Ants react to social isolation in a similar way as do humans and other social mammals. A study by an Israeli-German research team has revealed alterations to the social and hygienic behavior of ants that had been isolated from their group. The research team was particularly surprised by the fact that immune and stress genes were downregulated in the brains of the isolated ants. "This makes the immune system less efficient, a phenomenon that is also apparent in socially isolating humans - notably at present during the COVID-19 crisis," said Professor Susanne Foitzik, who headed up the study at Johannes ...

Cancer therapy in recent times relies on the use of several drugs derived from biological sources including different bacteria and viruses, among others. However, these bio-based drugs get easily degraded and therefore inactivated on administration into the body. Thus, effective delivery to and release of these drugs at target tumor sites are of paramount importance from the perspective of cancer therapy. Recently, scientists have discovered unique three-dimensional, water-containing polymers, called hydrogels, as effective drug delivery systems (DDSs). Drugs loaded into these hydrogels remain relatively stable owing to the network-like structure and organic tissue-like consistency of these DDSs. Besides, drug release from hydrogels can ...

By Karina Ninni | Agência FAPESP – A multidisciplinary research group affiliated with the Department of Physical Education’s Human Movement Laboratory (Movi-Lab) at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, measured step length synergy while crossing obstacles in patients with Parkinson’s disease and concluded that it was 53% lower than in healthy subjects of the same age and weight. Step length is one of the main variables affected by the disease. Synergy, defined as combined operation, refers in this case to the capacity of the locomotor (or musculoskeletal) system to adapt movement while crossing an obstacle, combining factors such as speed and foot position, for example. Improving synergy in Parkinson’s patients while they ...

You might not think an animal made out of stone would have much to worry about in the way of predators, and that's largely what scientists had thought about coral. Although corallivores like parrotfish and pufferfish are well known to biologists, their impact on coral growth and survival was believed to be small compared to factors like heatwaves, ocean acidification and competition from algae. But researchers at UC Santa Barbara have found that young corals are quite vulnerable to these predators, regardless of whether a colony finds itself alone on the reef or surrounded by others of its kind. The research, led by doctoral student Kai Kopecky, appears in the journal Coral Reefs. Kopecky and his co-authors ...

Unusual diseases are medical mysteries that fascinate us, and one such disease is multiple system atrophy, or MSA. This rare neurological disorder causes failures in the proper functioning of the body's autonomic system (processes that are not under our conscious control, such as blood pressure, breathing, and involuntary movement). The resulting symptoms can look like two other types of neurodegenerative disease: Parkinson's disease and cerebellar ataxia. In fact, MSA can be separated into a parkinsonism subtype or a cerebellar subtype based on whether the resultant movement-related ...

Within multicellular organisms, cells build connections with each other forming cell layers that cover the surfaces of tissues and organs and separate structures in the body. For example, the skin forms a mantle around the entire organism, and the layer of cells lining the blood vessels creates a boundary between the bloodstream and tissues. Special connections between neighbouring cells ensure that these cellular barriers are, on the one hand, stable and tight - thus protecting the body and organs against pathogens - while, on the other hand, they remain permeable to specific substances or migrating cells. This is how the cells allow dissolved ...

Imagine the process of distributing electricity to homes from the power grid is like travelers boarding a train. There are multiple steps to take before they can reach their final destination. First, they have to buy a ticket at the ticketing booth - this is where the power is generated. Then, they board a train that departs from the station - the power is transmitted over distances using transmission lines. Finally, the train takes the travelers (electricity) to their final destination. This final step of sending power to homes and businesses is called the distribution system - and it is critical that ...

Today, the Muon g-2 Collaboration finally published the highly anticipated first result from its measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, a precision quantity that offers physicists one of the most promising means to test predictions of the actual Standard Model of particle physics. The measured value, which is more precise than all values before, strengthens evidence for the emergence of new physics beyond the Standard Model, and thus for the existence of previously unknown particles or forces. The result was presented at an online ...

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found that an outdoor science program was linked to higher average science grades and an increase in a measure of science knowledge for a group of fifth grade girls in North Carolina. The findings, published in the International Journal of Science Education, indicates outdoor education could be a promising tool to help close gender gaps in science. "The outdoors is a space where teachers can find tangible ways to make science come alive," said the study's lead author Kathryn Stevenson, assistant professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State. "The natural environment is also a place that everybody has in common. In a way, it's also a great context for employing reform-based teaching practices ...

Conspiracy theories appear to be increasing in popularity as the Covid-19 pandemic continues. But to what extent do people really agree with them, and what is the association with cognitive biases? A research team from the University of Basel studied these questions in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany. Periods of crisis are often conducive to the emergence and spread of conspiracy theories, and the Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. A research team led by Sarah Kuhn and Dr. Thea Zander-Schellenberg of the University of Basel has investigated the endorsement rates of coronavirus-related conspiracy theories in German-speaking Switzerland and Germany, ...

Muons, particles akin to electrons, have kepts physicists' heads spinning for more than a decade, because an experimental measurement of their magnetic properties (1) disagrees with theory. Could this be caused by unknown particles or forces? A new theoretical calculation of this parameter, involving CNRS physicists and published in the journal Nature, has reduced the discrepancy with the experimental measurement. The debate nevertheless continues. -- For over 10 years, measurement of the magnetic properties of the muon (an ephemeral cousin of the electron) has exhibited disagreement with theoretical predictions. This ...

A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, with archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology, have found the first evidence of a religious diet locked inside pottery fragments excavated from the early medieval Jewish community of Oxford. Keeping kosher is one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining these dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundamental part of everyday life. It is a key part of what identifies them as Jews, both amongst their own communities and to the outside world. Oxford's Jewish quarter was established around St. Aldates in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following William the Conqueror's invitation ...

