Halle/Saale, Fort Lauderdale. More than 100 years of observations in nature have revealed a universal pattern of species abundances: Most species are rare but not very rare, and only a few species are very common. These so-called global species abundance distributions have become fully unveiled for some well-monitored species groups, such as birds. For other species groups, such as insects, however, the veil remains partially unlifted. These are the findings of an international team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg ...

Extreme El Niño weather saw South America’s forest carbon sink switch off Hot and dry conditions resulted in increased tree death  Evidence that most forest areas withstand periods of severe drought Greatest impact in forests with drier climates  Tropical forests in South America lose their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere when conditions become exceptionally hot and dry, according to new research.    For a long time, tropical forests have acted as a carbon sink, taking more ...

When it comes to global warming trends, the Arctic is a troubling outlier. The Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the global average, and aerosols play an important role in that warming. Scientists have long known that pollutants from other regions can accumulate in the Arctic atmosphere where they alter atmospheric chemistry, absorb sunlight, and affect local weather patterns, leading to localized warming that melts ice and snow. Sea salt particles dominate aerosol mass concentration, but their production mechanisms and impact on Arctic climate have remained unclear. Atmospheric scientists led by Jian Wang, director of the Center for Aerosol ...

In a review published in Engineering, scientists explore the burgeoning field of machine learning (ML) and its applications in chemistry. Titled “Machine Learning for Chemistry: Basics and Applications,” this comprehensive review aims to bridge the gap between chemists and modern ML algorithms, providing insights into the potential of ML in revolutionizing chemical research. Over the past decade, ML and artificial intelligence (AI) have made remarkable strides, bringing us closer to the realization of intelligent machines. The advent of deep learning methods and enhanced data storage capabilities has played a pivotal role in this progress. ML has already demonstrated success ...

Around 5.2% of the global population carries abnormal hemoglobin genes [1]. Each year, 300,000 to 500,000 children are born with severe hemoglobinopathies worldwide, with approximately 80% of these cases occurring in developing countries [2]. Thalassemia is the most common hereditary hemoglobinopathy and occurs in 4.4 out of every 10,000 live births [3]. It is prevalent in Mediterranean coastal areas, Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and southern China. A previous study indicated that Ganzhou, the southernmost city in Jiangxi province, had a thalassemia prevalence ...

Abu Dhabi, UAE (September 4, 2023) – In a breakthrough in cancer therapeutics, a team of researchers at the Magzoub Biophysics Lab at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has made a significant advance in light-based therapies – biocompatible and biodegradable tumor-targeting nanospheres that combine tumor detection and monitoring with potent, light-triggered cancer therapy to dramatically increase the efficacy of existing light-based approaches. Non-invasive, light-based therapies, photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) have the potential to be safe and effective alternatives to conventional cancer treatments, which are beset by a ...

Traditionally, the impact of human activity on an ecosystem has lacked context when planning restorative ecosystem mitigation and management strategies. Multiple human activities over time and space, the resilience of a particular ecosystem, and the stress caused by many individual or related, overlapping activities that generate cumulative effects may affect the overall "ecosystem response footprint," or ability of an ecosystem to adapt and change to human activity. A team of marine scientists reviewed the most recent perspectives on ecological footprints to rigorously define the term "ecosystem response footprint" as the ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new cancer therapy developed by Purdue University researchers attacks tumors by tricking cancer cells into absorbing a snippet of RNA that naturally blocks cell division. As reported today in Oncogene, tumors treated with the new therapy did not increase in size over the course of a 21-day study, while untreated tumors tripled in size over the same time period. Cancer can begin almost anywhere in the human body. It is characterized by cells that divide uncontrollably and that may be able to ignore signals to ...

The severe global threat posed by invasive alien species is underappreciated, underestimated, and often unacknowledged. According to a major new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. This conservative estimate is now rising at unprecedented rates. More than 3,500 of these are harmful invasive alien species – seriously threatening nature, nature’s contributions to people and good quality of life. Too often ignored until it is too late, invasive alien species are a ...

The Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Jong-Ho Lee, hereinafter referred to as 'MSIT') and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Director Young-Deuk Park, hereinafter referred to as 'KASI') announced the beginning of the transfer of the lunar space environment monitor, 'LUSEM'(Lunar Space Environment Monitor) that will be aboard United States’ unmanned lunar lander in 2024, has began on September 4th.   LUSEM is a payload developed by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in participation with the U.S. NASA's CLPS(Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative ...

IOP Publishing (IOPP) has appointed Dr. David Gevaux as the first Chief Editor of Reports on Progress in Physics. Taking up the post from the 4th of September, Dr. Gevaux will lead on ambitious plans for the journal, as its scope expands to include groundbreaking new research content alongside the authoritative reviews for which it is well known across all areas of physics.    Working closely with Professor Subir Sachdev, the Editor in Chief of Reports on Progress in Physics, Dr. Gevaux will champion the editorial ...

The Qing Dynasty in China, after over 250 years, crumbled in 1912. Led by the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), an international research team has pinpointed key reasons behind the collapse, revealing parallels to modern instability and offering vital lessons for the future.   China is considered today to be the world's largest economy (in terms of PPP). However, this position is not new. In 1820, China's economy already held the top spot, accounting for 32.9% of the global GDP. In the interim, there was a period of decline followed by a resurgence. In 1912, after over 250 years in power, the Qing Dynasty collapsed despite being considerably wealthier at the time ...

