It all started when litter researchers found a perch in the canals of Leiden that had become caught up in a latex glove. As far as we know, this was the first Dutch victim of corona waste. Since then, they have been trying to obtain an overall picture of the consequences of the corona waste mountain on animals. Biologists Auke-Florian Hiemstra from Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Liselotte Rambonnet from Leiden University started a quest to determine how often and where interactions between corona waste and animals occur. They collected observations from Brazil to Malaysia and from social media to local newspapers and international news websites. A fox in the United Kingdom, birds in Canada, hedgehogs, ...

Neurodevelopmental disorders like autism and schizophrenia disproportionately affect males and are directly linked to early life adversity caused by maternal stress and other factors, which might be impacted by nutrition. But the underlying reasons for these male-specific impacts are not well understood. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and the MU Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders have uncovered possible reasons for male vulnerability in the womb, and they've learned a specific maternal dietary supplement called docosahexanoic acid (DHA) may guard against the impact of maternal stress on unborn males during early development. "We believe differences in metabolic requirements for male ...

The more colorful a food, the more nutritious it probably is. For example, purple corn contains compounds associated with a reduced risk of developing diabetes and heart disease. The cobs contain the same compounds but are typically thrown out. Now, researchers report a step-wise biorefinery approach in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering that uses the whole cob, producing a dye and a possible nutraceutical with the pigments, and an animal litter with the left-overs. Eating a rainbow of fruits and vegetables provides a variety of health benefits, with vitamins and nutrients ...

Since the early industrial revolution in the mid-1700s, fossil fuels have acquired an ever-growing footprint in energy production. However, the environmental concerns of fossil fuels use and their inevitable depletion have led to a global shift toward renewable energy sources. These transitions, however, raise questions about the best choice of renewables and the impact of investing in these resources on consumer cost. In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Texas A&M University have devised a metric that reflects the average price of energy in ...

The unprecedented rainfall from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 brought more than flood damage to southeast Texas. For people living in environmental justice communities such as the Manchester neighborhood near the Houston Ship Channel, heavy rainfall and flooding may have increased risks of exposure to harmful chemicals from nearby industry. To gain a better understanding of how flooding mobilized pollution in the area, a research team led by Garett Sansom, DrPH, research assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Texas A&M University School of ...

umans are remarkably adaptable, and our ancestors have survived challenges like the changing climate in the past. Now, research is providing insight into how people who lived over 5,000 years ago managed to adapt. Madelynn von Baeyer Ph.D. '18, now at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, UConn Associate Professor of Anthropology Alexia Smith, and Professor Sharon Steadman from The State University of New York College at Cortland recently published a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports looking at how people living in what is now Turkey adapted agricultural practices to survive as conditions became more arid. The work was conducted ...

March 24, 2021 - With heavy workloads and high professional and personal demands, medical residents in training - and those in urology residency programs - face a high risk of burnout. At one urology department, a wellness program designed by and for residents produced meaningful reductions in burnout risks, reports a study in Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. The Resident Wellness Curriculum (RWC) in the Scott Department of Urology at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, led to significant improvements in key aspects of burnout, according to the new research by Jennifer M. Taylor, MD, and colleagues. ...

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have produced a detailed molecular atlas of lung development, which is expected to be a fundamental reference in future studies of mammalian biology and of new treatments for diseases, such as COVID-19, that affect the lungs. The researchers, who published their study in Science, generated a broad atlas of cell types in the developing and adult mouse lung by measuring the expression of genes in thousands of individual mouse lung cells across the lifespan, covering multiple cell types and ...

Bone turnover markers, and specifically bone resorption markers, are commonly used to monitor patients' response to pharmacological treatment and adherence. In 2011, the Joint Committee on Bone Marker Standards of the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) designated Procollagen type I N-propeptide (PINP) and the C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ß-CTX) in blood as reference bone turnover markers for bone formation and bone resorption, respectively, in osteoporosis. ...

