Researchers tend to co-author with individuals of the same gender, partly because of demography, norms and gender representation, but seemingly also through personal preference ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283106 Article Title: Gender-based homophily in collaborations across a heterogeneous scholarly landscape Author Countries: USA Funding: This research was supported by the Royalty Research Fund Grant #A118374 awarded to EE (PI) and CL (co-PI), National Science Foundation Grant #1735194 awarded to JW (co-PI), and National Science Foundation SMA 19-52069 to CTB. https://www.washington.edu/research/or/royalty-research-fund-rrf/; ...

Smartphone plant identification apps may not be accurate enough to be relied on, especially in avoiding toxic plants when foraging ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283386 Article Title: A repeatable scoring system for assessing Smartphone applications ability to identify herbaceous plants Author Countries: Ireland, UK Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

A new review of previously published studies on methods for reducing conspiracy beliefs has shown that most of these methods are ineffective, but that those focused on fostering critical thinking or an analytical mindset show some promise. Cian O’Mahony of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 5. Evidence from prior studies suggests that belief in conspiracy theories can be associated with harmful consequences, such as—in the case of ...

DNA and associated proteins in active regions of the genome are condensed but behave like a viscous liquid at the molecular level. This finding greatly increases our understanding of the physical nature of expressed genome regions in living human cells. The human genome DNA has a remarkable capacity for compaction. When 46 sets of human chromosomes are stretched end to end, they collectively reach two meters in length but are somehow arranged in a nucleus with only about ten micrometers in diameter. To fit inside the nucleus, the strands of DNA are wrapped ...

Researchers have developed a way to create photonic time crystals and shown that these bizarre, artificial materials amplify the light that shines on them. These findings, described in a paper in Science Advances, could lead to more efficient and robust wireless communications and significantly improved lasers. Time crystals were first conceived by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Mundane, familiar crystals have a structural pattern that repeats in space, but in a time crystal, the pattern repeats in time instead. While some physicists were ...

Embargoed: Not for Release Until 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time Wednesday, 05 April 2023. TUSCALOOSA, Ala. —  Through global-scale seismic imaging of Earth’s interior, research led by The University of Alabama revealed a layer between the core and the mantle that is likely a dense, yet thin, sunk ocean floor, according to results published today in Science Advances. Seen only in isolated patches previously, the latest data suggests this layer of ancient ocean floor may cover the core-mantle boundary. Subducted underground long ago as the Earth’s plates shifted, this ultra-low velocity zone, or ULVZ, is denser than the rest ...

A new review of methods for reducing conspiracy beliefs has shown that most methods are ineffective, but that those focused on fostering critical thinking or an analytical mindset show some promise. Led by researchers at University College Cork (UCC), the study is the first comprehensive review of the effectiveness of various conspiracy interventions. It is published in PLOS ONE.  While holding conspiracy beliefs has been associated with several detrimental social, personal, and health consequences, little research has been dedicated to systematically reviewing the methods that could reduce conspiracy beliefs. To ...

By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — Infections of the middle ear, the air-filled space behind the eardrum that contains the tiny vibrating bones of hearing, annually affect more than 700 million people worldwide. Children are especially prone to ear infections, with 40% of them developing recurrent or chronic infections that can lead to complications like impaired hearing, speech and language delays, perforations in their eardrums, and even life-threatening meningitis. As a treatment, doctors may surgically insert ear tubes knowns as “tympanostomy tubes” (TTs) into the eardrum to create an opening between the ear canal ...

Memphis, Tenn.—April 5, 2023) Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital revealed that human ribosomes decode messenger RNA (mRNA) 10 times slower than bacterial ribosomes, but do so more accurately. The study, published today in Nature, used a combination of field-leading structural biology approaches to better understand how ribosomes work. The scientists pinpointed where the process slows down in humans, which will be useful information for developing new therapeutics for cancer and infections.    Ribosomes are ...

The scientists designed a special cell in order to observe the transport of lithium-ions between the anode and the cathode in a solid-state Lithium-Sulfur battery. Since lithium can hardly be detected with x-ray methods, HZB physicists Dr. Robert Bradbury and Dr. Ingo Manke examined the sample cell with neutrons, which are extremely sensitive to lithium. In conjunction with Dr. Nikolay Kardjilov, HZB, they used neutron radiography and neutron tomography methods on the CONRAD2 instrument at the Berlin neutron source BER II1. Groups from Giessen (JLU), Braunschweig (TUBS) and Jülich (FZJ) were also involved in the work.  Lithium ...

Natural disasters can devastate a region, abruptly killing the species that form an ecosystem’s structure. But how this transpires can influence recovery. While fires scorch the landscape to the ground, a heatwave leaves an army of wooden staves in its wake. Storm surges and coral bleaching do something similar underwater. UC Santa Barbara scientists investigated how these two kinds of disturbances might affect coral reefs. They found that coral struggles more to recover from bleaching than from storms, ...

