviv University have discovered a species of ascidian, a marine animal commonly found in the Gulf of Eilat, capable of regenerating all of its organs - even if it is dissected into three fragments. The study was led by Prof. Noa Shenkar, Prof. Dorothee Huchon-Pupko, and Tal Gordon of Tel Aviv University's School of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History. The findings of this surprising discovery were published in the leading journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. "It is an astounding discovery, as this is an animal that belongs to the Phylum Chordata - animals with a dorsal cord - which also includes us humans," explains Prof. Noa ...

Water is a scarce resource in many of the Earth's ecosystems. This scarcity is likely to increase in the course of climate change. This, in turn, might lead to a considerable decline in plant diversity. Using experimental data from all over the world, scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), and the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have demonstrated for the first time that plant biodiversity in drylands is particularly sensitive to changes in precipitation. In an article published in Nature Communications, the team warns that this can also have consequences for the people living in the ...

The terms "co-creation" and "co-production", which denote the possibility for laypeople to participate in decision-making processes that affect their lives, have been gaining popularity. A new IIASA-led study explored options for empowering citizens as a driver for moving from awareness about the need to transform energy systems to action and participation. The European Union's climate and energy policies for 2020-2030 require decarbonization of the energy sector. To this end, EU member countries are working on a number of key goals including greater energy efficiency, greater use of renewable energy, and increased energy security across the EU. The successful ...

In recent decades, Spain has undergone rapid social changes in terms of gender equality, despite, as a result of the Franco dictatorship, starting from a more backward position than most European countries. This process is hampered by the economic downturn that began in 2008, underlining the importance of the economic context in the development of gender inequality levels. Little attention has been paid in academia to how this gender revolution is associated with factors related to individual wellbeing. A study by Jordi Gumà, a researcher at the Department of Political and ...

The human world is, increasingly, an urban one -- and that means elevators. Hong Kong, the hometown of physicist Zhijie Feng (Boston University),* adds new elevators at the rate of roughly 1500 every year...making vertical transport an alluring topic for quantitative research. "Just in the main building of my undergraduate university, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology," Feng reflects, "there are 37 elevators, all numbered so we can use them to indicate the location of hundreds of classrooms. There is always a line outside each elevator lobby, and if they are shut down, we have to hike for 30 minutes." Feng and Santa Fe Institute Professor ...

Myotonic dystrophy is a hereditary degenerative neuromuscular disease that occurs mainly in adults, affecting about 50,000 people only in Spain. Symptoms range from difficulty walking and myotonia (great difficulty in relaxing the contracted muscles) to severe neurological problems, leading to progressive disability that unfortunately puts many of those affected in a wheelchair. This disease is very heterogeneous among patients (age of onset, progression, hereditary transmission, affected muscles), which makes the development of generic treatments especially complex. Currently, drugs against myotonic ...

LAWRENCE -- Like much of society, college athletics were thrown into disarray by the COVID-19 pandemic. While student athletes were suddenly prevented from competing, training or seeing as much of their teammates and coaches, those who perceived they were part of a positive sporting environment also coped better during the early days of the crisis, a new study from the University of Kansas has found. KU researchers have long studied a caring, task-involved sporting climate, in which young athletes receive support and recognition for their efforts, while mistakes are treated as learning opportunities. But the pandemic provided a unique opportunity to see whether the approach helped collegiate athletes cope with the unique stresses and challenges that came with the disruption ...

Social media may make it easier for people to engage online, but I does not provide certain benefits of real-life human interactions, says a Michigan State University researcher. "Problematic social media use has been associated with depression, anxiety and social isolation, and having a good social support system helps insulate people from negative mental health," said Dar Meshi, an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at MSU. "We wanted to compare the differences between real-life support and support provided over social media to see if the support provided over social media could have beneficial effects." The research was published online April 29 in the journal Addictive Behaviors. While ...

Living materials, which are made by housing biological cells within a non-living matrix, have gained popularity in recent years as scientists recognize that often the most robust materials are those that mimic nature. For the first time, an international team of researchers from the University of Rochester and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands used 3D printers and a novel bioprinting technique to print algae into living, photosynthetic materials that are tough and resilient. The material has a variety of applications in the energy, medical, and fashion sectors. The research is published in ...

Nearly 10,000 acres of lush seagrass vanished from Florida Bay between 1987 and 1991, leading to massive ecological changes in the region near the Florida Keys. Abundance of the seagrass, Thalassia testudinum, more commonly known as turtlegrass, a foundation species of the Florida Bay ecosystem, decreased extensively during what is considered to be one of the largest declines in seagrass cover in recent history. Researchers from the University of South Florida, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the University of North Carolina Wilmington documented the response of seagrasses after the die-off. ...

31 percent of pet dogs and 40 percent of pet cats tested positive to COVID-19 after their owners' own diagnoses, though under half displayed symptoms, in small Brazilian study. INFORMATION: Publicly available article: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250853 Article Title: Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection in dogs and cats of humans diagnosed with COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Funding: MMS: This study was supported by CGLab/MoH (General Laboratories Coordination of Brazilian Ministry of Health), CVSLR/FIOCRUZ (Coordination of Health Surveillance and Reference Laboratories ...

Thanks to the so-called deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms inspired by the brain, machines can match human performance in perception and language recognition and even outperform humans in certain tasks. But do these synthetic biologically inspired systems learn in the same way that we do? According to a new article by first author Dr. Diogo Santos-Pata from the Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems lab (SPECS) at IBEC led by ICREA Professor Paul Verschure, in collaboration with Prof. Ivan Soltesz at Stanford University, the mechanism of autonomous learning underlying these AI systems reflects nature more closely than previously thought. With their hypothesis and model, these scientists offer new insights into ...

A world first study within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has found limited fishing zones (yellow zones) are still important conservation and fisheries management tools when paired with no-fishing zones. Lead author Dr April Hall, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU), said partially protected yellow zones still contain healthy numbers of reef fish targeted for recreational and commercial fishing. These include coral trout, tropical snappers, emperors and tuskfish. Yellow zones limit, rather than prohibit, fishing through fishing gear restrictions. For example, limited line fishing is allowed with one rod or line and one hook per ...

Bowel cancer survival rates could be improved if chemotherapy drugs were delivered via tiny nanoparticles to the diseased organs rather than oral treatment. That's the finding from Indian and Australian scientists who have undertaken the first study, using nanoparticles to target bowel cancer, the third most common cancer in the world and the second most deadliest. The researchers have shown in animal experiments that nanoparticles containing the chemotherapy drug Capecitabine (CAP) attach themselves directly to the diseased cells, bypassing healthy cells and therefore reducing toxic side effects as well as the size and number of tumours. The scientists, from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Indian Institute of Science and the University of South Australia, ...

National Health and Medical Research Council, the European Research Council and the Victorian Government. WEHI researchers have identified how natural human antibodies can block malaria parasites from entering red blood cells, potentially indicating how new protective therapies could be developed against this globally significant disease. The research provides greater insight into how antibodies block the entry of Plasmodium vivax malaria parasites into young red blood cells called reticulocytes. It builds on an earlier discovery that the P. vivax latches onto the transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) to enter cells. The research, led by Associate Professor Wai-Hong Tham and PhD student Li-Jin Chan ...

Many drug addicts take not only one substance but rather several. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Göttingen have investigated the role that genes and the environment play in the development of such multiple substance consumption or polytoxicomania. Their results show that, in addition to genetic factors, the accumulation of several unfavourable environmental factors causes people to slip into such an extreme form of multiple drug use. Among the risk factors were sexual and physical abuse, living in a big city, and migration experience as well as the use ...

Aromaticity, a concept usually used to explain the striking stability and unusual reactivity of certain carbon-based molecules, could inspire the design of new catalysts with novel uses, KAUST researchers have shown. Chemists first came upon the anomalous behavior of aromatic molecules in the nineteenth century while studying benzene. The unexpected stability of this six-carbon cyclic structure comes down to its electrons. In general, bonding electrons hold a specific pair of atoms together in a discrete chemical bond. But in benzene, six electrons form a delocalized ring across the molecule. A host of other molecules share this feature. "Many classic examples of organic and organometallic reactivity can be explained on this basis," says Théo Gonçalves, ...

