When people leave their rural lives behind to seek their fortunes in the city or agriculture is no longer profitable, the lands they toiled on are often left unused. A new perspective piece in Science shows that these abandoned lands could be both an opportunity and a threat for biodiversity, and highlights why abandoned lands are critical in the assessment of global restoration and conservation targets. The past 50 years have seen an increased exodus of populations from rural to urban areas. Today, 55% ...

Thanks to data from a magnified, multiply imaged supernova, a team led by University of Minnesota Twin Cities researchers has successfully used a first-of-its-kind technique to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. Their data provide insight into a longstanding debate in the field and could help scientists more accurately determine the Universe’s age and better understand the cosmos. The work is divided into two papers, respectively published in Science, one of the world’s top peer-reviewed academic journals, and The Astrophysical Journal, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of astrophysics and astronomy. In astronomy, there are two precise ...

Cancer of the penis is not a subject that comes up in conversation. When it does, one common response is, “I didn’t know you could get cancer there.” Not only is it not spoken about, but it is also rare, with fewer than one case per 100,000 men diagnosed in developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom per year. That rarity has meant far fewer clinical trials have been developed and conducted to guide its treatment, and in most cases, only small numbers of patients have been included. Fortunately, researchers from both sides ...

A UBC Okanagan researcher has been testing the effectiveness of a mobile app that encourages people living with a spinal cord injury—but can walk—to get active. Dr. Sarah Lawrason, a researcher in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences, has focused her career on working with people who live with a spinal cord injury (SCI) but are ambulatory. She describes this population as an isolated, often misunderstood group of people because while they live with an SCI, they may not rely on a wheelchair all of the time for mobility. “When people think of someone with an SCI, they picture a ...

TORONTO – May 11, 2023 – With funding from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Baycrest, the Kingston Indigenous Language Nest (KILN) and the University of Toronto have released a free online language course to learn the Indigenous language Ojibwe, also known as Anishinaabemowin. The Ojibwe language is spoken in Indigenous communities around the Great Lakes in Canada and the US, but serious efforts are needed to ensure the long-term survival of the language. “Due to the aging of people who ...

Experts from Newcastle University found the nervous system of people with post-Covid fatigue was underactive in three key areas. Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of long Covid. The breakthrough could lead to better treatment and tests to identify the condition and the team are already progressing the work having just started a trial. They have begun recruiting patients to test the effectiveness of a TENS machine – commonly used for pain relief in childbirth – to alleviate the fatigue in patients with long Covid.   Newcastle University ...

Into the Blue: Securing a Sustainable Future for Kelp Forests global synthesis report is the most comprehensive knowledge review on kelp to date, revealing the state of science on the world’s kelp forests and providing recommended actions to build the recovery of the world’s kelp forests. Aiming to improve our understanding of the value of kelp forests and provide recommendations to protect and sustainably manage them, the report also provides a range of policy and management interventions and options that can be used to maintain these remarkable ecosystems into the future and to support the people and economies that have depended on them for generations. Despite ...

LOS ANGELES — Two people regularly have a few alcoholic drinks daily. One develops liver disease. The other doesn’t.   What explains the different outcomes?   The answer may lie in a condition known as metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that together raise the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other serious health problems. This syndrome, characterized by symptoms such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar, affects more than one in three Americans.   A new ...

Scientists at UMass Chan Medical School and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole have identified the first gene—Bmal1—to play a crucial role in regulating circatidal behavior in the crustacean Parhyale hawaiensis. Circatidal rhythms help animals cope with the rise and fall of the tides in coastal areas. Published in Current Biology, the study by neurobiologists Patrick Emery, PhD, Joshua Rosenthal, PhD, and colleagues demonstrates the first molecular link between circatidal and circadian ...

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – Access to clean drinking water is essential for healthy communities, but delivering that water is growing increasingly difficult for many utilities. Corroding pipes and land shifts in aging water distribution networks can create frequent leaks, wasting water before it ever gets to the tap. Utilities in the U.S. lose about 6 billion gallons of water a day — enough to fill 9,000 swimming pools — due to leaks, in addition to wasted energy and resources spent in collecting and treating that water. Pranav Agrawal and Sriram Narasimhan from the University ...

InVADER Mission to Test its Robotic Laser Divebot on a Deep-Sea Expedition Team to test technologies for use in future planetary exploration while providing data to survey deep-sea ecosystems and minerals on Earth May 11, 2023, Mountain View, CA – A team of scientists and engineers from the SETI Institute, Impossible Sensing, NASA JPL, and other institutions will test their innovative robotic laser system on a deep-sea expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus. The mission, called InVADER (In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research), aims to advance technologies to explore, ...

A team of researchers led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Trevor David Rhone, assistant professor in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, has identified novel van der Waals (vdW) magnets using cutting-edge tools in artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, the team identified transition metal halide vdW materials with large magnetic moments that are predicted to be chemically stable using semi-supervised learning. These two-dimensional (2D) vdW magnets have potential applications in data storage, spintronics, and even quantum computing. Rhone ...

