Québec City, April 4, 2023 – Genetic factors could contribute to up to 50-75% of the variance in body mass index, or BMI, in the population. By analyzing the genome of more than 800,000 people of European descent, a research team from Université Laval and the Quebec Heart and Lung Institute Research Centre has identified 60 unique proteins expressed in the brain that may be critical regulators of body weight.  This study explored the link between genetic regions associated with body weight and the proteins expressed in the brain. "Previous ...

Research Highlights: Surviving family members of a person who died from sudden cardiac death rely on information from death investigators and health care professionals to process their relative’s death and understand their own risk of inherited heart conditions. The type and timing of the communication received from death investigators and health care professionals influences family members’ experiences and decisions about whether to pursue genetic screening. Future research is needed to guide death investigators and health ...

With a growing interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems worldwide, researchers at the University of Surrey have created software that is able to verify how much information an AI farmed from an organisation’s digital database. Surrey’s verification software can be used as part of a company’s online security protocol, helping an organisation understand whether an AI has learned too much or even accessed sensitive data. The software is also capable of identifying whether AI has identified and is capable of exploiting flaws in software code. For example, in ...

When the human remains found on board the warship Vasa were investigated, it was determined that the skeleton designated G was a man. New research now shows that the skeleton is actually from a woman. About thirty people died when Vasa sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. We cannot know who most of them were, only one person is named in the written sources. When the ship was raised in 1961 it was the scene of a comprehensive archaeological excavation, in which numerous human bones were found on board and examined. “Through osteological analysis it has been ...

Using real data from an online chess platform, scientists of the Complexity Science Hub and the Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi (CREF) studied similarities of different chess openings. Based on these similarities, they developed a new classification method which can complement the standard classification. "To find out how similar chess openings actually are to each other - meaning in real game behavior - we drew on the wisdom of the crowd," Giordano De Marzo of the Complexity Science Hub and the Centro Ricerche Enrico Fermi (CREF) explains. The researchers analyzed 3,746,135 chess games, 18,253 players and 988 ...

A new paper in Rheumatology Advances in Practice, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that Granulomatosis With Polyangiitis, a nasal disease that causes inflammation of the blood vessels and commonly presents with symptoms in sinuses, throat, lungs, and kidneys, may be commonly misdiagnosed. Researchers believe that many patients identified with the sinus and nasal limited form of the disease may actually be suffering from nasal damage due to cocaine usage. Cocaine is the second most commonly abused drug in the United Kingdom with 2.6% of the population between ages 16 and 59 years old using it. Some 4.8 million people in the United States (or 1.7% ...

Vitamin D deficiency is common among serving military personnel of Navies in the global north, especially submariners, finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Countermeasures, such as periodic vitamin D assessment and dietary supplements, should now be considered, say the researchers. Vitamin D has an essential role in musculoskeletal health and in helping to control infections and dampen down inflammation in the body, so is key to ensuring the physical fitness of active duty Navy military ...

A new study from researchers in the Lifecourse Epidemiology of Adiposity (LEAD) Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus shows that 90 percent of pregnant women do not receive adequate nutrients during pregnancy from food alone and must look to supplements to fill that deficit. However, they also discovered that 99 percent of the affordable dietary supplements on the market do not contain appropriate doses of key micronutrients that are urgently needed to make up for the nutritional imbalance. The study was published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.   “Nutrition is critical for a healthy mom and a healthy baby. ...

Nocturnal basking has only recently been reported in wild freshwater turtles, but this study suggests that the behaviour is widespread and occurs in many species. Postdoctoral Researcher at La Trobe University Dr Donald McKnight said he first observed freshwater turtles nocturnal basking at the Ross River in Townsville. “They were coming up at night and sitting on logs exhibiting very much the same behavior they do during the day; when we looked into it, it wasn’t something that turtles reportedly did,” Dr McKnight said. “We think it's related to temperature. The water is staying so warm at night that it's actually ...

Cancer is not incurable anymore. Nevertheless, according to statistics released by Statistics Korea last year, cancer remained the primary cause of mortality in Korea in 2021. This highlights the ongoing struggle against cancer, which demands effective prevention measures as well as timely diagnosis and prompt intervention through effective treatment. However, the question remains whether it is feasible to provide treatment promptly upon diagnosis.   A POSTECH research team led by Professor Young Tae Chang (Department of Chemistry) ...

Fresh insights into how our bodies interact with the microbes living in our guts suggest that a two-drug combination may offer a new way to treat inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. The potential treatment pathway emerges from a study led by experts at Cincinnati Children’s published online March 28, 2023, in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.  Co-first authors were Garrett Overcast, PhD, and Hannah Meibers, BS. Corresponding author was Chandrashekhar Pasare, DVM, PhD, Division of Immunobiology and ...

The photoexcitation, and especially photoionization, is one of the most important manifestations of the light-matter interaction in nature, ranging from photosynthesis in plants and vision in biology to photography and laser processing of materials. It is generally accepted that the change in a substance is weaker, the less light is absorbed. Here we found that this is not always the case. In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Peter G. Kazansky from Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, United Kingdom and co-workers have demonstrated efficient ultrafast laser nanostructuring ...

Marine predators have expanded their ranges  into the Arctic waters over the last twenty years, driven by climate change and associated increases in productivity. The seas surrounding the Arctic are important fisheries and ecological regions; they are also among the areas most affected by climate change. The effects of warming waters and loss of sea ice on the biodiversity of these waters, and hence their ecology, is still not fully understood. An international team of researchers led by Dr. Irene D. Alabia at the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University has examined Arctic-wide ...

