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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Earth Map works in tandem with its users to achieve a more conscious, climate-aware and environmental-friendly world

Rapid access to information is one of the largest barriers we have to deal with as a group of people in the Internet Age. Earth Map is a free application designed to be easily used and accessible to anyone with an internet connection and the desire to observe any environment at any time, with zero expertise (or travel) required. This new tool features an intuitive point-and-click way of interfacing with the program, lending further to its ease of use. ​​The researchers published their results on January 12th in the Journal of Remote Sensing. The authors underline the importance of ...

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Science10 Mar 2023

Northern and southern resident orcas hunt differently, which may help explain the decline of southern orcas

Link to Google Drive folder containing images with caption and credit information: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ye7QXkoTHfq7L4qEcJ33r6I6w7aB2-Mn?usp=share_link In the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, scientists have been sounding the alarm about the plight of southern resident orcas. Annual counts show that population numbers, already precarious, have fallen back to mid-1970s levels. Most pregnancies end in miscarriage or death of the newborn. They may not be catching enough food. And many elderly orcas — ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Dim lights before bedtime to reduce risk of gestational diabetes

Gestational diabetes mellitus is a common pregnancy complication with significant health risks for both mother and offspring Gestational diabetes is rising fast and is now 7.8% of all births in U.S. Mother with gestational diabetes has increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and dementia; offspring more likely to have obesity and hypertensio CHICAGO --- Pregnant persons should dim the lights in their home and turn off or at least dim their screens (computer monitors and smartphones) a few hours before ...

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Environment10 Mar 2023

Discovery of oldest known fossil gnat shows how insects adapted to a postapocalyptic world

Near the small harbour of Estellencs at the northeast of Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain), a pebbly beach can be found at the base of an impressive scarp that threatens rockfall. Remains of plants, crustaceans, insects, and fish have been discovered in the grey-blue rock layers formed from sediments deposited 247 million years ago. Fossils in these rocks are of great interest since they offer a window into the time where the planet was recovering from the greatest mass extinction. A few years ago, Mallorcan ...

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Environment10 Mar 2023

Sea temperatures control the distributions of European marine fish

An analysis extending from southern Portugal to northern Norway highlights the importance of temperature in determining where fish species are found. By confirming temperature as a key driver of large-scale spatial variation in fish assemblages the study was able to use future climate projections to predict where species will be most common by 2050 and 2100. The results show that overall, the greatest community-level changes are predicted at locations with greater warming, with the most pronounced effects further north - at higher latitudes. The study was the first of its ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

McMaster researcher crafting post-COVID-19 condition guidelines, commonly known as long COVID

Hamilton, ON (March 9, 2023) - McMaster University clinician-researcher Holger Schünemann is receiving $9 million in federal funding to develop official guidelines for post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC), commonly known as long COVID. Schünemann’s project, titled McMaster Development and Dissemination of Post COVID-19 Condition (PCC) Guidelines and Knowledge Translation Products, is being developed by McMaster in collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Schünemann said that Cochrane Canada and ...

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Science10 Mar 2023

USC research identifies existential threats to the iconic Nile River Delta

Large-scale heavy metal pollution, coastal erosion and seawater intrusion pose an existential threat to the Nile River Delta and endanger 60 million people (about twice the population of Texas) in Egypt who depend on its resources for every facet of life, according to new research from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Furthermore, the Nile River Delta is a critical stopover for migrating birds across their journey along the East African flyway. The study, led by Essam Heggy from the USC Viterbi Innovation Fund Arid Climates ...

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Technology10 Mar 2023

Researchers unveil new AI-driven method for improving additive manufacturing

Many industries rely on metal additive manufacturing to rapidly build parts and components. Rocket engine nozzles, pistons for high performance cars, and custom orthopedic implants are all made using additive manufacturing, a process that involves building parts layer-by-layer using a 3D printer. Additive manufacturing allows users to build complex parts quickly, but structural defects that form during the building process is one of the reasons that have prevented this approach from being widely adopted. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Advanced imaging may help in clinical treatment of prostate cancer

An advanced imaging method is showing promise as a way to improve the diagnosis of prostate cancer by giving clinicians a clearer view of suspected tumours during biopsy. A trial conducted at the University Hospital Bonn, in Germany, has been testing the benefit of a scanning method known as PSMA-PET/CT to help target where to take biopsy samples. Interim results reveal that when used alongside standard imaging techniques, the additional scans might help clinicians make improved decisions about subsequent courses of treatment. Compared to the standard scans alone, when PSMA-PET/CT was used clinicians changed ...