Tokyo, May 8, 2023 -- An increased risk of depression and anxiety among US older adults with dementia and poor activity participation has been demonstrated through an analysis of data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative population-based study. These findings were reached by a team of researchers from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center in National Cancer Center, and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Japan. This study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports 7(1). The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (May 11, 2023) — Van Andel Institute scientists have pinpointed how a specific gene mutation triggers an inflammatory cascade that may drive development of treatment-resistant cancers. The new findings, published today in Molecular Cell, reveal for the first time the molecular circuitry by which mutations in the gene STK11 cause inflammation to spiral out of control. The resulting chemical firestorm damages healthy cells and can enable cancer development. Tumors that lose the STK11 gene are tough ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For two decades, physicists have tried to directly manipulate the spin of electrons in 2D materials like graphene. Doing so could spark key advances in the burgeoning world of 2D electronics, a field where super-fast, small and flexible electronic devices carry out computations based on quantum mechanics. Standing in the way is that the typical way in which scientists measure the spin of electrons — an essential behavior that gives everything in the physical universe its structure — usually doesn’t work in 2D materials. This makes it incredibly difficult to fully understand the materials and propel forward technological ...

CHICAGO, May 11, 2023 – You may know how other planets look, like the rust orange, dusty surface of Mars or the vibrant teal of Uranus. But what do those planets sound like? Timothy G. Leighton from the University of Southampton in the U.K. designed a software program that produces extraterrestrial environmental sounds and predicts how human voices might change in distant worlds. He will demonstrate his work at the upcoming 184th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 8-12 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel. His presentation will take place ...

Answers could be cloudy for researchers using Landsat images to investigate the coverage of the continental United States. The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) are useful products for scientists to understand how things like tree canopy and road coverage changes over time, but something as simple as cloud coverage can be misinterpreted in the satellite images as a significant surface coverage change. How can researchers be sure they’re getting a truly representative understanding of any one area?   The answer lies in composite ...

About The Study: In this study of more than 45,000 individuals drawn from the French general population, COVID-19–like symptoms, but not SARS-CoV-2 infection, during the first months of the pandemic were associated with an increased occurrence of subsequent depression and anxiety eight months or more after the occurrence of COVID-19–like symptoms, even when SARS-CoV-2 serologic test results were negative.  Authors: Alexandra Rouquette, M.D., Ph.D., of the Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in Paris, is the corresponding ...

About The Study: The number of U.S. cancer survivors with self-reported functional limitation has more than doubled during the past 20 years, with relatively less growth in the number of limitation-free survivors.  Authors: Vishal R. Patel, B.S., of the University of Texas at Austin, 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/jamaoncol.2023.1180) Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, ...

Overuse of antibiotic prescriptions for patients with upper respiratory illnesses at urgent care clinics in the United States has been an ongoing challenge, but a new study led by researchers at two Utah health systems – Intermountain Health and University of Utah Health – finds that a targeted approach utilizing antibiotic stewardship practices significantly reduces overuse of these medications. In this Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded study, published today in JAMA Network ...

University of Cambridge media release   Obesity accelerates loss of COVID-19 vaccination immunity, study finds   UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 16:00 (UK TIME) / 11:00 (US ET) ON THURSDAY 11 MAY 2023   The protection offered by COVID-19 vaccination declines more rapidly in people with severe obesity than in those with normal weight, scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh have found. The study suggests that people with obesity are likely to need more frequent booster doses to maintain their immunity. Clinical trials have shown that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing symptoms, hospitalisation and deaths ...

A common chemical reaction that most people have seen first-hand is the inspiration for a new way to make a flexible gel film that could lead to innovations in sensors, batteries, robotics and more. A research team led by Texas Engineers developed what they call a "dip-and-peel" strategy for simple and rapid fabrication of two-dimensional ionogel membranes. By dipping sustainable biomass materials in certain solvents, molecules naturally respond by arranging themselves into functional thin films at the edge of the material that can easily be removed using nothing more than a simple set ...

Glioblastoma cancer cells use mitochondria from the central nervous system to grow and form more aggressive tumors, according to new Cleveland Clinic-led findings published in Nature Cancer. The research showed that it is common for healthy astrocytes – a type of glial cell with important functions in the central nervous system – to transfer the energy-producing organelles to glioblastoma cancer cells. When this process happens, it makes the cancer more deadly and the tumors more likely to grow. Researchers found that acquiring mitochondria ...

UCLA researchers have developed an “all-in-one,” next-generation statistical simulator capable of assimilating a wide range of information to generate realistic synthetic data and provide a benchmarking tool for medical and biological researchers who use advanced technologies to study diseases and potential therapies. Specifically, the new computer-modeling – or “in silico” – system can help researchers evaluate and validate computational methods. Single-cell RNA sequencing, called single-cell transcriptomics, is the foundation for analyzing genetic makeup (genome-wide gene ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Genomic studies of cancer patients have revealed thousands of mutations linked to tumor development. However, for the vast majority of those mutations, researchers are unsure of how they contribute to cancer because there’s no easy way to study them in animal models. In an advance that could help scientists make a dent in that long list of unexplored mutations, MIT researchers have developed a way to easily engineer specific cancer-linked mutations into mouse models. Using this technique, which ...