Gas emissions are the manifestation of activity occurring beneath the surface of a volcano. Measuring them lets researchers see what can’t be seen from the surface. This knowledge is vital for hazard monitoring and the prediction of future eruptions. Since the mid-2000s, ultraviolet SO2 cameras have become important tools to measure emissions. The measurement campaigns, however, must be accompanied by a user, making SO2 cameras unsuitable for acquiring long-term datasets. Building and operating this type of camera can cost upwards ...

Personality has become a more important factor than finances when it comes to dating, a new study has found. Researchers from the University of York and the University of Essex analysed more than a million lonely hearts ads and found that in the USA, France, and Canada, there was a sharp decline in economic factors when choosing a partner. However, finances remained an important issue in India when it came to relationships. To see how partner preferences changed over time, the researchers analysed lonely hearts ads from various major news outlets from Canada, France, and India. They collected data from publications from 1950 to 1995, the year that most of these ads shifted to being online. ...

Today (4 April) the British Ecological Society has published the results of a three-year randomised trial comparing double and single-anonymous peer review in the journal Functional Ecology. The findings indicate a reduction in reviewer bias when author identities are anonymised.  The three-year randomised trial in the journal Functional Ecology, provides the most compressive data yet on the effects of anonymising authors during scholarly journal peer review.  Double-anonymous peer review, also referred to as double-blind peer review, is where author identities are not disclosed to reviewers. This differs from single-anonymous peer review where reviewers know ...

The health and environmental harms of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are well-known, but a new peer-reviewed study calls into question their touted stain-fighting benefits. The study, published today in the AATCC Journal of Research, tested the performance of PFAS finishings on furniture fabrics and found that they had limited to no effectiveness, particularly under real-world conditions. “It was surprising that these harmful but supposedly indispensable chemicals had no practical benefit,” said lead author Jonas LaPier, a PhD ...

Scientists have called for a coordinated international effort to fully assess the environmental impacts of tritium ahead of a significant expected rise in its global production. A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is a by-product of the nuclear industry and its presence is predicted to grow exponentially with nuclear increasingly seen as being key to the global low carbon economy. That will result in many nations having to develop long-term strategies to manage tritiated radioactive waste and develop tools to both assess and address its environmental impact. However, writing in the journal Science of the Total Environment, ...

A revolutionary investigation that shed vivid light on pioneering female migrants who made their way to Orkney during the Bronze Age has won Research Project of the Year at the prestigious Current Archaeology Awards for 2023. The project – a collaboration between EASE Archaeology and the University of Huddersfield – focused on human remains excavated at the Links of Noltland, a Bronze Age cemetery on the island of Westray. This work revealed the first concrete evidence of a major influx of non-local people into Orkney during the Bronze Age – and, significantly, it appears that this migration ...

Roboticists have been using a technique similar to the ancient art of paper folding to develop autonomous machines out of thin, flexible sheets. These lightweight robots are simpler and cheaper to make and more compact for easier storage and transport.  However, the rigid computer chips traditionally needed to enable advanced robot capabilities — sensing, analyzing and responding to the environment — add extra weight to the thin sheet materials and makes them harder to fold. The semiconductor-based components therefore have to be added ...

FRANKFURT. In millions of years and with a long sequence of small changes, evolution has shaped a particular group of dinosaurs, the theropods, into the birds we watch fly around the planet today. In fact, birds are the only descendants of dinosaurs which survived the catastrophic extinction 66 million years ago that ended the Cretaceous period. Troodon was such a theropod. The carnivorous dinosaur was about two meters long and populated the vast semi-arid landscapes of North America about 75 million years ago. Like some of its dinosaur relatives, Troodon presented some bird-like ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - At an academic conference some years ago, Michèle Belot remembers talking with a participant who was convinced she had authored a research paper that wasn’t hers. He’d confused her with another female scholar, an experience she said is familiar to many colleagues. Such incidents – plus awareness of her own imperfect memory – inspired Belot, a professor in the Department of Economics at Cornell University, to investigate systemic biases in the way we remember people, since this could influence social networks important to career advancement. In new research focused on academia, Belot ...

Among the health problems developed or aggravated by Covid-19, those that affect neurological and respiratory functions draw special attention from specialists. Considering several studies that show the adverse effects of Covid-19 on human autonomic functions, which are those regulated by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), a recent Brazilian study has demonstrated that the use of non-invasive brain stimulation was capable of regulating the ANS and increasing the oxygen saturation in patients with Covid-19 admitted to a semi-intensive ...

A PhD student from the University of Huddersfield’s Department of Pharmacy competed against entries from around the world to win the prize for ‘Best Oral Presentation’ at a major international conference for the pharmaceutical sciences. Haja Muhamad is in the final year of her PhD and is being supervised by the University’s Dr Kofi Asare-Addo.  Her prize-winning talk, presented at the 13th Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences International Conference during the ‘New Scientist Focus Group (NSFG)’ session, was titled ‘An ...

Hospital quality has been measured and made publicly available for more than two decades in the US. In Germany, similar efforts were launched in 2004, when all acute care hospitals began being required to report structural, process, and outcome indicators as part of a national quality monitoring program. Hospitals are now mandated to submit quality reports annually. The German hospital market presents a unique opportunity to examine the relationship between public reporting and quality improvement in the absence of performance-linked payment incentives in a high-income country. In an analysis about the successes of quality measurement to date, Esra Eren Bayindir and Jonas Schreyögg, ...