Keeping tree diversity intact in Canada’s many forests over the long term can help increase carbon capture and mitigate climate change, according to a new University of Alberta study.  The study, published in Nature, is the first of its kind to show the sustained benefits of tree diversity on a large spatial scale, in terms of storing carbon and nitrogen in the soil. It reinforces the importance of biodiversity conservation in forests, says Xinli Chen, lead author on the paper and postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Agricultural, ...

Andy Weir’s bestselling 2011 book, The Martian, features botanist Mark Watney’s efforts to grow food on Mars after he becomes stranded there. While Watney’s initial efforts focus on growing potatoes, new research presented at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by a team of interdisciplinary researchers from the U of A suggests future Martian botanists like Watney may have a better option: growing rice. As outlined in the team’s abstract, Rice Can Grow and Survive in Martian ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- New research from a multidisciplinary team helps to illuminate the mechanisms behind circadian rhythms, offering new hope for dealing with jet lag, insomnia and other sleep disorders. Using innovative cryo-electron microscopy techniques, the researchers have identified the structure of the circadian rhythm photosensor and its target in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), one of the major organisms used to study circadian rhythms. The research, “Cryptochrome-Timeless Structure Reveals Circadian Clock Timing ...

The Buck Institute for Research on Aging announces that Ashley Webb, PhD, will join its faculty as an associate professor on August 1, 2023. Webb’s research is focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying stem cells and brain aging.  She joins the Buck from Brown University, where she is currently an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry. Webb uses a combination of mouse models, cell culture approaches and genomics technologies to investigate the epigenetic and transcriptional mechanisms that preserve healthy ...

    Preserving the diversity of forests assures their productivity and potentially increases the accumulation of carbon and nitrogen in the soil, which helps to sustain soil fertility and mitigate global climate change.   That's the main takeaway from a new study that analyzed data from hundreds of plots in Canada's National Forest Inventory to investigate the relationship between tree diversity and changes in soil carbon and nitrogen in natural forests.   Numerous biodiversity-manipulation experiments have collectively suggested that ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) identify a novel mechanism by which cells adhere more strongly to their surrounding matrix in response to stress Tokyo, Japan – The DNA molecules in our cells can be damaged by various extrinsic and intrinsic factors called genotoxic stressors; persistent and unchecked damage can lead to developing diseases like cancer. Fortunately, our cells don’t sit idly by and let this happen. In a recent article published in Cell Death & Disease, a team ...

Researchers have established that biological sex plays a role in determining an individual’s risk of brain disorders. For example, boys are more likely to be diagnosed with behavioral conditions like autism or attention deficit disorder, whereas women are more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders, depression, or migraines. However, experts do not fully understand how sex contributes to brain development, particularly in the context of these diseases. They think, in part, it may have something to do with the differing sizes of certain brain regions. University ...

HA NOI, Viet Nam (April 26, 2023) – A new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) identified a viral hotspot in Viet Nam where bat roosting sites, bat guano harvesting, and pig farms are all in close proximity. The findings of this collaborative One Health study, described in the latest issue of the journal Viruses, have important implications for public health and wildlife conservation. The authors say that the collection of guano – commonly used as a fertilizer – if not stopped ...

New research has found that it is possible to capture the impact of a meal on metabolism outside of a lab environment. Published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition and led by researchers at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England, the study evaluated Lumen, which the manufacturers claim is the first device to allow people to monitor metabolic fuel use at home. The research – the first applied study to investigate the practical use of this handheld breath device – was split into ...

In crop-breeding, plant phenotyping is the detailed study of a plant’s characteristic ‘visible’ or phenotypic features. It includes counting the number of plants generated by a crossing experiment and grading the features displayed by the offspring or progeny. The progeny with the desirable traits is then crossed to produce the next generation of crops, and the process is repeated to enhance the crop variety. Conventional methods for plant phenotyping typically lack scalability, accuracy, and are immensely labor-intensive. This imposes a certain bottleneck on crop-breeding programs. However, with technological ...

A University of Houston professor and her research team are seeking to improve the lives and education of bilingual children across the country through their research on developmental language disorder. Anny Castilla-Earls, professor of communication sciences and disorders, was awarded $3.27 million for five years by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders to investigate the relationship between a child’s proficiency in English or Spanish and the language in which they receive treatment for developmental language disorder. Developmental language disorder, or ...

An international team of scientists led by Dr. LU Rusen from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has used new millimeter-wavelength observations to produce an image that shows, for the first time, both the ring-like accretion structure around a black hole, where matter falls into the black hole, and the black hole's associated powerful relativistic jet. The source of the images was the central black hole of the prominent radio galaxy Messier 87. The study was published in Nature on April 26. The image underlines for the first time the connection between the accretion flow near the central supermassive black hole and the origin ...

Our genetic code includes over 15,000 specific sections that can be made into molecules called lincRNAs. Some of these sections can occur in coiled-up sections of our genome called TADs. LincRNAs derived from TADs appear to act as markers indicating the specific kind of tissue they are within. When something is wrong in these tissues, the markers could help with targeted medical interventions. The team that discovered this novel feature has outlined a way to apply this idea to different diseases and demonstrated it with a heart disease known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Diseases can affect very specific ...