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have discovered two new genes that cause head and neck cancer patients to be resistant to chemotherapy, and that silencing either gene can make cancer cells previously unresponsive to chemotherapy subsequently respond to it. The two genes discovered actively ‘work’ in most human cancer types, meaning the findings could potentially extend to other cancers with elevated levels of the genes. The researchers also looked through a chemical library, commonly used for drug discovery, and found two substances that could target the two genes specifically and make resistant cancer cells almost 30 times more sensitive to ...

Digital information exchange can be safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly with the help of a new type of random number generator for encryption developed at Linköping University, Sweden. The researchers behind the study believe that the new technology paves the way for a new type of quantum communication. In an increasingly connected world, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important to protect not just the individual, but also, for example, national infrastructure and banking systems. And there is an ongoing race between hackers and those trying to protect information. The most common way ...

People living with lung conditions, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), face even greater risks from climate change, according to an expert report published today (Monday) in the European Respiratory Journal [1]. The report brings together evidence on how the effects of climate change, such as heatwaves, wildfires and flooding, will exacerbate breathing difficulties for millions of people around the world, particularly babies, young children and the elderly. On behalf of the European Respiratory Society, which represents more than 30,000 lung specialists from 160 countries, the authors ...

ChatGPT could help to increase vaccine uptake by debunking myths around jab safety, say the authors of a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics. The researchers asked the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot the top 50 most frequently-asked Covid-19 vaccine questions. They included queries based on myths and fake stories such as the vaccine causing Long Covid. Results show that ChatGPT scored nine out of 10 on average for accuracy. The rest of the time it was correct but left some gaps in the information provided, according to the study. Based on these findings, experts who led the study from the GenPoB research group based ...

Humans, like many other species, regulate protein intake more strongly than any other dietary component and so if protein is diluted there is a compensatory increase in food intake. The hypothesis proposes that the dilution of protein in modern-day diets by fat and carbohydrate-rich processed foods is driving increased energy intake as the body seeks to satisfy its natural protein drive - eating unnecessary calories until it does so. This paper, resulting from the Royal Society Discussion Meeting held in London last October, shows that observational, experimental and mechanistic research increasingly supports ...

For roughly 80% of breast cancer survivors, treatment doesn’t end with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Instead, for the next five to 10 years, doctors recommend that they take medication to block sex hormones, which can fuel tumor growth and spark recurrence. The drugs are life-saving: They’ve been shown to cut risk of cancer recurrence by as much as half in patients with hormone receptor-positive tumors (HR+)—the most common form of breast cancer. Yet despite their promised benefits, 40% of patients stop taking them early and a third ...

Micro- and nanodisk lasers have recently emerged as promising optical sources and probes for various applications in the fields of nanophotonics and biomedicine. Their ability to achieve lasing at a deterministic wavelength and ultra-narrowband precision is critical for several applications in on-chip photonic communications, on-chip bioimaging, biochemical sensing, and quantum photonic information processing. However, the large-scale fabrication of such precise wavelength micro- and nanodisk lasers remains challenging. Current nanofabrication processes introduce randomness in ...

For more than 30 years, the models that researchers and government agencies use to forecast earthquake aftershocks have remained largely unchanged. While these older models work well with limited data, they struggle with the huge seismology datasets that are now available. To address this limitation, a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Technical University of Munich created a new model that uses deep learning to forecast aftershocks: the Recurrent Earthquake foreCAST (RECAST). In a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists show how the deep learning model is more flexible ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A team of UC Davis and University of Oxford researchers have developed an innovative tool: SparkMaster 2. The open-source software allows scientists to analyze normal and abnormal calcium signals in cells automatically. Calcium is a key signaling molecule in all cells, including muscles like the heart. The new software enables the automatic analysis of distinct patterns of calcium release in cells. This includes calcium "sparks," microscopic releases of calcium within cardiac cells associated ...

Key takeaways Ants can either forage for food as individuals or recruit other members of their colonies to help search for or carry food back to their nests. UCLA biologists found that the strategies ants use to forage play a bigger role in how they build their nests than innate, evolutionary “blueprints” do. When building nests, ants strike a balance between transportation efficiency and architectural constraints. Researchers say that observation could help humans design more efficient transportation systems tailored to specific needs. Could ants’ nests hold the secret to reducing traffic congestion on the 405 Freeway? In a new study, UCLA biologists ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In 2012, when the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) arrived in the U.S. from its home in China, scientists, land managers, and growers were understandably concerned that the sap-feeding insect would damage native and commercial trees. New long-term research led by Penn State has discovered that hardwood trees, such as maple, willow and birch, may be less vulnerable than initially thought. “Since the lanternfly was first introduced to the northeastern U.S., the question has been, ‘How at-risk are our forests?’ said Kelli Hoover, professor of entomology at Penn State. “So far, we haven't had a good answer. Our study is the first ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Backed by a $26 million federal grant, researchers at three Michigan universities, a leading health care system, and a state agency will continue a long-term study of how exposure to environmental factors during pregnancy and early childhood can impact health for a lifetime.  The funding from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, is for the second phase of a national research program called ECHO, which stands for the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes, and includes a sample of mothers, infants and children from across the United States. The first phase began in 2016.  “This award shows the research ...

Milwaukee, Wis. – Sept. 1, 2023 – Despite advances in treatment for high cholesterol, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. Scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) are investigating the role of a form of cholesterol called very-low-density lipoprotein – and their findings may lead to new treatment options in the future. The research team is led by Ze Zheng, MBBS, PhD, MCW assistant professor of medicine (endocrinology and molecular medicine); co-leader of the MCW Cardiovascular Center’s Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis ...