University of Otago researchers have added another piece to the puzzle about how best to translocate New Zealand lizards for conservation purposes - confine them. In a paper just published in the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, the Department of Zoology researchers outlined how they translocated 19 barking geckos to Mana Island, using the method of penned release - enclosing them in a 100m² pen for three months so they get used to the site and hopefully establish a breeding population. It was the first time such a method had been used with the species and the researchers found it worked well. The geckos' area use decreased over time, indicating ...

There are many components to aging, both mental and physical. When it comes to the infrastructure of the human body - the musculoskeletal system that includes muscles, bones, tendons and cartilage - age-associated decline is inevitable, and the rate of that decline increases the older we get. The loss of muscle function -- and often muscle mass -- is scientifically known as sarcopenia or dynapenia. For adults in their 40s, sarcopenia is hardly noticeable -- about 3% muscle mass is lost each decade. For those aged 65 years and older, however, muscle decline can become much more rapid, with an average loss of 1% muscle mass each year. More importantly, sarcopenia is also marked by a decrease ...

Since 2013, China has implemented the strictest ever air pollution control policies, which resulted in substantial reductions in aerosol concentrations. However, extreme and persistent haze events frequently occur during wintertime in China. In winter haze events, aerosol-related reductions of surface solar radiation (SSR) have comparable impacts on clouds over eastern provinces. Recently, researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the United States (PNNL) and their collaborators conducted a study to further understand the underlying chemical mechanisms driving winter haze events and how ...

A new type of stem cell - that is, a cell with regenerative abilities - could be closer on the horizon, a new study led by UNSW Sydney shows. The stem cells (called induced multipotent stem cells, or iMS) can be made from easily accessible human cells - in this case, fat - and reprogrammed to act as stem cells. The results of the animal study, which created human stem cells and tested their effectiveness in mice, was published online in Science Advances today - and while the results are encouraging, more research and tests are needed before any potential translation ...

Males are more likely to test positive for COVID-19, more likely to have complications and more likely to die from the virus than females, independent of age, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Farhaan Vahidy of Houston Methodist Research Institute, US, and colleagues. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds and evolves across the globe, researchers have identified population sub-groups with higher levels of disease vulnerability, such as those with advanced age or certain pre-existing conditions. Small studies from China and Europe have indicated that males tend to experience higher disease ...

KAIST metabolic engineers presented the bio-based production of multiple short-chain primary amines that have a wide range of applications in chemical industries for the first time. The research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering designed the novel biosynthetic pathways for short-chain primary amines by combining retrobiosynthesis and a precursor selection step. The research team verified the newly designed pathways by confirming the in vivo production of 10 short-chain primary amines by supplying the precursors. Furthermore, the platform Escherichia ...

Women who are young, "conventionally attractive" and appear and act feminine are more likely to be believed when making accusations of sexual harassment, a new University of Washington-led study finds. That leaves women who don't fit the prototype potentially facing greater hurdles when trying to convince a workplace or court that they have been harassed. The study, involving more than 4,000 participants, reveals perceptions that primarily "prototypical" women are likely to be harassed. The research also showed that women outside of those socially determined norms ...

WASHINGTON -- Women who do not fit female stereotypes are less likely to be seen as victims of sexual harassment, and if they claim they were harassed, they are less likely to be believed, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. "Sexual harassment is pervasive and causes significant harm, yet far too many women cannot access fairness, justice and legal protection, leaving them susceptible to further victimization and harm within the legal system," said Cheryl Kaiser, PhD, of the University of Washington and a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "Our research found that a claim was deemed less ...

In experiments in mouse tissues and human cells, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have found that removing a membrane that lines the back of the eye may improve the success rate for regrowing nerve cells damaged by blinding diseases. The findings are specifically aimed at discovering new ways to reverse vision loss caused by glaucoma and other diseases that affect the optic nerve, the information highway from the eye to the brain. "The idea of restoring vision to someone who has lost it from optic nerve disease has been considered science fiction for decades. ...

