CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, forcing the hosts to do the hard work of raising the unrelated young. A team of scientists wanted to simulate the task of piercing an egg - a tactic that only a minority of host birds use to help grasp and eject the foreign eggs. Their study offers insight into some of the physical challenges the discriminating host birds face. The new findings appear in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Take cowbirds, for example. Their eggs look nothing like the host birds' eggs, "yet most of their hosts do not reject the parasite eggs," said study co-author Mark Hauber, a professor of evolution, ecology and behavior at the ...

Natural disasters have a way of bringing people together to rebuild. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on April 8 have found that the same is true for rhesus macaques. The study reports that after a major hurricane hit Puerto Rico, macaques living on Cayo Santiago Island became more tolerant of each other and sought new social connections. The findings are based on careful study of social connections among Cayo Santiago Island's macaques before and after Hurricane Maria, a devastating storm that left more than 3,000 people dead. "The macaques ...

Chest beating by mountain gorillas - rapidly beating their chests with their hands to produce a drumming sound - may convey information about their body size and allow identification of individuals, a study published in Scientific Reports suggests. These findings demonstrate how non-vocal behaviours may contribute to mountain gorilla communication. Although it had previously been suggested that gorillas may beat their chests to convey information, the exact nature of that information was unclear. Edward Wright and colleagues observed and recorded 25 wild, adult male silverback gorillas monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, between January 2014 and July 2016. Body size was determined from photographs ...

Along the Tian Shan and Alay mountain ranges of Central Asia, sheep and other domestic livestock form the core economy of contemporary life. Although it was here that the movements of their ancient predecessors helped to shape the great trade networks of the Silk Road, domestic animals were thought to have come relatively late to the region. A new study, published today in the journal Nature: Human Behavior, reveals that the roots of animal domestication in Central Asia stretch back at least 8,000 years - making the region one of the oldest continuously inhabited pastoral landscapes in the world. The domestication ...

Ageing and age-related brain disease do not affect women and men in the same way. The adult brain constantly generates new brain cells called neurons from stem cells, a process called neurogenesis. This process is important for learning and cognitive function which declines as the brain ages. Neurogenesis has been extensively studied in animals, but most studies have looked at male animals, raising the question of whether age-related decline in neurogenesis affects both sexes in the same way. To address this, researchers Sally Temple, PhD (sallytemple@neuralsci.org), Kristen Zuloga, PhD (zuloagk@amc.edu) and colleagues at the NY Neural Stem ...

Mutations in the DNA of the cell's energy 'factories' increases the chances of survival for people with bowel cancer, according to a study published today (Thursday) in Nature Metabolism. Scientists funded by Cancer Research UK have found that patients with colorectal cancer, a common form of bowel cancer, had a 57 to 93% decreased risk of death from their cancer, depending on the presence and type of mitochondrial DNA mutations in their tumours. The researchers hope that in the future, doctors could use this information to identify patients with more aggressive forms of bowel ...

What The Study Did: This analysis evaluated in-hospital mortality rates for patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection over time and factors associated with changes were examined Authors: Lyn Finelli, Dr.P.H., M.S., of Merck Research Labs in North Wales, Pennsylvania, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.6556) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions ...

Gorillas usually stand bipedally and rapidly beat their chests with cupped hands in rapid succession. Chest beating is a unique sound because is it not a vocalization, like frogs croaking, but rather it is a form of gestural communication that can be both heard and seen. The emanating drumming sound can be heard over one kilometre away. The presumed function of gorilla chest beats is to attract females and intimidate rival males. Researchers recorded chest beats and used a technique called photogrammetry to non-invasively measured body size of adult male wild mountain gorillas monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda. They found that larger males emitted chest beats with lower peak frequencies than smaller ones. In other words, ...

The U.S. military veteran population is known to have abnormally high rates of suicide, so health officials have been concerned that the COVID-19 pandemic might elevate risk of psychiatric disorders, particularly among those suffering from post-traumatic stress and related disorders. A recent national study of more than 3,000 veterans participating in the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study did find that 12.8% reported post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms related to COVID-19 and 8% said they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic. However, the same survey, published April 8 in JAMA Network Open, revealed another, startling finding. A full 43.3% ...

What The Study Did: This survey study uses self-reported data from a national study of veterans to assess the association of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder with posttraumatic psychological growth (these are positive psychological changes such as an appreciation of life and personal growth) among U.S. veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors: Robert H. Pietrzak, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4972) Editor's ...

It may be possible in the future to use information technology where electron spin is used to store, process and transfer information in quantum computers. It has long been the goal of scientists to be able to use spin-based quantum information technology at room temperature. A team of researchers from Sweden, Finland and Japan have now constructed a semiconductor component in which information can be efficiently exchanged between electron spin and light at room temperature and above. The new method is described in an article published in Nature Photonics. ...

The millions of people who have chronic sinusitis deal not only with stuffy noses and headaches, they also commonly struggle to focus, and experience depression and other symptoms that implicate the brain's involvement in their illness. New research links sinus inflammation with alterations in brain activity, specifically with the neural networks that modulate cognition, introspection and response to external stimuli. The paper was published today in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. "This is the first study that links chronic sinus inflammation with a neurobiological ...

Expressive language sampling (ELS) is a useful tool for measuring communication development in youth with Down syndrome, a END ...

Cyberbullying already accounts for one in four cases of bullying and, according to the latest UNICEF report issued on the occasion of 'Safer Internet Day', it affects at least two students per class in Spanish schools. In this regard, the Laboratory of Studies on Coexistence and Violence Prevention at the University of Cordoba, under the direction of professors Rosario Ortega-Ruiz and Eva M. Romera, has just published a study examining family communication and its impact on cyber-gossip and the excessive use of social media-two of the main factors with the greatest influence on cyber-bullying. Their results point in the same direction: an atmosphere of trust in the family is an antidote to this type of behaviour, reducing the risk of schoolchildren engaging inproblematic ...

