DURHAM, N.C. -- When marine biologist Eleanor Caves of the University of Exeter thinks back to her first scuba dives, one of the first things she recalls noticing is that colors seem off underwater. The vivid reds, oranges, purples and yellows she was used to seeing in the sunlit waters near the surface look increasingly dim and drab with depth, and before long the whole ocean loses most of its rainbow leaving nothing but shades of blue. "The thing that always got me about diving was what happens to people's faces and lips," said her former Ph.D. adviser Sönke Johnsen, a biology professor at Duke University. "Everybody has a ghastly sallow complexion." Which got the researchers to thinking: In the last half-century, some fish have been shifting ...

Researchers at GMI - Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences - and the John Innes Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom, determine that gene-regulatory mechanisms at an early embryonic stage govern the flowering behavior of Arabidopsis later in development. The paper is published in the journal PNAS. How do early life events shape the ability of organisms to respond to environmental cues later in their life? Can such phenomena be explained at the mechanistic level? GMI group leader and co-corresponding author Michael Nodine counters these questions with a clear statement: "Our research demonstrates that gene-regulatory mechanisms established in early embryos forecast events that have major ...

UC Riverside engineers are developing methods to estimate the impact of California's destructive wildfires on air quality in neighborhoods affected by the smoke from these fires. Their research, funded by NASA and the results published in Atmospheric Pollution Research, fills in the gaps in current methods by providing air quality information at the neighborhood scales required by public health officials to make health assessments and evacuation recommendations. Measurements of air quality depend largely on ground-based sensors that are typically spaced many miles apart. Determining how healthy it is to breathe air is straightforward in the vicinity of the sensors but becomes unreliable in areas in between sensors. Akula Venkatram, a professor of mechanical engineering in UC Riverside's ...

Much of common pharmaceutical development today is the product of laborious cycles of tweaking and optimization. In each drug, a carefully concocted formula of natural and synthetic enzymes and ingredients works together to catalyze a desired reaction. But in early development, much of the process is spent determining what quantities of each enzyme to use to ensure a reaction occurs at a specific speed. New collaborative research from Northwestern University could expedite, or even eliminate, the need for scientists to manually adjust bioproduction reaction conditions at all. Using ideas conceived by graduate students across three labs, Northwestern researchers developed technology that allows microbes to produce drugs with feedback control systems, dialing down or amping up ...

Cisgender sexual minority men and transgender women are aware of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a daily pill for HIV-negative people to prevent HIV infection, but few are currently taking it, according to researchers at Rutgers. The study, published in the journal AIDS and Behavior, surveyed 202 young sexual minority men and transgender women - two high-priority populations for HIV prevention - to better understand why some were more likely than others to be taking PrEP. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sexual minority men are the community most impacted by HIV, making ...

Skoltech scientists in collaboration with researchers from the University of Arizona and the Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed an approach that allows power grids to return to stability fast after demand response perturbation. Their research at the crossroads of demand response, smart grids, and power grid control was published in the journal Applied Energy. Power grids are complex systems that manage the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power to consumers, also called loads. As it is not possible to store electrical energy along the transmission lines, grid operators must ensure, ideally at all times, the balance between production and consumption of electrical energy, i.e. the stability of power grids. While it is essential ...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have developed a new mathematical model for predicting how epidemics such as COVID-19 spread. This model not only accounts for individuals' varying biological susceptibility to infection but also their levels of social activity, which naturally change over time. Using their model, the team showed that a temporary state of collective immunity--which they termed "transient collective immunity"--emerged during the early, fast-paced stages of the epidemic. However, subsequent "waves," ...

BOSTON - Legislation currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress would increase regulatory oversight of certain diagnostic tests, and a new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and colleagues from several other institutions demonstrates that its potential impact will depend on key details in the bill's final language. This study, published in JCO Oncology Practice, offers the first evidence-based analysis of how new rules proposed for the regulation of laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) could affect health care costs in the United States. "The idea of having more oversight of LDTs is justified," says Jochen Lennerz, MD, PhD, medical director of the MGH Center for Integrated Diagnostics (CID) and the study's senior author. ...

April 21, 2021 - Consuming a diet high in pro-inflammatory foods - including foods that contain refined carbohydrates and sugar as well as polyunsaturated fats - may be associated with increased odds of developing testosterone deficiency among men, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The risk of testosterone deficiency is greatest in men who are obese and consume a refined diet that scores high on the dietary inflammatory index (DII), according to the new research by Qiu Shi, MD, Zhang Chichen, MD, and colleagues of ...

A national strategy to ensure that families have access to food could revolutionize Canada's farms, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University's Food Systems Lab. The study proposes implementing a "right to food" framework that would support the needed funding, infrastructure, and stability that can reduce losses of edible food at the farm, while creating better access to local foods for consumers. The study, published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, looked at the reasons for on-farm losses of edible food. Approximately 14 per cent of the world's food is lost before it ever reaches store shelves. In Canada, 35.5 million metric tonnes of food are lost or wasted annually, ...

A one-time injection of an experimental stem cell therapy can repair brain damage and improve memory function in mice with conditions that replicate human strokes and dementia, a new UCLA study finds. Dementia can arise from multiple conditions, and it is characterized by an array of symptoms including problems with memory, attention, communication and physical coordination. The two most common causes of dementia are Alzheimer's disease and white matter strokes -- small strokes that accumulate in the connecting areas of the brain. "It's a vicious cycle: ...