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Science10 Mar 2023

UK study reveals ethnic differences in obstetric anesthesia care

Black Caribbean-British women in the UK are 58% more likely than white women to be given general anaesthesia for elective caesarean births; for Black African-British women, they are 35% more likely to have general anaesthesia For emergency Caesarean births, Black Caribbean-British women are 10% more likely than white women to be given general anaesthesia For vaginal births, Bangladeshi-British (by 24%), Pakistani-British (by 15%) and Black Caribbean-British (by 8%) women less likely than white women to receive an epidural Black women are approximately 40% less likely to have an assisted vaginal birth (forceps/ventouse [suction] delivery) compared to white women but instead are more likely ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Emergency department visits for attempted suicides rose globally among youth during pandemic

EMBARGOED UNTIL 4:30 PM MST, MARCH 9 Calgary, AB – Even though pediatric emergency department visits decreased greatly overall during the COVID-19 pandemic, a newly published study led out of the University of Calgary shows there was also a sharp increase in emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicide ideation among children and adolescents in that same period of social isolation. Dr. Sheri Madigan, a clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychology, is the lead author on the study, published today (March 9) in Lancet Psychiatry, which ...

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Science10 Mar 2023

Reducing trip hazards and decluttering can prevent falls among older people living at home

Eliminating hazards around the home, such as clutter, stairs without railings and poor lighting, can reduce the risk of falls for older people by around a quarter, according to a new Cochrane review. The review did not find any compelling evidence for other measures to reduce falls, such as making sure older people have the correct prescription glasses, special footwear, or education on avoiding falls. It also found that decluttering and reducing hazards had the most benefit for older people who are at risk of falls, ...

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Science10 Mar 2023

Online ‘personal brands’ key to job success for Gen Z

New research reveals how Generation Z perceive online ‘personal brands’ as a crucial tool to gain more advantage in job markets. The study, led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with the University of Greenwich, demonstrates the importance of authentically building online personal branding strategies and tactics to bridge the gap between Gen Z’s desired and perceived images on social media when job seeking. Gen Z - the generation of people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s - are also in favour of a more dynamic, interactive, work-in-progress style of authentic personal brands, which may not necessarily show them as “perfect”, ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Ozone pollution is linked with increased hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease

Sophia Antipolis, 10 March 2023: The first evidence that exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) ozone limit is associated with substantial increases in hospital admissions for heart attack, heart failure and stroke is published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 Even ozone levels below the WHO maximum were linked with worsened health. “During this three-year study, ozone was responsible for an increasing proportion of admissions ...

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Physics10 Mar 2023

Development of a photonic dispersion solver

An exponential increase in the amount of information required in society is making the development of new optoelectronic devices increasingly important. Recently, photonic crystals have emerged as an alternative to overcome the limitations of conventional photonic devices thanks to their ability to control photons freely in microscopic space to introduce the next generation of highly integrated devices. A research team at POSTECH has developed a photonic dispersion solver that may act as the foundation of studies on photonic crystals. Professor Junsuk Rho (Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering) at POSTECH along with a team from Gwangju Institute ...

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Medicine10 Mar 2023

Ancient virus genome drives autism?

Although autism is a common neurodevelopmental disorder, the multiple factors behind its onset are still not fully understood. Animal models of idiopathic autism*1, especially mice, are often used to help researchers understand the complicated mechanisms behind the disorder, with BTBR/J being the most commonly used mouse model in the world. Now, an international research collaboration including Kobe University’s Professor TAKUMI Toru and Researcher Chia-wen Lin et al. have made new discoveries regarding autism onset in mouse models. In their detailed series of experiments and analyses of BTBR/J mice and the other subspecies BTBR/R, they revealed that endogenous ...

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Science9 Mar 2023

If you think you understand how incentives work, think again

How can people be incentivized to drive more fuel-efficient cars, be more innovative at work, and get to the gym on a regular basis? Uri Gneezy, professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego explains this in his new book “Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work.” In the book, Gneezy, a pioneering behavioral economist, reveals how we can create reward systems that minimize unintended consequences and maximize happiness, health, wealth and success. “Mixed Signals” was recently included in Adam Grant’s ...