Calibration and validation (CAL/VAL) is a key technology for quantitative application of space-borne remote sensing data. However, the complex space environment can cause many uncertainties and degrade the calibration accuracy. In-flight calibration is always needed. The thermal emission of the Moon is stable over hundreds of years because there is no atmosphere and no significant physical or chemical change on its surface. The deep space view of the Microwave Humidity Sounder onboard NOAA-18 has viewed the Moon many times every year. Under solar illumination, the lunar surface shows stable and periodical variation in microwave brightness temperature (TB). The Moon is a potential calibration source for thermal calibration The ...

A decade ago, the discovery of quasiparticles called magnetic skyrmions provided important new clues into how microscopic spin textures will enable spintronics, a new class of electronics that use the orientation of an electron's spin rather than its charge to encode data. But although scientists have made big advances in this very young field, they still don't fully understand how to design spintronics materials that would allow for ultrasmall, ultrafast, low-power devices. Skyrmions may seem promising, but scientists have long treated skyrmions as merely 2D objects. Recent studies, however, have suggested that 2D skyrmions could actually be the genesis of a 3D spin pattern called hopfions. ...

In all adult vertebrates, neural stem cells can be recruited to produce new neurons in the brain. However, little is known about these so-called "activation" processes. Scientists at the Institut Pasteur, CNRS, and Tel Aviv University working in collaboration with the École Polytechnique and INRAE have successfully performed 3D visualization and spatial and temporal distribution analysis of neural stem cell activation in the adult brain of a zebrafish vertebrate model. Their findings demonstrate for the first time that activation events for these cells are coordinated ...

Powerful algorithms used by Netflix, Amazon and Facebook can 'predict' the biological language of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, scientists have found. Big data produced during decades of research was fed into a computer language model to see if artificial intelligence can make more advanced discoveries than humans. Academics based at St John's College, University of Cambridge, found the machine-learning technology could decipher the 'biological language' of cancer, Alzheimer's, and other neurodegenerative diseases. Their ground-breaking study has been published in the scientific journal PNAS today (April 8 2021) and could be used in the future to 'correct the grammatical mistakes inside cells that cause disease'. Professor Tuomas Knowles, lead ...

The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in preschool and school children is an important benchmark for deciding whether to open kindergartens and schools. The screening study "Fr1da" led by Anette-Gabriele Ziegler tests children in Bavaria for an early stage of type 1 diabetes. These tests include the collection of blood samples. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers had decided to use the valuable study infrastructure of the Fr1da study to detect SARS-CoV-2 infections, too. For this, they developed a SARS-CoV-2 antibody test with particularly high accuracy. During the first ...

The rainfall over the Yangtze River Valley (YRV) in June 2020 broke the record since 1979 (Figure 1). As of June 28, the People's Daily Online reported that there were more than 12 million people affected by flood disasters related to this torrential rain, with deaths or disappearances of 78 persons and a direct economic loss of more than 25 billion CNY. Recently, scientists from South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO), Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the cause of the record-breaking rainfall over the YRV. According to their study published in Science China Earth Sciences on March 19, 2021, all three oceans of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans ...

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) demonstrate an mRNA delivery system that effectively produces BDNF protein in rat brain to protect neurons from ischemia Tokyo - A lack of oxygen to brain tissue--known as ischemia--leads to the death of neurons, which results in stroke. Despite considerable research, there are currently no treatments that successfully prevent neuronal death. Now, Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) researchers have reported a way of delivering mRNA to produce a therapeutic protein that protects neurons. Their findings, demonstrated in rats, ...

Cycling at moderate intensity during dialysis could drastically improve the heart health of patients with kidney failure and result in significant savings for the NHS, according to new research by the University of Leicester supported by the charity Kidney Research UK and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Centre. Patients in the CYCLE-HD study were offered 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise on a specially adapted bicycle during their regular dialysis sessions. Dialysis can lead to long-term scarring of the heart, which can accumulate over time and lead to heart failure. The study set out to examine ...

Ensuring sustainability of crop and timber production would mitigate the greatest drivers of terrestrial wildlife decline, responsible for 40% of the overall extinction risk of amphibians, birds and mammals, according to a paper published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. These results were generated using a new metric which, for the first time, allows business, governments and civil society to assess their potential contributions to stemming global species loss, and can be used to calculate national, regional, sector-based, or institution-specific targets. The work was led by the IUCN Species Survival Commission's Post-2020 Taskforce, hosted by Newcastle ...

New Curtin University-led research has found climate change will have a substantial impact on global food production and health if no action is taken by consumers, food industries, government, and international bodies. Published in one of the highest-ranking public health journals, the Annual Review of Public Health, the researchers completed a comprehensive 12-month review of published literature on climate change, healthy diet and actions needed to improve nutrition and health around the world. Lead researcher John Curtin Distinguished Emeritus Professor Colin Binns, from the Curtin School of Population Health at Curtin University, said climate change has had a detrimental impact on health and food production for the past 50 years and far more needs to be ...

A Curtin University study has found the introduced European honeybee could lead to native bee population decline or extinction when colonies compete for the same nectar and pollen sources in urban gardens and areas of bush. Published in the 'Biological Journal of the Linnean Society', the research found competition between the native bees and the introduced European honeybee could be particularly intense in residential gardens dominated by non-native flowers, and occurred when the bees shared the same flower preferences. Under these conditions, it would appear that European honeybees, being very abundant, and effective foragers, with the ...