Even after three years since the emergence of COVID-19, much remains unknown about how it causes severe disease, including the widespread organ damage beyond just the lungs. Increasingly, scientists are learning that organ dysfunction results from damage to the blood vessels, but why the virus causes this damage is unclear. Now a multidisciplinary team of Emory researchers has discovered what they believe is the key molecular pathway. Results of their study, published today in Nature Communications, show that COVID-19 damages the cells lining the smallest blood vessels, choking off blood flow. These results could pave the way for new treatments to save lives at a time when hundreds ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the inequality in American health care systems, which consistently neglect the needs of underserved communities, leaving them without access to quality care. A commentary published in Population Health Management highlights the need for a transformational change in our health care systems to advance health equity and address structural racism and health disparities affecting wellbeing. Click here to read the article now. Coauthors Dr. Jonathan B. Perlin, President ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Teens’ trust in the news they consume on social media – or lack of it – may be key to whether it supports or detracts from their well-being, according to Cornell-led psychology research. Surveying nearly 170 adolescents and young adults from the U.S. and U.K. early in the pandemic, the researchers found that those more trusting of the COVID-19 information they saw on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok were more likely to feel it was empowering, while those less trusting were more likely to find it stressful. The findings highlight the need for news literacy programs to help young people discern fact-based, trustworthy sources from misinformation ...

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that Monica P. Medina, the first diplomat in the U.S. designated to advocate for global biodiversity, has been named WCS President and CEO, effective June 1, 2023. Medina, current Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment, and Science; and Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources will serve until April 30, 2023, at the U.S. Department of State. Medina ushered in a new era of environmental diplomacy as a foreign policy priority at the State Department. She will join WCS to lead its mission to save wildlife and wild places, harnessing the power of its four zoos, an aquarium, and its Global ...

INDIANAPOLIS--A multi-disciplinary team of Indiana University researchers is focusing their efforts on a growing public health concern: binge and “high-intensity” drinking—extreme drinking behaviors that are increasingly prevalent among college-age adults. The researchers, who are part of the Indiana Alcohol Research Center, recently received a five-year, $8.65 million grant renewal from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to support this work. Established in 1987, the Indiana Alcohol Research Center (IARC) is housed at IU School of Medicine and led by director David Kareken, PhD, a professor of ...

Texas Tech’s Thomas Maccarone has received a grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to study possible impacts of one layer of the earth’s ionosphere upon radio communications. Maccarone, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, said the project will have short- and long-term benefits and implications. The one-year grant is for just more than $500,000. “We will use a set of dipole radio antennas to study what is called the sporadic E-layer of the ionosphere,” he said. “That is the short-term component the Air Force ...

Leesburg, VA, April 5, 2023—According to an accepted manuscript published in ARRS’ own American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), a worklist reprioritization tool with artificial intelligence reduced both report turnaround time and wait time for pulmonary embolus-positive CT pulmonary angiography examinations. “By assisting radiologists in providing rapid diagnoses, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool could potentially enable earlier interventions for acute pulmonary embolus (PE),” concluded lead researcher Kiran Batra, MD, from the department of radiology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 4, 2023—Ponderosa pine forests in the Sierra Nevada that were wiped out by western pine beetles during the 2012-2015 megadrought won’t recover to pre-drought densities, reducing an important storehouse for atmospheric carbon. “Forests store huge amounts of atmospheric carbon, so when western pine beetle infestations kill off millions of trees, that carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere,“ said Zachary Robbins, a postdoctoral at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Robbins is corresponding author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science about carbon stored in living ponderosa pines in the ...

Galaxies grow and evolve by merging with other galaxies, blending their billions of stars, triggering bursts of vigorous star formation, and often fueling their central supermassive black holes to produce luminous quasars that outshine the entire galaxy. Some of these mergers eventually go on to become massive elliptical galaxies that contain black holes that are many billions of times the mass of our Sun. Although astronomers have observed a veritable menagerie of merging galaxies with more than one quasar in our own cosmic neighborhood, more distant examples, seen when the Universe was only a quarter of its current age, are quite rare and ...

Researchers at Simon Fraser University are studying the genes of superbugs to aid the development of new and effective treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections. Superbugs are characterized as infection-causing bacteria resistant to treatment with antibiotics. “Antimicrobial resistance occurs when the disease-causing bacteria has ways to overcome the antibiotics that we use in treatment for infections,” says assistant professor Amy Lee, of SFU's Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. The initiative is a collaboration between the Lee Lab and Brinkman Lab, which are working together as ...

About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this sector by 40% in the U.S. The approach, called aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), could also help prevent blackouts caused by high power demand during extreme weather events. “We need storage to absorb the fluctuating energy from solar and wind, and most people are interested in batteries ...

West Virginia University researchers will continue to develop and advance their pioneering method to extract and separate rare earth elements and critical minerals from acid mine drainage and coal waste, courtesy of $8 million in new funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant, part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, will lead to the design, construction and operation of a pre-commercial demonstration facility for separating and refining rare earth elements and critical minerals, according to Paul Ziemkiewicz, project lead and director of the West Virginia Water ...

Deep within our brain’s temporal lobes, two almond-shaped cell masses help keep us alive. This tiny region, called the amygdala, assists with a variety of brain activities. It helps us learn and remember. It triggers our fight-or-flight response. It even promotes the release of a feel-good chemical called dopamine. Scientists have learned all this by studying the amygdala over hundreds of years. But we still haven’t reached a full understanding of how these processes work. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory neuroscientist Bo Li has brought us several important steps closer. His lab recently made a series of discoveries ...

Ice sheets can retreat up to 600 metres a day during periods of climate warming, 20 times faster than the highest rate of retreat previously measured. An international team of researchers, led by Dr Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, UK, used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to reveal just how quickly a former ice sheet that extended from Norway retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago.  The team, which also included researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Loughborough in the UK and the Geological Survey of Norway, mapped more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called ‘corrugation ridges’ across the seafloor. The ridges ...