DALLAS - Jan. 13, 2021 - A new treatment that combines two existing medications may provide long-sought relief for many battling debilitating methamphetamine use disorder, according to a study to be published tomorrow in The New England Journal of Medicine. The article, based on a multisite study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), describes how combining an injectable drug currently used to treat alcohol and opioid addictions (naltrexone), and a commonly prescribed antidepressant (bupropion) produced positive results in 13.6 percent of the 403 patients treated, significantly higher than the 2.5 percent response in placebo ...

Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) are widely used for daily products in our life, such as hybrid cars, cell phone, etc. but their charge/discharge process is not fully understood yet. To understand the process, behaviors of lithium ion, distribution and chemical composition and state, should be revealed. A research group in Institute for Molecular Science noticed on a scanning transmission X-ray microscope (STXM, shown in Fig. 1) as a powerful technique to perform X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with high spatial resolution. By using absorption edge of a specific ...

Researchers led by Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) find that certain oral pathogens are more prevalent in esophageal cancer patients, and could be used as a novel diagnostic tool Tokyo, Japan - It is increasingly clear that the trillions of bacteria that make themselves at home in and on the human body are more than just casual observers along for the ride. Gut bacteria in particular have been shown to have an enormous influence on human health, with studies suggesting they play a role in illnesses ranging from autoimmune disorders to anxiety and depression. The oral cavity is another rich source of microbial diversity, ...

A research group from Kumamoto University, Japan has developed a highly sensitive technique to quantitatively evaluate the extent of cytoskeleton bundling from microscopic images. Until now, analysis of cytoskeleton organization was generally made by manually checking microscopic images. The new method uses microscopic image analysis techniques to automatically measure cytoskeleton organization. The researchers expect it to dramatically improve our understanding of various cellular phenomena related to cytoskeleton bundling. The cytoskeleton is a ...

Data from the DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) Legacy Imaging Surveys have revealed over 1200 new gravitational lenses, approximately doubling the number of known lenses. Discovered using machine learning trained on real data, these warped and stretched images of distant galaxies provide astronomers with a flood of new targets with which to measure fundamental properties of the Universe such as the Hubble constant, which describes the expanding Universe. Astronomers hunting for gravitational lenses utilized machine learning to inspect the vast dataset known as the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, uncovering 1210 new lenses. The data were collected at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) and Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), ...

URBANA, Ill. ¬- Illinois residents value efforts to reduce watershed pollution, and they are willing to pay for environmental improvements, according to a new study from agricultural economists at the University of Illinois. Nutrient runoff from agricultural production is a major cause of pollution in the Mississippi River Basin and contributes to hypoxia - limited oxygen to support sea life in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set up action plans to reduce pollution in 12 midwestern states and reduce transmissions of nitrate-nitrogen and phosphorus by 45% in 2040. Illinois agencies have established the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (INLRS) to ...

Recently there has been a reemergence of interest in optical computing platforms for artificial intelligence-related applications. Optics/photonics is ideally suited for realizing neural network models because of the high speed, large bandwidth and high interconnectivity of optical information processing. Introduced by UCLA researchers, Diffractive Deep Neural Networks (D2NNs) constitute such an optical computing framework, comprising successive transmissive and/or reflective diffractive surfaces that can process input information through light-matter interaction. These surfaces are designed using standard deep learning techniques ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon State University have found that the blue orchard bee, an important native pollinator, produces female offspring at higher rates in the aftermath of wildfire in forests. The more severe the fire had been, the greater percentage of females - more than 10% greater in the most badly burned areas relative to areas that burned the least severely. "This is one of the first studies that has looked at how forest fire severity influences bee demography," said Jim Rivers, an animal ecologist with the OSU College of Forestry. "Sex ratio varied under different fire conditions but the number of young produced did not, which indicates bees ...