Women are significantly underrepresented in the editorial boards of marketing academic journals, and awards and recognition favour men, new research from the University of Bath School of Management has found. In their study 'It's hard to be what you can't see - gender representation in marketing's academic journals', Professor Andrea Prothero of Business and Society at University College Dublin and co-researcher Professor Pierre McDonagh examined gender representation in 20 marketing academic journals through three areas - the gender composition of editorial boards, special issue celebrations ...

Worldwide 39 percent of the adults were overweight in 2016, according to statistics of the World Health Organization. In the US the prevalence of obesity was 42.4 percent in 2017/2018, according to a survey of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Concurrently millions of people want to lose weight. Physical exercise is an important option to achieve this. After all, more calories are consumed through sport than when sitting, standing or lying down. But what influence does sport have on (direct) eating habits? Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the University of Nebraska (USA) have now investigated this ...

An international research team has sequenced the genomes of the oldest securely dated modern humans in Europe who lived around 45,000 years ago in Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. By comparing their genomes to the genomes of people who lived later in Europe and in Asia the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show that this early human group in Europe contributed genes to later people, particularly present-day East Asians. The researchers also identified large stretches of Neandertal DNA in the genomes of the Bacho Kiro Cave people, showing that ...

Working safely is not only about processes, but context - understanding the work environment and circumstances, and being able to predict what other people will do next. A new system empowers robots with this level of context awareness, so they can work side-by-side with humans on assembly lines more efficiently and without unnecessary interruptions. Instead of being able to only judge distance between itself and its human co-workers, the human-robot collaboration system can identify each worker it works with, as well as the person's skeleton model, which is an abstract of body volume, says Hongyi Liu, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Using this information, the context-aware robot system can recognize ...

3D-mammography reduces the number of breast cancer cases diagnosed in the period between routine screenings, when compared with traditional mammography, according to a large study from Lund University in Sweden. The results are published in the journal Radiology. "Our results indicate that 3D-mammography, or digital breast tomosynthesis, possibly detects cancers that would otherwise have been diagnosed later at a more advanced stage", says Kristin Johnson, doctoral student at Lund University and radiology resident at Skåne University Hospital. A large prospective screening study conducted at Skåne ...

WESTMINSTER, Colorado - April 07, 2021 - As the number of weed populations resistant to multiple herbicides continues to soar, it is clear that better tools are needed to help growers rapidly diagnose resistance issues. With more timely access to information, they can take earlier, proactive steps to keep resistant weeds from spreading. A recent article in the journal END ...

An international team of researchers has studied individual differences in the behaviour of red deer. They found that several observed behaviours form a personality component, which they labelled "Confidence/Aggressiveness". As is commonly known, individual people behave consistently different from each other and these kinds of consistent differences in behaviour are called personality. Studies on species other than humans, from insects to elephants, have found that personalities are widespread in nature. The team consists of researchers from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic, the University of Vienna, Austria, and the University of Turku, Finland and is led by Bruno Esattore from the Department of ...

Cardiovascular diseases are usually complex and affect multiple organs simultaneously. Treatments for vascular diseases in the brain may therefore have implications for the treatment of cardiac diseases. It is therefore important to understand the respective causes and effects. This study explores the causes of intracerebral haemorrhages and links them to the risk of stroke associated with atrial fibrillation. It suggests a fundamental new assessment of the effects of blood thinning on intracerebral haemorrhages. About 1,000 patients with intracerebral haemorrhage are treated at stroke units each year in Switzerland. Intracerebral haemorrhages are more often fatal than other forms of strokes, ...

Most materials go from being solids to liquids when they are heated. One rare counter-example is helium-3, which can solidify upon heating. This counterintuitive and exotic effect, known as the Pomeranchuk effect, may now have found its electronic analogue in a material known as magic-angle graphene, says a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Prof. Shahal Ilani, in collaboration with Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This result, published today in Nature, comes thanks to the first ever measurement of electronic entropy in an atomically-thin two dimensional ...

For those who live in an area blighted by ticks, the threat of Lyme disease can cast a shadow over the joy of spring and summer. These blood-sucking arachnids can transmit bacteria into the bloodstream of their unsuspecting host, causing the disease. Early treatment is essential, but current tests are not usually sensitive enough to detect the disease in early-stage patients. A recent study in open-access journal END ...

A joint research team led by Dr. MAO Fangyuan and Dr. ZHANG Chi from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. MENG Jin from the American Museum of Natural History have discovered two new species of mammal-like, burrowing animals that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The new species, described in Nature on April 7, are distantly related. However, they independently evolved traits to support their digging lifestyle. They represent the first "scratch diggers" discovered in this ecosystem. "There are many hypotheses about why animals dig into the soil and live underground," said Prof. MENG, lead author of the study. "For protection against predators, ...

A recent study finds that unhealthy eating behaviors at night can make people less helpful and more withdrawn the next day at work. "For the first time, we have shown that healthy eating immediately affects our workplace behaviors and performance," says Seonghee "Sophia" Cho, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "It is relatively well established that other health-related behaviors, such as sleep and exercise, affect our work. But nobody had looked at the short-term effects of unhealthy eating." Fundamentally, the researchers had two questions: Does unhealthy eating behavior affect you at work the next day? And, if so, why? For the study, ...

An epigenetic study at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences shows that in mouse egg cells, modifications to histone H2A at lysine 119 lay the groundwork for inherited DNA functional modifications from the mother. In books and the movies, a group of people on a special mission always sends out a scout to do reconnaissance before they proceed. Sometimes, the scouts leave signs or markers that allow the group to know where there should go. Researchers led by Azusa Inoue at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan have discovered a mark left behind in unfertilized egg cells that determine which DNA modifications ...