Japanese and Zambian scientists have shown that environmental lead poisoning in children affects not only their own health and wellbeing, but the vitality and mental health of their mothers, as well. Lead poisoning is a common pediatric problem caused by the environment, and is easily preventable. Due to their smaller size and mass, infants and children are at a higher risk of negative effects compared to adults. Chronic lead poisoning leads to fatigue, sleeping problems, headaches, stupor, and anemia. The population of Kabwe, Zambia, is exposed ...

One of the many challenges for grape growers posed by climate change is the accelerated rate at which grapes ripen in warmer climates, which can result in poor colour and aroma development. In a new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers from the University of Adelaide found it is possible to increase the flavour potential of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes by slowing down the ripening process with strategies including crop load manipulation and irrigation management. Lead author, Pietro Previtali from the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, said: "Advanced maturation due to warmer temperatures is a key issue for grape growers in most wine regions worldwide and especially in warm ...

Politicians use emotional resources in their speeches in parliament depending on the type of debate and use emotive rhetoric strategically and selectively, mainly to attract voters. This is one of the main conclusions of a study published in the journal American Political Science Review (APSR) involving Toni Rodon, a professor with the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences and member of the Research Group on Institutions and Political Actors, together with Moritz Osnabrügge (Durham University, as first author) and Sara B. Hobolt (London School of Economics and Political Science). "Our research provides evidence that incentives to attract voters differ systematically depending on the type of debate" In recent years, much research has been done ...

Domestic burning of wood and dung fuels in Neolithic homes would have exceeded modern internationally-agreed standards for indoor air quality, exposing inhabitants to unsafe levels of particulates. Working with environmental engineers, archaeologists at Newcastle University, UK, used modern air quality monitoring methods to assess the impact of domestic fuel burning inside buildings at Çatalhöyük, in Turkey, one of the world's earliest settlements. A typical house at Çatalhöyük, a UNESCO World Heritage site, had a domed oven set against the south wall, located beneath an opening in the roof. In the 1990s, a replica of one of these houses ...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are highly reactive chemicals which contain oxygen radicals. Hypochlorous acid, peroxides, superoxide, singlet oxygen, alpha-oxygen and hydroxyl radicals are the major examples of ROS, which are familiar to persons from many walks of life as they are used in many domestic and industrial processes. ROS are naturally produced during a variety of biochemical reactions within the cell organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria and peroxisomes. ROS are also formed as a byproduct of the normal metabolism of oxygen. The production of ROS can be induced by various factors such as heavy metals, tobacco, smoke, drugs, xenobiotics, pollutants and radiation. From various experimental studies, it is reported that ROS acts as either tumor suppressing or tumor ...

Malaria still kills millions. Researchers are excited by a new intervention: giving people a drug which kills mosquitoes that bite them. Incredibly, this is a reality, as the drug ivermectin, widely used for the control of parasite infections such as lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, appears to do this. With some mosquitoes now resistant to the insecticides used in treated bed nets, this is a potentially important new control measure. LSTM's Dr Rebecca Thomas and Dr Joseph Okebe, together with Dr de Souza from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR(link is external)), University of Ghana, first examined the experimental evidence that giving the drug to people kills the mosquitoes that bite them. All included studies showed large effects of ivermectin on ...

Predicting the potential effects of coral loss on fish communities globally is a fundamental task, especially considering that reef fishes provide protein to millions of people. A new study led by the University of Helsinki predicts how fish diversity will respond to declines in coral diversity and shows that future coral loss might cause a more than 40% reduction in reef fish diversity globally. Corals increasingly bleach and often die when the water warms. What happens to fish if there are no alternative reefs to swim to? The few fish species that feed on corals will inevitably starve, but the rest might find alternative rocky habitat to persist. As yet, it has been hard to ...

By the beginning of April 2021, the number of people infected during the COVID-19 pandemic had risen to more than 130 million people of whom more than 2.8 million died. The SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19 is transmitted particularly by droplets or aerosols emitted when an infected person speaks, sneezes or coughs. This is how the viruses and other pathogens spread through the environment and transmit infectious diseases when they are inhaled by someone else. The capacity of these particles to remain suspended in the air and to spread in the environment depends largely on the size and nature of the air flow generated by the expiration of air. As with other airborne infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, common flu ...

