Opposites don’t actually attract. That’s the takeaway from a sweeping CU Boulder analysis of more than 130 traits and including millions of couples over more than a century. “Our findings demonstrate that birds of a feather are indeed more likely to flock together,” said first author Tanya Horwitz, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG). The study, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, confirms what individual studies have hinted at for decades, defying the age-old adage that “opposites ...

A new study published in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters examines the links between drinking water quality violations and social vulnerability in the United States, revealing that these violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities. Approximately 70% of the population affected ranked in the highest social vulnerability category, with many different social parameters, beyond income, linked to different drinking water quality violations.  The study, led by researchers from the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas in Austin, used new water quality data ...

A new study showing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigation strategies used to manage the virus on emergency department (ED) visits in British Columbia can help with future planning. The study is published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.221516. "Evaluation of the effects of the pandemic and associated measures can provide a historical account and inform health care service planning for both postpandemic recovery and mitigation of potential consequences ...

Peer-reviewed / Empirical study New study challenges political claims that some high-income countries have achieved “green growth”– revealing that under current growth-oriented strategies, emission reductions in these nations fall drastically short of meeting the climate goals and fairness requirements of the Paris Agreement. If current trends continue, even the 11 high-income countries that have "decoupled" carbon emissions from GDP growth would on average take over 200 years to get their emissions close to zero, and would emit more than 27-times their fair share of the “global carbon budget” ...

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 04 September 2023 Annals of Internal Medicine Tip Sheet @Annalsofim Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. ---------------------------- 1. New ACP paper addresses ethical issues in determining death; recommends clarification to the Uniform Determination ...

It seems intuitive that forests would provide better habitat for forest-dwelling wildlife than farms. Yet, in one of the longest-running studies of tropical wildlife populations in the world, Stanford researchers found that over 18 years, smaller farms with varying crop types – interspersed with patches or ribbons of forest – sustain many forest-dependent bird populations in Costa Rica, even as populations decline in forests. In a paper published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nicholas Hendershot and colleagues ...

For those fortunate enough to walk normally, wandering is such an expected behavior that we hardly consider that it involves complex, partly involuntary processes. “Animals move to explore their environment in search of food, interaction with others, or simply out of curiosity. But the perception of danger or a painful stimulus can also activate an automatic flight reflex”, Martin Carbo-Tano, a post-doctoral fellow at Paris Brain Institute, explains. In both cases, movement initiation relies on the activation of so-called reticulospinal control neurons, which form an intertwined network in ...

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 ...