The current loss of biological diversity is unprecedented and species extinctions exceed the estimated background rate many times over. Coinciding with increasing human domination and alteration of the natural world, this loss in abundance and diversity is especially pronounced with - but not limited to - fauna in the tropics. A new publication from scientists at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) in Sweden and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Germany now explores the links between defaunation of tropical forests and the United ...

Several organisms possess "ion channels" (gateways that selectively allow charged particles called ions to enter the cells and are integral for cell function) called "channelrhodopsins," that can be switched on and off with the help of light. Different channelrhodopsins respond to different wavelengths in the light spectrum. These channels can be expressed in foreign organisms (animals even in human) by means of genetic engineering, which in turn finds applications in optogenetics, or the application of light to modulate cellular and gene functions. So far, the shortest wavelength that a channelrhodopsin ...

Monash University researchers have uncovered for the first time the reason mutations in a particular gene lead to mitochondrial disease. The finding, published in PNAS journal and led by Professor Mike Ryan from Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute, shows that a gene responsible for causing loss of vision and hearing, TMEM126A, makes a protein that helps build an important energy generator in mitochondria. So, if this gene is defective, it reduces mitochondrial function and impares energy production, uncovering why mutations lead to the disease. Mitochondria are critical structures within ...

Portopulmonary hypertension (PoPH) is a form of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). PoPH occurs in approximately 15% of patients with PAH, and is reportedly found in 2-6% of patients with portal hypertension and 1-2% of patients with liver cirrhosis according to studies from Europe and America. However, the real-world data on PoPH in Japan are largely unknown, with many questions on the condition's etiology and prevalence. Led by doctorate student Shun-ichi Wakabayashi of Shinshu University, the goal of this investigation is to clarify the actual state of PoPH among patients with chronic liver disease by screening all such patients treated at Shinshu University Hospital. Although there is considerable uncertainty on the impact of PoPH, it is known that ...

Examples of complex systems exist everywhere. Neuron connections and protein-protein interactions are two systems of this type found in organisms, but complex systems also exist in cities, economic models, and even in social networks. The common denominator is that they are made up of many interrelated elements which can be represented and studied as a network. For more than a decade, scientists have been studying the possibility of finding more than one type of structural organization within a single network, and this is the subject of the doctoral thesis defended by María José Palazzi, as part of the UOC's doctoral programme in Network and Information Technologies. ...

An international team with researchers from the University of Bayreuth has succeeded for the first time in discovering a previously unknown two-dimensional material by using modern high-pressure technology. The new material, beryllonitrene, consists of regularly arranged nitrogen and beryllium atoms. It has an unusual electronic lattice structure that shows great potential for applications in quantum technology. Its synthesis required a compression pressure that is about one million times higher than the pressure of the Earth's atmosphere. The scientists have presented their discovery in the journal Physical Review Letters. Since the discovery of graphene, which is made of carbon atoms, interest in two-dimensional ...

Researchers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia, and Italy have developed a breakthrough method for quickly, accurately, and reliably diagnosing cardiac arrhythmias. They called it Directed graph mapping (DGM). The technology principles are published in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology. One of the members of the research team is Alexander Panfilov, leading specialist of the laboratory of computational biology and medicine at Ural Federal University (Russia), head of the biophysics group at the University of Ghent (Belgium), professor at the Department of Cardiology at Leiden University (Netherlands). The research was led ...

Tightening the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) in line with the EU Green Deal would dramatically speed up the decarbonization of Europe's power sector - and likely cause a demise of the coal industry. In a new study a team of researchers from Potsdam, Germany has quantified the substantial shifts Europe's electricity system is about to undergo when the newly decided EU climate target gets implemented. Higher carbon prices, the authors show, are not only an inevitable step to cut emissions - they will also lead much faster to an inexpensive electricity system powered by renewable energies. "Once the EU translates their recently adjusted target of cutting emissions by at least 55% in 2030 in comparison to 1990 into tighter EU ETS caps, the electricity sector will see fundamental changes ...

The neutron reflexometry method has given scientists an atomic-level insight into the behaviour of Bcl-2, a protein that promotes cancerous cell growth. The new study was carried out by Umeå chemists in collaboration with the research facilities ESS and ISIS and is published in Nature Communications Biology. Elevated function of the cell-protecting membrane protein Bcl-2 can promote cancer and cause resistance to cancer treatment. Developing an understanding of the way it does this could inform the development of anti-cancer drugs. It may seem counter-intuitive, ...

Western Australia's wheatbelt is a biodiversity desert, but the remaining wildlife - surviving in 'wheatbelt oases' - may offer insights for better conservation everywhere, according to researchers. University of Queensland researcher Dr Graham Fulton and local John Lawson have been reviewing the biodiversity in the woodland oasis of Dryandra, in WA's south west. "It's hard to witness the devastating loss of wilderness in Western Australia's wheatbelt," Dr Fulton said. "Ninety-seven per cent of the best native vegetation has been taken - around 14 million hectares - it's an area greater in size ...

During the last 30 years, medical and dental research has attracted a large number of scientists and practitioners working on aspects of high medical relevance that involve a combination of genetic and tissue regeneration approaches. These developments in stem cell and tissue engineering have provided medical and dental researchers with new insights and given rise to new ideas as to how everyday clinical practice can be improved. Many research groups are dealing with questions like: How can we help injured tissues and organs heal? Can lost tissue be regenerated? How can we create solid protocols that apply across all stem cell therapies? Advanced single-cell sequencing technology used A team of researchers led by Thimios ...

In light of declining natural forests, tree plantations may seem like a good way to replace forest habitats. But what are the possible benefits of these plantations for biological diversity? A team of researchers led by led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Friedrich Schiller University Jena (FSU) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) investigated this question using the example of beetles. Beetles account for 27% of all insect species worldwide and are often used as indicators for the effects of climate change and habitat fragmentation on biodiversity. In forest, they serve important functions - for example, they contribute to the decomposition of plant and animal biomass, making the nutrients stored ...

A recent study by the University of Eastern Finland shows that loneliness among middle-aged men is associated with an increased risk of cancer. According to the researchers, taking account of loneliness and social relationships should thus be an important part of comprehensive health care and disease prevention. The findings were published in Psychiatry Research. "It has been estimated, on the basis of studies carried out in recent years, that loneliness could be as significant a health risk as smoking or overweight. Our findings support the idea that attention should be paid to this issue," Project Researcher Siiri-Liisi Kraav from the University of Eastern Finland says. The study was ...

For a long time, historical linguists have been using the comparative method to reconstruct earlier states of languages that are not attested in written sources. The method consists of the detailed comparison of words in the related descendant languages and allows linguists to infer the ancient pronunciation of words which were never recorded in any form in great detail. That the method can also be used to infer how an undocumented word in a certain language would sound, provided that at least some information on that language, as well as information on related languages is available, has been known for a long time, but so far never explicitly tested. Two researchers from SOAS University of London and the Max Planck Institute for the Science ...

Scientific studies rarely focus on long non-coding RNA molecules (lncRNAs), even though they potentially regulate several diseases. The role of several lncRNAs in anti-viral inflammatory response regulation has recently been reported. Considering their significant regulatory function in immune response, researchers from the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine of Bar-Ilan University sought to identify lncRNAs co-expressed with human genes involved in immune-related processes during severe SARS-CoV-2 infection in the lungs. Recent studies demonstrated that ...

Chemotherapy is a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cancer cells in the body. It is a systemic treatment where drugs travel throughout the body and destroy cancer cells that have spread (metastasized) to parts of the body far away from the original (primary) tumour. As such, chemotherapy remains the main treatment against various cancers. Thus, when cancer cells resist chemotherapeutic drugs, treatment failure results. The resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapy is marked by changes and increased output of certain proteins. These altered proteins can help doctors to identify patients who will not respond well to chemotherapy and paves the way for the development of therapeutic intervention to "re-sensitise" their cancer cells to treatment. In a Nature ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new treatment is among the first known to reduce the severity of acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by the flu in animals, according to a new study. Tests in mice infected with high doses of influenza showed that the treatment could improve lung function in very sick mice and prevent progression of disease in mice that were pre-emptively treated after being exposed to the flu. The hope is that it may also help humans infected with the flu, and potentially other causes of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) such as SARS-CoV-2 infection. Specific cells in mice are less able to ...

