Neanderthal remains recently discovered in a cave in France support well-known theory of why the Neanderthals became extinct, researchers behind a new study say. In recent years, researchers have offered different explanations for why modern humans survived and the Neanderthals became extinct some 40,000 years ago. A new study from the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen supports one of the main hypotheses. The researchers behind the new study discovered Neanderthal remains of a male in a cave in southern France, ...

Analysis of air samples taken at altitudes of up to 3,000 metres above Japan has revealed the presence of a vast range of viable bacteria and fungi transported by air masses originating more than 2,000 kilometres away, in regions enriched with fertilisers and pesticides. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals a new way in which human, animal and plant pathogens may travel to distant geographical regions. This research has been led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Daniel ...

The Wyss Institute at Harvard University announced today that Ropirio Therapeutics, Inc. (Ropirio) has secured a worldwide, exclusive license from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) and Boston University (BU)’s Technology Development office for novel molecules that activate the lymphatic system - a first in the pharma industry. “There has been a tremendous amount of research into the lymphatic system over the last decade, with scientists uncovering new lymphatic vasculature and understanding the critical role it plays across a wide range of serious diseases. Ropirio is building on this explosion of research ...

Between 2018 and 2020, Australia implemented policy changes to improve the quality and safety of opioid prescribing, with a specific focus on oxycodone.  A new study led by The University of Queensland (UQ) using wastewater analysis has determined that oxycodone consumption in Australia dropped by 45% from 2019 to 2020, coinciding with those national policy changes.  In November 2019, the Australian National Prescribing Service launched a federal initiative to improve opioid prescribing.  The initiative involved alerting high-prescribing clinicians that their opioid prescribing practices were outside typical ...

A neighborhood’s walkability is affected by many factors such as street connectivity and density; access to destinations and aesthetics; investment in walking and biking infrastructure; and the presence or absence of urban natural features, specifically tree cover. Not all neighborhoods are alike. Many neighborhoods in impoverished and minority communities lack the cooling effect of vegetation and tree cover, especially in urbanized areas. As a result, residents face the “heat island effect,” where temperatures remain higher in urban areas ...

Recently, many major countries around the world, starting with the U.S., Japan, Germany, China, U.K., etc., have issued an administrative order to ensure the safety of AI technology, putting an emphasis on the safe, effective implementation of AI into their systems. In line with such trends, Korean researchers have collaborated with renowned AI experts from all around the world to create new AI-related international standards, garnering attention from the global AI community. Proposal No. Title Status ISO/IEC ...

WHAT: Newborns who had an atypical pattern of metabolites were more than 14 times as likely to die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), compared to infants who had more typical metabolic patterns, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. Metabolites are molecules produced by the body’s various chemical reactions. Researchers found that infants who died of SIDS had a specific pattern of metabolites compared to infants who lived to their first year. The researchers believe that checking for this pattern could provide ...

Biotechnological pesticides are a promising alternative to traditional chemical pesticides. But we have limited knowledge of how toxic they are to other organisms in the environment beyond regulatory assessments. A new research centre will now work to provide this knowledge – especially to ensure the EU has a chance of joining the growing market for biotechnological pesticides. As for now, Europe has failed to keep up. "If a thing kills something, we need to know how it kills, and who and what else it may kill," says Professor Nina Cedergreen of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences. She is ...

Proper power grounding systems are necessary for maintaining the safety and reliability of critical electrical subsystem infrastructure, such as substations. Power grounding systems provide a low-resistance path for electrical fault currents to flow into the earth, preventing electrical shocks, fires, and damage to vital equipment. Investigation of soil resistivity is crucial for designing power grounding systems. For the most cost-effective and efficient grounding systems for electrical substations, it is imperative to carefully ...

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, have for the first time succeeded in combining two major research fields in photonics by creating a nanoobject with unique optical qualities. Since the object is a thousand times thinner than the human hair, yet very powerful, the breakthrough has great potential in the development of efficient and compact nonlinear optical devices. “My feeling is that this discovery has a great potential,” says Professor Timur Shegai, who led the study at Chalmers.   Photonic applications harness the power of light-matter interactions to generate ...

Thanks to an experiment started before the Great Depression, researchers have pinpointed the genes behind the remarkable adaptability of barley, a key ingredient in beer and whiskey. These insights could ensure the crop’s continued survival amidst rapid climate change.  Grown everywhere from Asia and Egypt to Norway and the Andes mountains of South America, barley is one of the world’s most important cereal crops and has been for at least 12,000 years. As it has spread across the globe, random ...

PULLMAN, Wash. -- A computer algorithm can efficiently find genetic mutations that work together to drive cancer as well as other important genetic clues that researchers might someday use to develop new treatments for a variety of cancers. Reporting in the journal Frontiers in Bioinformatics, a Washington State University-led team used a novel network computer model to find co-occurring mutations as well as other similarities among DNA sequence elements across several types of cancer. The model allows for easier searches for patterns in huge seas of cancer genetic data. “This is a ...

What if that proverbial man in the mirror was a fish? Would it change its ways? According to an Osaka Metropolitan University-led research group, yes, it would. In what the researchers say in Scientific Reports is the first time for a non-human animal to be demonstrated to possess some mental states (e.g., mental body image, standards, intentions, goals), which are elements of private self-awareness, bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) checked their body size in a mirror before choosing whether to attack fish that were slightly larger or smaller than themselves. The ...