Significantly higher rates of child intensive care admissions for unintentional cannabis poisonings have been seen following legalization of the drug in Canada. Researchers from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), based in Toronto, found a four-fold increase in unintentional poisonings in children under the age of 12 and a three-fold increase in intensive care admissions for severe cannabis poisoning in the first two years following cannabis legalization. However, the overall number of visits per month for cannabis intoxications to the SickKids Emergency Department (ED) remained consistent when comparing the pre- and post-legalization ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have upgraded their laser frequency-comb instrument to simultaneously measure three airborne greenhouse gases -- nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor -- plus the major air pollutants ozone and carbon monoxide. Combined with an earlier version of the system that measures methane, NIST's dual comb technology can now sense all four primary greenhouse gases, which could help in understanding and monitoring emissions of these heat-trapping gases implicated in climate change. The newest comb system can also help assess urban air quality. These NIST instruments identify gas signatures by precisely measuring the amounts of light ...

A McGill-led study has shown that the size of the Maya population in the lowland city of Itzan (in present-day Guatemala) varied over time in response to climate change. The findings, published recently in Quaternary Science Reviews, show that both droughts and very wet periods led to important population declines. These results are based on using a relatively new technique involving looking at stanols (organic molecules found in human and animal faecal matter) taken from the bottom of a nearby lake. Measurements of stanols were used to estimate changes in population size and to examine how they align with information about climate variability and changes in vegetation drawn from other biological and archaeological sources. By using the technique, the researchers were able ...

Increasing our understanding of cellular processes requires information about the types of biomolecules involved, their locations, and their interactions. This requires the molecules to be labeled without affecting physiological processes (bioorthogonality). This works when the markers are very quickly and selectively coupled using small molecules and "click chemistry". In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of researchers has now introduced a novel type of click reaction that is also suitable for living cells and organisms. As an example, labeling biomolecules allows for the localization and characterization of tumors ...

A new Finnish study shows that 180 health care workers who had received two doses of the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine have very good antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The immune response was as strong against the alpha variant (formerly the UK variant) but was somewhat decreased against the beta variant (formerly the South Africa variant). Finnish researchers from the University of Turku and University of Helsinki together with Turku University Hospital, Helsinki University Hospital, and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare studied the immune response induced by the coronavirus vaccinations, which started in Finland in December. The researchers analysed vaccine responses ...

Growing in popularity, unagi kabayaki - grilled freshwater eel in soy sauce - can be found on the menu of many Japanese restaurants, and is stocked by Asian shops and in specialist supermarkets. But new research tracing the DNA of eel fillets used for this dish has found that fraudulent food labelling is rife, with a third of the products violating EU regulations on the provision of food information. With certain species of eels now endangered, the researchers say that accurate labelling on these products is vital if the global eel trade is to be sustainable. The European eel is a critically ...

Plants play an essential role in curbing climate change, absorbing about one-third of the carbon dioxide emitted from human activities and storing it in soil so it doesn't become a heat-trapping gas. Extreme weather affects this ecosystem service, but when it comes to understanding carbon uptake, floods are studied far less than droughts - and they may be just as important, according to new research. In a global analysis of vegetation over more than three decades, Stanford University researchers found that photosynthesis - the process by which plants take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - was primarily influenced by floods and heavy rainfall nearly as often as droughts in many locations. The paper, published in Environmental Research Letters on June ...

A key component of next-generation solar panels can be created without expensive, high-temperature fabrication methods, demonstrating a pathway to large scale, low-cost manufacturing for commercial applications. Nickel oxide (NiO) is used as an inexpensive hole-transport layer in perovskite solar cells because of its favourable optical properties and long-term stability. Making high-quality NiO films for solar cells usually requires an energy intensive and high-temperature treatment process called thermal annealing, which is not only costly, but also incompatible with plastic substrates, until now precluding the use of ...

