Microplastic pollution of waterways has become a huge concern, with the tiny pieces of plastic entering food webs and potentially having harmful effects on animals and people. In addition, microplastics can act as breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions. In rivers, major sources of microplastics include textile fibers from laundering, water bottle fragments, and films from bags and wrappers. Also prevalent in ...

An international team of scientists, led by astrophysicists from the University of Bath in the UK, has measured the magnetic field in a far-off Gamma-Ray Burst, confirming for the first time a decades-long theoretical prediction - that the magnetic field in these blast waves becomes scrambled after the ejected material crashes into, and shocks, the surrounding medium. Black holes are formed when massive stars (at least 40 times larger than our Sun) die in a catastrophic explosion that powers a blast wave. These extremely energetic events drive out material at velocities ...

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest-yet-observed example of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the Universe. At the center of many large galaxies hides a supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun. Interestingly, the mass of the black hole is roughly proportional to the mass ...

The old cousins of the common woodlice were crawling on Irish land as long as 360 million years ago, according to new analysis of a fossil found in Kilkenny. The research, published today (00.01 Wednesday 16 June) in the science journal Biology Letters, used state-of-the-art modern imaging technology to create a new picture of the Oxyuropoda - a land-based creature larger than the modern woodlice - using a fossil found in Kiltorcan, Co Kilkenny in 1908. Lead researcher Dr Ninon Robin, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork's (UCC) School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences said that their work advances science's understanding of when land-dwelling species of crustaceans roamed the earth, and what they looked like. Dr Robin said: "Woodlice, ...

Québec produces more strawberries than any other Canadian province. Strawberries are delicate and difficult to keep fresh. In response to this challenge, Monique Lacroix, a professor at at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), and her team have developed a packaging film that can keep strawberries fresh for up to 12 days. The team's findings on how this film protects against mould and certain pathogenic bacteria have been published in Food Hydrocolloids. The innovative film is made of chitosan, a natural molecule found in shellfish shells. This food industry by-product contains key antifungal properties ...

Thirty state-of-the-art IPCC-climate models predict dramatically different climates for the Northern Hemisphere, especially Europe. An analysis of the range of responses now reveals that the differences are mostly down to the individual model's simulations of changes to the North Atlantic ocean currents and not only - as normally assumed - atmospheric changes. The work, by Katinka Bellomo, National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and colleagues is published today in Nature Communications and is part of the European ...

A study led by Fernando Colchero, University of Southern Denmark and Susan Alberts, Duke University, North Carolina, that included researchers from 42 institutions across 14 countries, provides new insights into the aging theory "the invariant rate of ageing hypothesis", which states that every species has a relatively fixed rate of aging. - Human death is inevitable. No matter how many vitamins we take, how healthy our environment is or how much we exercise, we will eventually age and die, said Fernando Colchero. He is an expert in applying statistics and mathematics to population biology and an associate professor at Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark. "We were able to shed light on the invariant rate of ageing hypothesis by combining ...

Teachers play a key role in supporting children's development in early childhood education classrooms such as Head Start. Research shows significant associations between teachers' depressive symptoms and their students' social and emotional development. However, little research has focused on the associations between teachers' depressive symptoms and academic outcomes of preschoolers from low-income families. Specifically, one important pathway that has not been examined is whether teacher depressive symptoms have implications for the quality of family-teacher relationships. This in turn could affect how supportive parents ...

An herbicide widely used in agriculture, forestry and other applications can cause deleterious effects on the reproductive health of a common perennial plant found in forests in British Columbia, Canada. Researchers reported in the journal END ...

Despite rapid development of electric vehicles (EVs), the safety of the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries remains a concern as they are as a fire and explosion risk. Among the various approaches to tackle this issue, Korean researchers have used semiconductor technology to improve the safety of Li-ion batteries. A research team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) led by Dr. Joong Kee Lee of the Center for Energy Storage Research has succeeded in inhibiting the growth of dendrites, crystals with multiple branches that cause EV battery fires by forming protective semiconducting passivation layers on the surface of Li electrodes. When ...

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (6/16/2021) - In unconventional superconductors, electrons often exhibit a tendency towards spatial ordering within their atomic structure. In high-temperature superconductors, this comes in the form of the electronic structure exhibiting a pronounced difference in the lattice-bound directions along which atoms are ordered. Within these materials, this electronic activity in turn breaks the rotational symmetry of the crystal, a phase known as electronic nematicity. Researchers have sought to better understand this novel electronic state, which co-exists with superconductivity. Boston College Associate Professor of Physics Ilija Zeljkovic and an international team of researchers set out to better understand the atomic-scale signature ...

The omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) are found in oily fish. Researchers from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre assessed the effects of high doses of EPA and DHA in lab-grown neurones and then in patients to help clarify how they reduce inflammation and depression. This novel approach allowed the scientists to identify an important molecular mechanism which can help inform the development of potential new treatments involving omega-3 fatty acids for patients with depression. Lead author Dr Alessandra Borsini, NIHR Maudsley BRC Senior Postdoctoral ...

Killer whales have complex social structures including close "friendships", according to a new study that used drones to film the animals. The findings show that killer whales spend more time interacting with certain individuals in their pod, and tend to favour those of the same sex and similar age. The study, led by the University of Exeter and the Center for Whale Research (CWR), also found that the whales become less socially connected as they get older. "Until now, research on killer whale social networks has relied on seeing the whales when they surface, and recording which whales are together," said lead author Dr Michael Weiss, of the University of Exeter. "However, because resident killer whales stay in the social groups into which they're born, how closely related whales ...