Fungal spores found in dung have revealed that large animals went extinct in two “waves” in the Colombian Andes. Spores of coprophilous fungi pass through the guts of megafauna (animals over 45kg) as part of their life cycle, so the presence of the spores in sediment samples shows large animals lived in a certain place and time. The study, by the University of Exeter, found that large animals became locally extinct at Pantano de Monquentiva about 23,000 years ago, and again about 11,000 years ago – with major impacts on ecosystems. The study used ...

More than 45,000 Americans died by suicide in 2020, a 30% increase over 2000, making it the 12th leading cause of death in the U.S. Studies have shown that the social and environmental factors where people live, like exposure to violence and crime, access to quality health care, food insecurity, job opportunities, and air pollution, are connected to suicide rates. Now, a new research study from the University of Chicago provides more statistical evidence that social determinants of health are tightly linked to suicide risk. The study, published ...

Contrary to popular belief, firearm deaths in the U.S. are statistically more likely in small towns, not major cities, according to new research. Across the country, gun suicides are more common than gun homicides, and gun suicides are largely responsible for an increase in gun deaths over the past few decades, the study also finds. The analysis of two decades of U.S. mortality data was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of California, Davis, and appears in the journal JAMA Surgery. “Our study has found that the divide in total intentional ...

About The Study: The findings of this randomized clinical trial including 2,200 adolescents indicate that the NVX-CoV2373 (Novavax, Inc.) COVID-19 vaccine is safe, immunogenic, and efficacious in preventing COVID-19, including the predominant Delta variant, in adolescents.  Authors: German Anez, M.D., of Novavax, Inc., in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.9135) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

About The Study: This study found that living in a more economically deprived and socially marginalized area was associated with increased risk of using violence against others. The finding suggests that interventions may need to include investments in neighborhoods with the highest levels of violence to help reduce downstream transmission of violence.  Authors: Elizabeth C. Pino, Ph.D., of the Boston University School of Medicine, is the corresponding author.  To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.8404) Editor’s ...

Note to journaliststs. There are two linked press releases below: the first describes the scientific findings. The second describes the challenges of working in the Amazon forest. How the Amazon rainforest is likely to cope with the effect of future drought New study identifies regions in the rainforest most at risk from drier conditions Drought will reduce the rainforest’s ability to remove carbon from the environment A major collaboration involving 80 scientists from Europe and South America has identified the regions of the Amazon rainforest where trees are most likely to face the greatest risk from drier ...

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled the processes that give astrocytes, the most abundant glial cell in the brain, their special bushy shape, which is fundamental for brain function. They report in the journal Nature that neuronal activity is necessary and sufficient for astrocytes to develop their complex shape, and interrupting this developmental process results in disrupted brain function. “Astrocytes play diverse roles that are vital for proper brain function,” said first author  Yi-Ting Cheng, a graduate student in Dr. Benjamin Deneen’s lab at Baylor. “For instance, they support the activity of other essential brain cells, ...

The new chemical process is not limited to wind turbine blades but works on many different so-called fibre-reinforced epoxy composites, including some materials that are reinforced with especially costly carbon fibres. Thus, the process can contribute to establishing a potential circular economy in the wind turbine, aerospace, automotive and space industries, where these reinforced composites, due to their light weight and long durability, are used for load-bearing structures. Being designed to last, the durability of the blades poses an ...

"Previously we had seen both the black hole and the jet in separate images, but now we have taken a panoramic picture of the black hole together with its jet at a new wavelength”, says Ru-Sen Lu, from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and leader of a Max Planck Research Group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The surrounding material is thought to fall into the black hole in a process known as accretion. But no one has ever imaged it directly. "The ring that we have seen before is becoming larger and thicker at 3.5 mm observing wavelength. This shows that the material falling into the black hole produces additional emission that is now observed in the new ...

In 2017, astronomers captured the first image of a black hole by coordinating radio dishes around the world to act as a single, planet-sized telescope. The synchronized network, known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), focused in on M87*, the black hole at the center of the nearby Messier 87 galaxy. The telescope’s laser-focused resolution revealed a very thin glowing ring around a dark center, representing the first visual of a black hole’s shadow.  Astronomers have now refocused their view to capture a new layer of M87*. The team, including scientists at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has harnessed ...

Astronomers in the Canadian-led CHIME/FRB Collaboration have doubled the number of known repeating sources of mysterious flashes of radio waves, known as fast radio bursts (FRBs). Among them are astronomers from the University of Toronto. Through the discovery of 25 new repeating sources (for a total of 50), the team also solidified the idea that all FRBs may eventually repeat. FRBs are considered one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, but their exact origins are unknown. Astronomers do know that they come from far outside of our Milky Way, and are likely produced by the cinders left behind after stars die. Most of the thousands of FRBs that astronomers have discovered to ...

For the first time, astronomers have observed, in the same image, the shadow of the black hole at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) and the powerful jet expelled from it. The observations were done in 2018 with telescopes from the Global Millimetre VLBI Array (GMVA), the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which ESO is a partner, and the Greenland Telescope (GLT). Thanks to this new image, astronomers can better understand how black holes can launch such energetic jets. Most galaxies harbour a supermassive black hole at their centre. While black holes are known for ...