In material physics understanding how systems interact across the interfaces separating them is of central interest. But can physical models clarify similar concepts in living systems, such as cells? Physicists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), used the framework of disordered elastic systems to study the process of wound healing - the proliferation of cell fronts which eventually join to close a lesion. Their study identified the scales of the dominant interactions between cells which determine this process. The results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will allow better analysis of cell front behaviour, in terms of both wound healing and tumour development. In the future, this approach may offer personalised diagnostics ...

Scientists are warning that drinking water supplies in parts of rural West Africa are being contaminated by lead-containing materials used in small community water systems such as boreholes with handpumps and public taps. They analysed scrapings taken from the plumbing of 61 community water supply systems in Ghana, Mali and Niger. Eighty percent of the tested systems had at least one component that contained lead in excess of international guidance. Lead is released into the water when the components corrode. The study, by a research team from the University of Leeds, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Boston University, also took samples of the water from those 61 water distribution systems, ...

Migratory waterbirds are particularly exposed to the effects of climate change at their breeding areas in the High Arctic and in Africa, according to a new study published in Bird Conservation International. The research team came to this conclusion after modelling climatic and hydrological conditions under current and future climate scenarios (in 2050) and comparing the impact on the distribution of 197 of the 255 waterbird species listed under the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA). The international team was led by Wetlands International, BirdLife International, and the British Trust for Ornithology, involved researchers from various universities, including McGill. The results suggest that investing more in habitat conservation in the wider ...

A team of researchers led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has developed a device that offers a quicker and less invasive way to seal tears and holes in blood vessels, using an electrically-activated glue patch applied via a minimally invasive balloon catheter. This device could eventually replace the need for open or keyhole surgery to patch up or stitch together internal blood vessel defects. After inserting the catheter into an appropriate blood vessel, the glue patch - nicknamed 'Voltaglue' - can be guided through the body to where the tear is located and then activated using retractable electrodes to glue it shut in ...

Symptoms of health anxiety are common already during childhood and adolescence - and if the children do not receive the correct help, the anxiety can become a permanent problem with serious personal and socio-economic consequences. This is shown by a new research result from Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen. Ida is 11 years old. Six months ago, her grandmother died of cancer after a long illness and since then Ida has become more and more anxious that she too will get cancer and die. The anxiety can be triggered when she passes by a hospital or sees people who look ill. ...

What would it be like to produce fertilizer in your own basement? Leguminous plants, like peas, beans, and various species of clover, obtain the organic nitrogen they need for their growth from symbiotic soil bacteria via specialized structures in their roots. A team led by the cell biologist Prof. Dr. Thomas Ott from the University of Freiburg's Faculty of Biology has now detected a factor in the root cells that the plants need for the initial contact with these so-called root-associated bacteria, which live in the soil. They discovered a protein found only in legumes called symbiotic formin 1 (SYFO1) and demonstrated the essential role it plays in symbiosis. Together with the molecular biologist Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse University of Freiburg's Faculty of Medicine and the evolutionary ...

In a number of biological processes, iron-sulfur clusters play a vital role, where they act as cofactors to enzymes. Research published in Angewandte Chemie now shows that cubic clusters can support unusual bonding states. This study shows that the cluster copes well with a multiple bond between iron and nitrogen--a structural motif that may be involved in biological nitrogen fixation. Clusters made of iron and sulfur atoms are essential cofactors for a number of enzymes, especially in biological processes involving electron transfer. As an example, nitrogen-fixing bacteria use iron-sulfur clusters to convert ...

An international team of scientists from 20 countries identified 47 problems that hinder the successful prevention and elimination of the consequences of the tsunami. Based on the carried out analysis, the world's leading experts on natural hazards have outlined directions for further scientific research. The research group's review is published in a special issue of the "Frontiers in Earth Science". The main problems identified in the review are related to the large gaps and uncertainties in knowledge about tsunami, the lack of well-documented observations, and imperfect methods of processing available information. One of the reasons is the lack of coordination of the efforts of those countries for which the study and prediction of tsunamis, forecasting the corresponding risks, and preparation ...