This study is led by Dr. Wenxia Liu (State Key Laboratory of Biobased Materials and Green Papermaking, Qilu University of Technology, Shandong Academy of Science). To uniformly disperse LM into hydrogel, she conceived and designed using CCNFs rich in quaternary ammonium groups to encapsulate LM droplets through an approach of Pickering emulsion. “The strong electrostatic attraction and ion-dipole interaction between the quaternary ammonium groups of CCNFs and the hydroxyl groups on LM droplet surfaces were expected to prevent the LM droplets from aggregation and coalescence. The incorporation of CCNFs into hydrogel with the LM droplets was also expected to improve the mechanical ...

Recently-published research from an international team of physicists reveals how the three-dimensional shape of rigid microscopic filaments determines their dynamics when suspended in water, and how control of that shape can be used to engineer solid-like behavior even when the suspension is more than 99% water.   The paper, “Bonded straight and helical flagellar filaments form ultra-low-density glasses,” was co-authored by Georgetown physics professors Peter Olmsted and Jeffrey Urbach and graduate student Matthew ...

The alga Melosira arctica, which grows under Arctic sea ice, contains ten times as many microplastic particles as the surrounding seawater. This concentration at the base of the food web poses a threat to creatures that feed on the algae at the sea surface. Clumps of dead algae also transport the plastic with its pollutants particularly quickly into the deep sea - and can thus explain the high microplastic concentrations in the sediment there. Researchers led by the Alfred Wegener Institute have now reported this in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. It is a food lift for bottom-dwelling animals in the deep sea: the alga Melosira arctica grows ...

The genomes of two hornet species, the European hornet and the Asian hornet (or yellow-legged hornet) have been sequenced for the first time by a team led by UCL (University College London) scientists. By comparing these decoded genomes with that of the giant northern hornet, which has recently been sequenced by another team, the researchers have revealed clues suggesting why hornets have been so successful as invasive species across the globe. Hornets are the largest of the social wasps; they play important ...

Running is one of the most accessible forms of exercise with an array of proven cardiovascular and musculoskeletal benefits, and an added bonus of increased mental health. Good quality running gear, such as the right pair of shoes, is vital to improve running performance and reduce injury risk. For women particularly, a well-designed sports bra protects from exercise-induced breast pain, which can be a significant barrier to practicing sports. Up to 72% of women experience breast pain while running. Previous research has shown that the increased ...

SAN ANTONIO – 4.20.23 -Scientists from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) led a team in the unique Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) experiment to image the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, during a short solar eclipse on the opposite side of the Earth. Using four platforms in the northwest corner of Australia, the team successfully observed the million-degree solar corona at the April 20 eclipse viewed from the Exmouth peninsula. The Australian eclipse serves both as a unique scientific opportunity and a training exercise for the program’s leadership in preparation ...

Staff in public and private hospitals in Mexico City are likely to follow well-established and reinforced earthquake early warning (EEW) protocols for evacuation, according to an ongoing study. Overall, staff are likely to follow the protocols especially when they are “reinforced with drills that help practice the correct protective action,” said Sandra Vaiciulyte of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She discussed her research at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)’s 2023 Annual Meeting. In the study, there have been “no accounts of injuries of patients and staff because of the particular reaction by staff,” ...

Concern about the mental health of hospital professionals has been increasing in recent years, and when, in early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was declared and rapidly spread, there was a large increase in the overload of workers in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Given this, researchers from the D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) and other national institutions assessed the prevalence and extent of psychological disorders such as burnout, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder ...

Faults in the Ridgecrest, California area were very sensitive to solid earth tidal stresses in the year and a half before the July 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, researchers reported at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)’s 2023 Annual Meeting. “The signal of tidal modulation becomes extremely strong” after 2018, said Eric Beauce of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who noted that the signal was identified with seismicity that occurred around the faults that broke in the 2019 magnitude 7.1 earthquake. The link ...

A new study published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD])finds that individuals who experienced childhood adversity are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D) in early adulthood. The research was conducted by Assistant Professor Leonie K. Elsenburg and colleagues at the Section of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark and aimed to determine whether there was a link between childhood adversity and the development ...

Nurses exposed to 40 minutes of bright light before their night shifts feel less fatigued and make fewer errors at work, according to a study led by McGill University. The nurses also slept better after their shifts. “Healthcare workers are experiencing high levels of fatigue due to staffing shortages, difficult schedules, and heavy workloads. Further, the cost of medical errors has been estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year in North America,” says Jay Olson, the senior author of the recent study in Sleep Health, ...

Metabolic (bariatric) surgery is more effective than medications and lifestyle interventions for the treatment of advanced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. A new paper, published today in The Lancet by King’s College London and the Catholic University of Rome, is the first to compare three active treatments of non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) and to specifically investigate the effectiveness of metabolic surgery (weight loss surgery) in a randomised clinical trial. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is the most common cause of chronic liver disease, globally affecting 55% of people with type 2 diabetes and 75% of those with obesity. Non-alcoholic ...

A new Griffith University study has found that humpback whales will use sandy, shallow bay areas to ‘roll’ around in sandy substrates to remove dead skin cells on their return journeys south to cooler waters.  Marine ecologist Dr Olaf Meynecke, from the Griffith-led Whales and Climate Research Program and Coastal and Marine Research Centre, used suction cup tags to track southward migrating whales between August 2021 and October 2022.  The CATS tags are fitted with integrated high-definition video, magnesium release system, a VHF transmitter for retrieval, magnetometers, ...