A first-of-its-kind, international study of 107,000 children finds that higher temperatures are an equal or even greater contributor to child malnutrition and low quality diets than the traditional culprits of poverty, inadequate sanitation, and poor education. The 19-nation study is the largest investigation of the relationship between our changing climate and children's diet diversity to date. It is believed to be the first study across multiple nations and continents of how both higher temperatures and rainfall--two key results of climate change--have impacted children's diet diversity. "Certainly, future climate changes have been predicted to affect malnutrition, but it surprised ...

DALLAS, Jan. 14, 2021 -- The longer the time between when heart attack symptoms start and a patient has an artery-clearing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), the more damage to the heart muscle, according to new research published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, an American Heart Association journal. A heart attack happens about every 40 seconds in the U.S., and the most common heart attack is caused by a complete blockage in a coronary artery, called ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). STEMI patients are most often treated with PCI, also known as angioplasty with stent, in which a catheter with a deflated balloon is inserted into the narrowed heart artery. Subsequently, the balloon is inflated, which clears the obstruction and restores ...

DALLAS, Jan. 14, 2021 -- Adults who smoke or who are genetically predisposed to smoking behaviors are more likely to experience a serious type of stroke called subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), according to new research published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. The results of this study provide important evidence that there is a causal link between smoking and the risk of SAH. SAH is a type of stroke that occurs when a blood vessel on the surface of the brain ruptures and bleeds into the space between the brain and the skull. It mainly affects middle-aged adults and has high rates of complications ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE (January 14, 2021) - A team of researchers led by engineers at Tufts University's School of Engineering and Stanford University's Program on Water, Health and Development have developed a novel and inexpensive chlorine dispensing device that can improve the safety of drinking water in regions of the world that lack financial resources and adequate infrastructure. With no moving parts, no need for electricity, and little need for maintenance, the device releases measured quantities of chlorine into the water just before it exits the tap. It provides a quick and ...

There is a growing consensus among scientists as well as national and local governments representing hundreds of millions of people, that humanity faces a climate crisis that demands a crisis response. New research from the University of California San Diego explores one possible mode of response: a massively funded program to deploy direct air capture (DAC) systems that remove CO2 directly from the ambient air and sequester it safely underground. The findings reveal such a program could reverse the rise in global temperature well before 2100, but only with immediate and sustained investments from governments and firms to scale up the new technology. Despite the enormous undertaking explored in the study, the research ...

Honeybee historians might seem like a flight of fancy but these tiny pollinators have been helping researchers from the National Botanic Garden of Wales track how the UK's fields, hedgerows, wild spaces and gardens have changed since the 1950s.Using cutting-edge DNA barcoding techniques, scientists at the Botanic Garden identified which plants modern-day honeybees visited most often by looking at the pollen grains trapped within honey. They compared this to a 1952 survey of honey plants where a microscope had been used to painstakingly identify pollen grains in honey sent from hives across the country. The differences were clear. White clover had been the most important plant for honeybees but, with fewer pastures today and increased use of herbicides and inorganic ...

New research has unlocked the mystery of how the Galápagos Islands, a rocky, volcanic outcrop, with only modest rainfall and vegetation, is able to sustain its unique wildlife habitats. The Galápagos archipelago, rising from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean some 900 kilometres off the South American mainland, is an iconic and globally significant biological hotspot. The islands are renowned for their unique wealth of endemic species, which inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and today underpins one of the largest UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Marine Reserves on Earth. Scientists have known ...

Water isn't just crucial for life, it's fundamental to increasing opportunities for women and girls in rural areas across the globe. A new Stanford study reveals how bringing piped water closer to remote households in Zambia dramatically improves the lives of women and girls, while also improving economic opportunities, food security and well-being for entire households. The research, recently published in Social Science & Medicine, could spur governments and NGOs to more carefully evaluate the costs and benefits of piped water as an alternative to less accessible communal water sources. "Switching from the village borehole to piped supply saved almost 200 hours of fetching time per year for a typical household," said study senior ...