Spatial reasoning ability in small children reflects how well they will perform in mathematics later. Researchers from the University of Basel recently came to this conclusion, making the case for better cultivation of spatial reasoning. Good math skills open career doors in the natural sciences as well as technical and engineering fields. However, a nationwide study on basic skills conducted in Switzerland in 2019 found that schoolchildren achieved only modest results in mathematics. But it seems possible to begin promoting math skills from a young ...

New research shows thermal imaging techniques can predict whether a wound needs extra management, offering an early alert system to improve chronic wound care. It is estimated that 1-2% of the population will experience a chronic wound during their lifetime in developed countries - in the US, chronic wounds affect about 6.5 million patients with more than US$25 billion each year spent by the healthcare system on treating related complications.* The Australian study shows textural analysis of thermal images of venous leg ulcers (VLUs) can detect whether a wound needs extra management as early as week two for clients receiving treatment at home. The clinical study by RMIT University and Bolton Clarke, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, is the first to investigate ...

Decision-makers around the world are increasingly interested in using ecosystem solutions such as mangroves, coral reefs, sand dunes and forests on steep slopes to help buffer the impacts from hazard events and protect populations. But what evidence exists to show the efficacy of nature-based solutions over man-made protective measures to reduce the impacts of the increasing numbers of hazard events humanity faces due to climate change? An international, multi-disciplinary team of 28 researchers has examined nearly 20 years' worth of peer-reviewed studies on the impacts of ecosystem-based disaster ...

A study analysing the association between a wide variety of prenatal and childhood exposures and neuropsychological development in school-age children has found that organic food intake is associated with better scores on tests of fluid intelligence (ability to solve novel reasoning problems) and working memory (ability of the brain to retain new information while it is needed in the short term). The study, published in Environmental Pollution, was conceived and designed by researchers at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)--a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation--and ...

A scientific breakthrough: Researchers from Tel Aviv University have engineered the world's tiniest technology, with a thickness of only two atoms. According to the researchers, the new technology proposes a way for storing electric information in the thinnest unit known to science, in one of the most stable and inert materials in nature. The allowed quantum-mechanical electron tunneling through the atomically thin film may boost the information reading process much beyond current technologies. The research was performed by scientists from the Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy and Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Chemistry. The group includes Maayan Vizner Stern, Yuval Waschitz, Dr. Wei Cao, Dr. Iftach Nevo, Prof. Eran Sela, Prof. Michael Urbakh, ...

Working out just five minutes daily via a practice described as "strength training for your breathing muscles" lowers blood pressure and improves some measures of vascular health as well as, or even more than, aerobic exercise or medication, new CU Boulder research shows. The study, published June 29 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, provides the strongest evidence yet that the ultra-time-efficient maneuver known as High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST) could play a key role in helping aging adults fend off cardiovascular disease - the nation's leading killer. In the United States alone, 65% of adults over age 50 have ...

A University of Arkansas researcher and international colleagues found that employed individuals, on average, are 35.3% more likely to be infected with the flu virus. The findings confirm a long-held assumption about one prevalent way illness spreads and could influence government policy on public health and several issues for private companies, from optimal design and management of physical work spaces to policy decisions about sick leave and remote work. To track influenza incidence, Dongya "Don" Koh, assistant professor of economics in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, and colleagues relied on nationally representative data from the Medical ...

A new study shows that colleges students are experiencing significant grief reactions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper, "College Student Experiences of Grief and Loss Amid the COVID-19 Global Pandemic," was recently published in OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying. "This study aimed to identify the most common non-death losses and grief reactions experienced by undergraduate and graduate college students amid the pandemic," said author Erica H. Sirrine, Ph.D., director of Social Work at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "What we found is that students ...

New Brunswick, N.J. (June 28, 2021) - Rutgers researchers have developed a machine learning model using a physics-based simulator and real-world meteorological data to better predict offshore wind power. The findings appear in the journal Applied Energy. Offshore wind is rapidly maturing into a major source of renewable energy worldwide and is projected to grow by 13% in the next two decades and 15-fold by 2040 to become a $1 trillion industry, matching capital spending on gas- and coal-fired power generation. In the United States, for instance, New York and New Jersey recently awarded two offshore ...