The period preceding the emergence of behaviourally modern humans was characterised by dramatic climatic and environmental variability - it is these pressures, occurring over hundreds of thousands of years that shaped human evolution. New research published today in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal proposes a new theory of human cognitive evolution entitled 'Complementary Cognition' which suggests that in adapting to dramatic environmental and climactic variabilities our ancestors evolved to specialise in different, but complementary, ways of thinking. ...

CHARLESTON, S.C. (June 15, 2021) - It's not every day that someone discovers a new-to-science bird migration spectacle. It's even more unexpected that such an encounter - in this case, tens of thousands of shorebirds gathering during their annual journey north - would be just a stone's throw from a metropolitan area. But two years ago, that's exactly what happened in coastal South Carolina. In May 2019, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) biologist Felicia Sanders and a team of researchers confirmed that approximately 20,000 whimbrel were roosting at night on a small island during their spring migration. The team documented similar numbers again in 2020. This single ...

Reston, VA (Embargoed until 6:15 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, June 15, 2021)--A new positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracer can detect abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) and potentially predict when they will rupture, according to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2021 Annual Meeting. Targeting a novel biomarker associated with AAA, the radiotracer is effective both in diagnosis and in providing information to assist in the development of AAA treatments, of which there currently are none. AAA is a life-threatening degenerative vascular disease. It occurs when blood vessels weaken and ...

Persisting symptoms thought to be complex interplay between effects of new injury and underlying conditions Strict rest after a sports related concussion slows recovery and may prolong symptoms, says a consensus statement drawn up by a US expert panel on how best to treat and manage the condition, and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Most of these concussions get better within a month and can be effectively treated, it says. Persisting symptoms are thought to be a complex interplay between the physical and psychological effects of the new injury and underlying conditions. The consensus statement was developed by the Team Physician Consensus Conference (TPCC), an annual project-based alliance of six major professional associations,* with the aim ...

A junk food diet may increase the risk of dangerous driving among truck/lorry drivers by boosting fatigue, which is often a key factor in vehicle collisions, suggests research published online in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Some 1.35 million people die in road traffic collisions every year, with professional drivers at greater risk because of the time they spend behind the wheel. There are several known contributory factors, among which gender, age, experience, driving skills and attitudes seem to be important, note the researchers. But lifestyle ...

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers demonstrated they could print layers of electrically conductive ink on polyester fabric to make an e-textile that could be used in the design of future wearable devices. Since the printing method can be completed at room temperature and in normal atmospheric conditions, researchers believe inkjet printing could offer a simpler and more effective method of manufacturing electronic textiles, also known as e-textiles. In addition, researchers said the findings suggest they could extend techniques common in the flexible electronic industry to textile manufacturing. They reported their findings in the journal ACS Applied ...

New research from Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications reveals a relationship between political biases and attitudes about sexual assault. Authored by assistant professor Rebecca Ortiz and PhD student Andrea Smith, the article "A social identity threat perspective on why partisans may engage in greater victim blaming and sexual assault myth acceptance in the #MeToo era," was published in the peer-reviewed journal Violence Against Women. Ortiz and Smith found that the stronger the partisan identity of Republicans and Democrats, the more likely they were to engage in victim blaming attitudes, which was then related to a lesser likelihood to perceive the #MeToo ...

Reston, VA (Embargoed until 3:00 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, June 15, 2021)--A phase III clinical trial has validated the effectiveness of the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radiotracer 18F-DCFPyL in detecting and localizing recurrent prostate cancer. Approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month, the radiotracer identified metastatic lesions with high positive predictive values regardless of anatomic region, adding to the evidence that PSMA-targeted radiotracers are the most sensitive and accurate agents for imaging prostate cancer. This study was presented at the ...

The demand for detecting infrared (IR) light, invisible to human eyes, is constantly growing, due to a wide variety of applications ranging from food quality control and remote sensing to night vision devices and lidar. Commercial IR cameras require the conversion of infrared light to electrons and the projection of the resultant image on a display. This display blocks the transmission of visible light, thereby disrupting normal vision. Moreover, such IR detectors require low temperature and even cryogenic cooling due to the low energies of the IR photons, making IR detectors bulky and heavy. An all-optical alternative to traditional cameras is the use of a nonlinear optical process to convert IR light into visible. In this case, electrical signals are no ...

A new article analyzes Chile's transition in 1990 from dictatorship to democracy, the nature of democracy between 1990 and 2019, and the appearance of several social movements geared to expanding this democracy. The article, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), appears in The Latin Americanist, a publication of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies. "Our goal is to locate the October 2019 protest movement in the context of Chile's very slow and incomplete transition to democracy, as well as amid social movements that have consistently challenged the economic ...

Dr. Igor Ivanishin, a postdoctoral researcher in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, has firsthand experience with the frustrations of oil production. He spent nine years as a hydraulic fracturing engineer with operating and service companies in Russia. A few years ago, he came to Texas A&M to get his doctoral degree while delving into a reoccurring recovery problem in carbonate reservoirs: why don't they produce oil as predicted? Ivanishin is investigating variations in the chemical composition of dolomite and calcite ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC - A group of scientists led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian reported that the Moderna mRNA vaccine and a protein-based vaccine candidate elicited durable neutralizing antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in pre-clinical research. There were no adverse effects. The research, published June 15 in Science Immunology, suggests that vaccines for young children are likely important, safe tools to curtail the pandemic. The co-senior authors of the paper are Kristina De Paris, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at the UNC School ...