Peer deeper into the heart of the atom than any microscope allows and scientists hypothesize that you will find a rich world of particles popping in and out of the vacuum, decaying into other particles, and adding to the weirdness of the visible world. These subatomic particles are governed by the quantum nature of the Universe and find tangible, physical form in experimental results. Some subatomic particles were first discovered over a century ago with relatively simple experiments. More recently, however, the endeavor to understand these particles has spawned the largest, most ambitious and complex experiments in the world, including ...

An international team of researchers has found that three commonly used antiviral and antimalarial drugs are effective in vitro at preventing replication of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The work also underscores the necessity of testing compounds against multiple cell lines to rule out false negative results. The team, which included researchers from North Carolina State University and Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, looked at three antiviral drugs that have proven effective against Ebola and the Marburg virus: tilorone, quinacrine and pyronaridine. "We were looking for compounds that could block the entry of the virus into the cell," says Ana Puhl, senior scientist at Collaborations Pharmaceuticals and ...

Scientists investigating the genetics of chilli pepper species have discovered a whole host of new chilli hybrids that can be grown by crossing domesticated peppers with their wild cousins. This will allow plant breeders to create new varieties that have better disease resistance and could increase productivity. Despite their huge world-wide culinary appeal, chillies are relatively difficult to cultivate, being prone to disease and sensitive to growing conditions. There are 35 species of pepper in the Capsicum family, including five domesticated species. The most well-known ...

The process of fabricating materials is complicated, time-consuming and costly. Too much of one material, or too little, can create problems with the product, forcing the design process to begin again. Advancements in the design process are needed to reduce the cost and time it takes to produce materials with targeted properties. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers at Texas A&M University are using advanced computational and machine-learning techniques to create a framework capable of optimizing the process of developing materials, cutting time and costs. "Our general focus ...

Curtin University research has uncovered the first solid clues about the very beginning of the supercontinent cycle of Earth, finding it was kick-started two billion years ago. Detailed in a paper published in Geology, a team of researchers from Curtin's Earth Dynamics Research Group found that plate tectonics operated differently before two billion years ago, and the 600 million years supercontinent cycle likely only started during the second half of Earth's life. Lead researcher Dr Yebo Liu from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences said that the shift in plate tectonics marked a regime change in the Earth System. "This regime change impacted on the eventual emergence of complex life and even ...

The talented athletes are there. The cheering fans are there. But the media? It's nowhere to be found. This is the reality of women's sports, which continue to be almost entirely excluded from television news and sports highlights shows, according to a USC/Purdue University study published on March 24th in Communication & Sport. The survey of men's and women's sports news coverage has been conducted every five years since 1989. In the latest study, researchers found that 95% of total television coverage as well as the ESPN sports highlights show SportsCenter focused on men's sports in 2019. They saw a similar lopsidedness ...

A research group at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) has found that glycans--sugar molecules--play an important role in the structural changes that take place when the virus which causes COVID-19 invades human cells. Their discovery, which was based on supercomputer-based simulations, could contribute to the molecular design of drugs for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. The research was published in the Biophysical Journal. When SARS-CoV-2--the coronavirus that causes COVID-19--invades a human cell, a spike protein on its surface binds to an enzyme called ACE2 on the surface of the cell. The ...

Osaka, Japan - Scientists from the Division of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering at Osaka University employed deep learning artificial intelligence to improve mobile mixed reality generation. They found that occluding objects recognized by the algorithm could be dynamically removed using a video game engine. This work may lead to a revolution in green architecture and city revitalization. Mixed reality (MR) is a type of visual augmentation in which real-time images of existing objects or landscapes can be digitally altered. As anyone who has played Pokémon Go! or similar games knows, looking at a smartphone ...