Horodyskia, characterized by a string of beads with uniform size and spacing, is a kind of macroscopic fossil with a record extending from the early Mesoproterozoic Era (~1.48 Ga) to the terminal Ediacaran Period (~550 Ma).  Now, researchers led by Dr. LI Guangjin and Prof. PANG Ke from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) and Prof. CHEN Lei from Shandong University of Science and Technology have revealed that Horodyskia is among the oldest multicellular macroorganisms and may have attained its macroscopic ...

APRIL 20, 2023 Researchers use networks to model the dynamics of coupled systems ranging from food webs to neurological processes. Those models originally focused on pairwise interactions, or behaviors that emerge from interactions between two entities. But in the last few years, network theorists have been asking, what about phenomena that involve three or more? In medicine, antibiotic combinations may fight a bacterial infection differently than they would on their own. In ecology, survival strategies may arise from ...

Scientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. Now, Fuzhong Zhang, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has made a significant breakthrough in the fabrication of synthetic spider silk, paving the way for a new era of sustainable clothing production. Since engineering recombinant spider silk in 2018 using bacteria, Zhang has been working to increase the yield of silk threads produced from microbes while maintaining its desirable properties of enhanced ...

Houston, TX – Degeneration of myelin, an insulating sheath required for rapid communication between nerve cells, and neuroinflammation are notable hallmarks of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and related neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or Huntington’s disease that affect roughly 2.8 million people in the world. However, little is known about the precise molecular steps by which demyelination leads to the loss of neurons and glia, the two major types of brain cells. A paper published recently in Cell Metabolism by a research team led by Drs. Hugo J. Bellen, Hyunglok Chung, and Hyun ...

New York, NY (April 20, 2023) — The American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation today announced that Elizabeth L. Whitlock, MD, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is the 2023 recipient of the Jeffrey H. Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties.  The award will be presented at the 2023 AGS Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS23) which is being held in Long Beach, CA from May 4-6 (preconference day is May 3).  The award recognizes Dr. ...

A decade’s worth of research at oil and gas operations in the central and eastern United States has confirmed that fluid injection from hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal can induce seismicity. Now, data from hydraulic fracturing wells in eastern Ohio indicate that extraction activities also can influence the seismicity rate, according to a presentation at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)’s 2023 Annual Meeting. During hydraulic fracturing, well operators inject a pressurized liquid ...

In autumn 2022 and winter 2023, a total of 20 cheetahs from Namibia and South Africa were introduced to Kuno National Park in India to establish a free-ranging population – for the first time since their extinction in India 70 years ago. Although the idea may be commendable, getting it right is not so easy. Scientists of the Cheetah Research Project of Leibniz-IZW in Namibia see shortcomings in the reintroduction plan: In southern Africa, cheetahs live in a stable socio-spatial system with widely spread territories and densities ...

APRIL 20, 2023 Most people think of a disease outbreak when they hear the word “contagion.” But it’s a concept that extends beyond pathogens. It could be an infectious disease, a fad, an online meme, or even a positive behavior in a population. “From the mathematical perspective, a contagion is just a thing that spreads,” says Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, a former SFI Postdoctoral Fellow, now an associate professor in computer science at the University of Vermont. April 19–21, Hébert-Dufresne and Juniper Lovato, ...

American Geophysical Union 20 April 2023 AGU Release No. 23-18 For Immediate Release   This press release and accompanying multimedia are available online at:  https://news.agu.org/press-release/beaver-ponds-with-more-sediments-store-more-nitrogen-simple-mapping-reveals/  Beaver ponds with deeper sediments store more nitrogen, simple mapping reveals  Simple mapping of beaver ponds can help land managers and conservationists in the West detect which ponds are sponging up nitrogen and which are releasing it  AGU press contact:   Rebecca Dzombak, +1 (202) 777-7492, news@agu.org (UTC-4 hours)  Contact information for the researchers:  Desneiges ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – The drug atogepant may help prevent migraines for people who have had no success with other preventive drugs, according to a preliminary study released April 20, 2023, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 75th Annual Meeting being held in person in Boston and live online from April 22-27, 2023. The study involved people with episodic migraine, which is defined as having up to 14 headache days per month with migraine ...

Last month, OpenAI launched its newest AI chatbot product, GPT-4. According to the folks at OpenAI, the bot, which uses machine learning to generate natural language text, passed the bar exam with a score in the 90th percentile, passed 13 of 15 AP exams and got a nearly perfect score on the GRE Verbal test. Inquiring minds at BYU and 186 other universities wanted to know how OpenAI’s tech would fare on accounting exams. So, they put the original version, ChatGPT, to the test. The researchers ...

An international team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine with the National Institutes of Health Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium and the Bogdan Mateescu laboratory at the ETH Zürich and University of Zürich has developed a new powerful resource to study extracellular RNA (exRNA), a novel form of cell-to-cell communication. The study, published in the journal Cell Genomics, lays the foundation to examine how exRNA and its carrier proteins found in bodily fluids function in a healthy as well as a diseased setting, potentially providing a means to accurately implement early ...