We've all heard the news stories of how what you eat can affect your microbiome. Changing your diet can shift your unique microbial fingerprint. This shift can cause a dramatic effect on your health. But what about the microbiome of the plants you eat? Scientists are beginning to see how shifts in plant microbiomes also impact plant health. Unlocking the factors in plant microbial assemblage can lead to innovative and sustainable solutions to increase yield and protect our crops. In a new study published in the Phytobiomes Journal, "Influence of plant host and organ, management strategy, and spore ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In nature, many molecules possess a property called chirality, which means that they cannot be superimposed on their mirror images (like a left and right hand). Chirality can influence function, impacting a pharmaceutical or enzyme's effectiveness, for example, or a compound's perceived aroma. Now, a new study is advancing scientists' understanding of another property tied to chirality: How light interacts with chiral materials under a magnetic field. Prior research has shown that in such a system, the left- and right-handed forms of a material absorb light differently, in ...

Plenty of people struggle to make sense of a multitude of converging voices in a crowded room. Commonly known as the "cocktail party effect," people with hearing loss find it's especially difficult to understand speech in a noisy environment. New research suggests that, for some listeners, this may have less to do with actually discerning sounds. Instead, it may be a processing problem in which two ears blend different sounds together - a condition known as binaural pitch fusion. The research, co-authored by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and VA Portland Health Care System, was published today in the Journal of the Association for Research ...

When deciding whether to have children, there are many factors to consider: finances, support systems, personal values. For a growing number of people, climate change is also being added to the list of considerations, says a University of Arizona researcher. Sabrina Helm, an associate professor in the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is lead author of a new peer-reviewed study that looks at how climate change is affecting people's decisions about whether to have children. "For many people, the question of whether to have children or not is one of the biggest they will face in their lives," Helm said. "If you are worried ...

By targeting a receptor in the brains of mice, researchers have successfully altered feeding and anxiety-like behaviors linked to anorexia. Although more work is needed in humans, their study suggests that fine-tuning the receptor's activity could help change feeding habits and promote weight gain in patients with eating disorders. Anorexia and other eating disorders affect at least 28 million Americans and cause more than 10,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. Studies have linked anorexia to neurons that bear a protein named AgRP; these neurons reside in an area of the brain ...

Video: https://bit.ly/pelicanflightvideo It's a common sight: pelicans gliding along the waves, right by the shore. These birds make this kind of surfing look effortless, but actually the physics involved that give them a big boost are not simple. Researchers at the University of California San Diego have recently developed a theoretical model that describes how the ocean, the wind and the birds in flight interact in a recent paper in Movement Ecology. UC San Diego mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Ian Stokes and adviser Professor Drew Lucas, of UC San Diego's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering ...

Like humans, certain plants are treated with antibiotics to ward off pathogens and protect the host. Saving millions, antibiotics are one of the 20th century's greatest scientific discoveries, but repeated use and misuse of these life-saving microbial products can disrupt the human microbiome and can have severe effects on an individual's health. Overuse has led to several microbes developing resistance to the antibiotic, rendering it useless, and created "superbugs" that overpower medication. But do we find that same phenomenon in plants and our food industry? This was the question Dr. Anna Wallis ...

Handwriting analysis of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates the biblical text was likely written by multiple scribes, who mirrored one another's writing styles. INFORMATION: Article Title: Artificial intelligence based writer identification generates new evidence for the unknown scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls exemplified by the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) Funding: 'Mladen Popovi? Project: The Hands that Wrote the Bible Grant Number: ERC Starting Grant 640497 European Research Council https://erc.europa.eu/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.' Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0249769 ...

Weight gain in older age does not appear to preserve cognitive performance, according to study of 58,389 European adults INFORMATION: Article Title: Bodyweight change and cognitive performance in the older population Funding: None of the authors of the manuscript has received specific funding for the work included in this submission. The funders mentioned below did not play any role in the study design, data analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Female baboons may not have bills to pay or deadlines to meet, but their lives are extremely challenging. They face food and water scarcity and must be constantly attuned to predators, illnesses and parasites, all while raising infants and maintaining their social status. A new study appearing April 21 in Science Advances shows that female baboons with high life-long levels of glucocorticoids, the hormones involved in the 'fight or flight' response, have a greater risk of dying than those with lower levels. Glucocorticoids are a group of hormones ...

In a world-first, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have captured an image showing the internal orbits, or spatial distribution, of particles in an exciton - a goal that had eluded scientists for almost a century. Excitons are excited states of matter found within semiconductors - a class of materials that are key to many modern technological devices, such as solar cells, LEDs, lasers and smartphones. "Excitons are really unique and interesting particles; they are electrically neutral which means they behave very differently within materials from other particles like electrons. Their presence can ...

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered some seventy years ago, are famous for containing the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and many hitherto unknown ancient Jewish texts. But the individual people behind the scrolls have eluded scientists, because the scribes are anonymous. Now, by combining the sciences and the humanities, University of Groningen researchers have cracked the code, which enables them to discover the scribes behind the scrolls. They presented their results in the journal PLOS ONE on 21 April. The scribes who created the scrolls did not sign their work. Scholars suggested ...

Floodwaters are not what most people consider a blessing. But they could help remedy California's increasingly parched groundwater systems, according to a new Stanford-led study. The research, published in Science Advances, develops a framework to calculate future floodwater volumes under a changing climate and identifies areas where investments in California's aging water infrastructure could amplify groundwater recharge. As the state grapples with more intense storms and droughts, stowing away floodwaters would not only reduce flood risks but also build more water reserves for ...

Addressing a much-debated question about the impact of stress on survival in wild, nonhuman primates, a new multi-decadal study involving 242 wild female baboons found evidence to support chronic stress as a significant factor affecting survival. The study found that a female baboon with a stress response - as reflected in fecal glucocorticoid concentrations, a biomarker of stress response - in the top 90% for her age throughout adulthood was expected to lose 5.4 years of life compared to a female with glucocorticoid concentrations in the bottom 10% for her age group. The findings, which leveraged more than 14,000 fecal glucocorticoid measurements over a ...