An international collaboration of astronomers led by a researcher from the Astrobiology Center and Queen's University Belfast, and including researchers from Trinity College Dublin, has detected a new chemical signature in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet (a planet that orbits a star other than our Sun). The hydroxyl radical (OH) was found on the dayside of the exoplanet WASP-33b. This planet is a so-called 'ultra-hot Jupiter', a gas-giant planet orbiting its host star much closer than Mercury orbits the Sun and therefore reaching atmospheric temperatures of more than 2,500° C (hot enough to melt most metals). The lead researcher based at the Astrobiology Center and Queen's University Belfast, ...

A research group led by Professor Xiang David LI from the Research Division for Chemistry and the Department of Chemistry, The University of Hong Kong, has developed a novel chemical tool for elucidating protein interaction networks in cells. This tool not only facilitates the identification of a protein's interacting partners in the complex cellular context, but also simultaneously allows the 'visualisation' of these protein-protein interactions. The findings were recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Molecular Cell. In the human body, proteins interact with each other to cooperatively regulate essentially every biological process ranging from gene expression and signal transduction, to immune response. As a result, dysregulated ...

The researchers in this study reached this conclusion by drawing on network modelling research and mapped the job landscapes in cities across the United States during economic crises. Knowing and understanding which factors contribute to the health of job markets is interesting as it can help promote faster recovery after a crisis, such as a major economic recession or the current COVID pandemic. Traditional studies perceive the worker as someone linked to a specific job in a sector. However, in the real-world professionals often end up working in other sectors that require similar skills. In this sense, researchers consider job markets as being something similar to ecosystems, where organisms are linked in a complex network of interactions. In this context, an effective job market depends ...

During the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia was witness to several climate crises. In the long run, these crises prompted the development of stable forms of State and therefore elicited cooperation between political elites and non-elites. This is the main finding of a study published in the journal PNAS and authored by two scholars from the University of Bologna (Italy) and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany). This study investigated the impact of climate shocks in Mesopotamia between 3100 and 1750 bC. The two scholars looked at these issues through the lenses of economics and adopted a game-theory approach. They applied this approach ...

A new paper on college science classes taught remotely points to teaching methods that enhance student communication and collaboration, offering a framework for enriching online instruction as the coronavirus pandemic continues to limit in-person courses. "These varied exercises allow students to engage, team up, get outside, do important lab work, and carry out group investigations and presentations under extraordinarily challenging circumstances--and from all over the world," explains Erin Morrison, a professor in Liberal Studies at New York University and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. "The active-learning toolbox can be effectively used from ...

The placenta forms the interface between the maternal and foetal circulatory systems. As well as ensuring essential nutrients, endocrine and immunological signals get through to the foetus to support its development and growth, the placenta must also protect it from the accumulation of potentially toxic compounds. A study from Cécile Demarez, Mariana Astiz and colleagues at the University of Lübeck in Germany now reveals that the activity of a crucial placental gatekeeper in mice is regulated by the circadian clock, changing during the day-night cycle. The study, which has implications for the timing of maternal drug regimens, is published in the journal Development. The circadian clock translates time-of-day information into physiological signals through rhythmic regulation ...

The combined effect of rapid ocean warming and the practice of targeting big fish is affecting the viability of wild populations and global fish stock says new research by the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania. Unlike earlier studies that traditionally considered fishing and climate in isolation, the research found that ocean warming and fishing combined to impact on fish recruitment, and that this took four generations to manifest. "We found a strong decline in recruitment (the process of getting new young fish into a population) in all populations that had been exposed to warming, and this effect was highest where all the largest individuals ...

In an effort to determine the potential for COVID-19 to begin in a person's gut, and to better understand how human cells respond to SARS-CoV-2, the scientists used human intestinal cells to create organoids - 3D tissue cultures derived from human cells, which mimic the tissue or organ from which the cells originate. Their conclusions, published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, indicate the potential for infection to be harboured in a host's intestines and reveal intricacies in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. "Previous research had shown that SARS-CoV-2 can infect the gut," says Theodore Alexandrov, who leads one of the two EMBL groups involved. "However, it remained unclear how intestinal cells mount their immune response to the infection." In fact, ...