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Environment9 Mar 2023

The world’s atmospheric rivers now have an intensity ranking like hurricanes

American Geophysical Union 9 March 2023 AGU Release No. 23-10 For Immediate Release This press release and accompanying multimedia are available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/the-worlds-atmospheric-rivers-now-have-an-intensity-ranking-like-hurricanes/ AGU press contact: Rebecca Dzombak, +1 (202) 777-7492, news@agu.org (UTC-5 hours) Contact information for the researchers: Bin Guan, University of California Los Angeles and California Institute of Technology, bin.guan@jpl.nasa.gov (UTC-8 hours) WASHINGTON — Atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow bands of water vapor, are becoming more intense and frequent with climate ...

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Social Science9 Mar 2023

Complex learned social behavior discovered in bee’s ‘waggle dance’

Passing down shared knowledge from one generation to the next is a hallmark of culture and allows animals to rapidly adapt to a changing environment. While widely evident in species ranging from human infants to naked mole rats or fledgling songbirds, early social learning has now been documented in insects. Publishing in the journal Science, a University of California San Diego researcher and his colleagues uncovered evidence that social learning is fundamental for honey bees. Professor James Nieh of the School of Biological Sciences and his collaborators discovered that the “waggle dance,” which signals the location ...

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Social Science9 Mar 2023

Social signal learning enhances a honey bee’s waggle dance performance

Social learning plays an important role in a honey bee’s ability to “waggle dance,” report researchers, who observed that honey bees not exposed to the dances of older, more experienced nestmates produced disordered dances full of errors. The findings demonstrate that social learning shapes this complex form of insect communication, just as it does in humans, birds, and other social vertebrate species. The waggle dance is a behavior that honey bee foragers use to communicate spatial information about the precise location of a food source to other nestmates. ...

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Science9 Mar 2023

Island dwarfs and giants are disproportionality prone to human-mediated extinctions

Island dwarfs and giants are more susceptible to extinction than other species, particularly following the arrival of humans to their insular homes, according to a new analysis of island species over millions of years. The findings highlight the vulnerability of some of Earth’s most unique species and could be used to inform conservation strategies to preserve them. Although they cover less than 7% of the planet’s surface, islands are hotspots of biodiversity. Due to their isolation, islands often contain species ...

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Medicine9 Mar 2023

Presenting a synapse-by-synapse map of an insect’s brain

Researchers have presented the connectome – or synaptic wiring diagram – of an entire Drosophila larva brain. This first-ever insect whole-brain connectome is larger and more complex than previously reported connectomes and represents a valuable resource for future experimental and theoretical studies of neural circuits and brain function. The brain comprises complex networks of interconnected neurons that communicate through synapses. Understanding the brain’s network architecture is critical to understanding brain function. However, due to technological constraints, imaging entire brains with electron microscopy (EM) and reconstructing ...

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Medicine9 Mar 2023

The “MIDAS” platform detects protein-metabolite interactions

To help improve the discovery and characterization of elusive interactions between proteins and metabolites, researchers present MIDAS (Mass spectrometry Integrated with equilibrium Dialysis for the discovery of Allostery Systematically). According to the authors, MIDAS represents a powerful new tool to “identify, understand, and exploit previously unknown modes of metabolic regulation across the protein-metabolite interactome.” The interactions between proteins and small-molecule metabolites are among the most common and fundamental types of biological interaction and play vital ...

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Science9 Mar 2023

Insular dwarfs and giants more likely to go extinct

Leipzig/Halle. Islands are “laboratories of evolution” and home to animal species with many unique features, including dwarfs that evolved to very small sizes compared to their mainland relatives, and giants that evolved to large sizes. A team of researchers from the German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has now found that species that evolved to more extreme body sizes compared to their mainland relatives have a higher risk of extinction than those that evolved to less extreme sizes. Their study, which was published in Science, also shows that extinction rates of mammals ...

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Social Science9 Mar 2023

Honey bees use social learning to improve waggle dancing

In a study published in Science, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California San Diego have shown that honey bees use social signal learning to improve their ability to waggle dance. Social learning shapes honey bee signaling, as it does communication in human infants, birds, and several other vertebrate species, according to the researchers. Social learning occurs when one individual learns by observing or interacting with another. Eusocial insects (i.e., insects with an advanced level of social ...

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