Osaka, Japan - Most of the devices used in our daily lives are operated and controlled by electricity. From the standpoint of safety and the tight supply and demand of electricity, circuit design that satisfies low electromagnetic noise and power saving is becoming increasingly important. In an electric circuit, electric signals transmit inside the conductor, and electromagnetic fields radiate outside the conductor. Furthermore, the electromagnetic field propagates through the air and is converted into signals for itself and other circuits, which leads to electromagnetic noise. Now, a research team at Osaka University has formulated a numerical method ...

At the bottom of the world, there's a small island about four kilometers off the coast of Antarctica. In summer, temperatures climb to freezing with uninterrupted daylight for two months. In winter, they fall to minus 40 degrees Celsius without a single sunrise for two months. It is isolated and desolate, uninhabitable to all humans -- except for the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE). Almost every year since 1956, a JARE team winters over on the island, staying in Syowa Station, from February to January to conduct various research projects. From 2004 to 2014, however, they were also research subjects themselves. As part of a joint project between the National Institute of Polar Research at the Research Organization of Information and Systems ...

Materials science likes to take nature and the special properties of living beings that could potentially be transferred to materials as a model. A research team led by chemist Professor Andreas Walther of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has succeeded in endowing materials with a bioinspired property: Wafer-thin stiff nanopaper instantly becomes soft and elastic at the push of a button. "We have equipped the material with a mechanism so that the strength and stiffness can be modulated via an electrical switch," explained Walther. As soon as an electric current is applied, the nanopaper becomes soft; when the current flow stops, it regains its strength. From an application perspective, this switchability could be interesting for damping ...

Tokyo, Japan - Scientists from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo calculated the efficiency of the sensory network that bacteria use to move towards food and found it to be optimal from an information theory standpoint. This work may lead to a better understanding of bacterial behavior and their sensory networks. Despite being single-celled organisms, bacteria such as E. Coli can perform some impressive feats of sensing and adaptation in constantly changing environmental conditions. For example, these bacteria can sense the presence of a chemical ...

Imbued with special electric, mechanical and other physical properties due to their tiny size, nanofibers are considered leading-edge technology in biomedical engineering, clean energy and water quality control, among others. Now, researchers in Italy and UK have developed an automatic process to assess nanofiber fabrication quality, producing 30% more accurate results than currently used techniques. Details were published on January 2021 in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, a joint publication of the IEEE and the Chinese Association of Automation. "In recent years, nanostructured materials have gained continuously growing interest both in scientific and industrial contexts, because of their research appeal and versatile applications," ...

SMN or in full Survival Motor Neuron: Professor Utz Fischer has been analyzing this protein and the large molecular complex of the same name, of which SMN is one of the building blocks, for many years. He holds the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the Julius-Maximilian's University of Würzburg (JMU), and he first discovered the molecule during his search for the root cause of spinal muscular atrophy. As scientists found out a few years ago, this disease is caused by a lack of the SNM complex. The work group around Prof. Fischer has now succeeded in presenting a first three-dimensional model of the ...

In a ground-breaking first, researchers have fabricated 3D scaffold implants containing antibiotics at high temperatures. These scaffolds not only support bone regeneration but manage the bone infections that can arise as a result of injury or surgery. Each year, around 4 million people worldwide develop bone infection following an open fracture or surgery. The gold standard treatment consists of a lengthy antibiotic therapy, usually delivered orally or Intravenously, and the removal of infected bone tissue, which often leaves behind a hole too large for the body to fill via normal bone regeneration. In a study published in the KeAi journal Bioactive Materials, a group of researchers from the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, outline a new treatment ...

A genetic variation that regulates iron metabolism may enhance athletes' endurance performance, researchers at the University of Toronto have shown. The findings could help explain studies that show an association between the genetic variation and elite athletes across many sports, and may help competitive athletes fine-tune their iron intake to boost performance. The variation, found in the homeostatic iron regulator (HFE) gene, is a known cause of iron overload, a condition called hemochromatosis in which the body absorbs too much iron leading to organ and joint damage. Athletes at risk for hemochromatosis but with iron stores below potentially toxic levels could have ...