LA JOLLA, CA—It’s a dogma taught in every introductory biology class: Proteins are composed of combinations of 20 different amino acids, arranged into diverse sequences like words. But researchers trying to engineer biologic molecules with new functions have long felt limited by those 20 basic building blocks and strived to develop ways of putting new building blocks—called non-canonical amino acids—into their proteins. Now, scientists at Scripps Research have designed a new paradigm for easily adding non-canonical amino acids to proteins. Their approach, described in Nature Biotechnology on September 11, 2024, revolves around using ...

A groundbreaking study led by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus reveals that stress-induced changes in sperm motility occur after a stressful event, rather than during it and improves sperm performance. The discovery is essential in understanding how stress impacts the reproductive process to improve fetal development outcomes. The study was published today in Nature Communications. Over the last five decades, there has been a notable decline in semen quality, which has coincided with environmental stressors. This new research identifies how stress affects the ability of ...

Throat problems could impair autonomic nervous system's ability to regulate blood pressure Research suggests problems at junction between air and food passages may ‘overwhelm’ the Vagus nerve Patients with throat problems were less able to regulate their blood pressure in a new study led by the University of Southampton. The study published in JAMA Otolaryngology is the first to observe reduced baroreflex sensitivity in patients with throat symptoms. The baroreflex is a crucial part of the autonomic nervous system which detects changes ...

The Centre for Research and Innovation for Black Survivors of Homicide Victims (The CRIB) is calling for decisive action to address the grief from homicide that is disproportionately affecting Black communities worldwide — and to tackle the root causes of homicide that impact this population. In a paper published in the journal Homicide Studies, University of Toronto social work professor Tanya Sharpe and colleagues argue that the prevalence and spread of homicide grief — the grief that follows the ...

During social interactions, the activity of the brain’s neurons becomes synchronized between the individuals involved. New research published in Advanced Science reveals that such synchronization occurs between humans and dogs, with mutual gazing causing synchronization in the brain’s frontal region and petting causing synchronization in the parietal region. Both regions are associated with attention. The strength of this synchronization increased with growing familiarity of human–dog pairs over 5 days, and tests indicated that the human is the leader while ...

New research published in Business Strategy and the Environment based on information from G7 countries demonstrates that green finance—loans, investments, and incentives that support environmentally-friendly projects and activities—can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Also, data indicate that investments in green projects are profitable. The study found that G7 countries' environmental conditions have been negatively impacted by economic development; however, there are advantages of green finance solutions for economic growth. The study’s investigators ...

In an analysis of information on 164,170 older adult Medicare beneficiaries who were hospitalized for hip fractures, a similar proportion of Black and white beneficiaries used opioids after they were discharged and returned to the community, but Black beneficiaries consistently received lower doses of the pain medications. In the study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, investigators observed that on average Black beneficiaries received the equivalent of around 250 fewer milligrams ...

Flowers that are pollinated by bats tend to have long stems that make them stand out from the surrounding foliage. New research published in New Phytologist reveals the evolutionary advantage that this characteristic provides to plants to ensure that they are discovered by bats. In simple backgrounds lacking foliage, bats showed no significant difference in the time it took them to find flowers with long versus short stems, but in complex backgrounds (with arrays of leaves and flowers), bats took nearly twice as much time to locate short-stemmed flowers. Investigators hypothesize that flowers located away from the surrounding foliage likely help bats to distinguish ...

The neurons of the brain are protected by an insulating layer called myelin. In certain diseases like multiple sclerosis, this protective layer is damaged and lost, leading to death of neurons and disability. New research published in The FEBS Journal reveals the importance of a protein called C1QL1 for promoting the replacement of the specialized cells that produce myelin. The findings could have important implications for the ongoing effort to develop new and improved therapies for the treatment of demyelinating diseases. In experiments conducted in mice, deleting the gene that codes for C1QL1 caused a delay in the rate at which oligodendrocytes ...

Cells that die during inflammation send wound-healing messages  A study by the team of Prof. Kodi Ravichandran (VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) and colleagues found that pyroptosis, a form of programmed cell death traditionally thought to be purely inflammatory, also plays a crucial role in promoting healing and tissue repair. This research, published in Nature, opens new avenues for understanding how our bodies respond to injury and could lead to innovative treatments for wounds and inflammatory diseases.  Dying cells  About a billion cells ...

Bottom Line: The frequency of second primary malignancies (SPMs) arising in cancer survivors following treatment with CAR T-cell therapy was statistically comparable to the frequency of SPMs following other standard-of-care therapies, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal in Which the Study was Published: Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Author: Kai Rejeski, MD, a visiting investigator and research fellow in the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Background: In January 2024, the U.S. Food and ...

With the development of intelligent era, information captured in low-light environments has become increasingly vital. Low-light enhancement technology is now a significant research topic in the domain of machine vision. Designing a robust low-light enhancement algorithm can not only improve the contrast of images, but also restore color and texture details, so as to obtain more distinct and accurate low-light scene information. The team led by Prof. Danhua Cao from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), ...