"Shell-crushing" - exactly what it sounds like - is a predatory mode used by numerous marine life from crabs to octopuses to large fishes and mammals when they eat hard-shelled mollusks like clams, oysters and conchs. These predators have to break apart the shell using robust claws or fortified jaws to access the prey's soft tissues. Despite its prevalence in the marine environment, this feeding behavior has remained elusive to study remotely, particularly for larger marine animals that destroy shells almost completely, leaving behind little trace. Moreover, because they are highly mobile, scientists have difficulty in directly observing their foraging habits, which is why the ecology of shell-crushing (durophagy) remains ...

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new tungsten-substituted vanadium oxide catalyst for breaking down harmful nitrogen oxides in industrial exhaust. Their new catalyst material works at lower temperatures and does not suffer major drops in performance when processing "wet" exhaust, resolving a major drawback in conventional vanadium oxide catalysts. They found that the unaggregated dispersal of atomic tungsten in the original crystal structure plays a key role in how it functions. Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is an essential technology for keeping air clean. Industrial exhaust is passed through catalytic units and reacted with ...

If we are to prevent the impending environmental crisis, it is imperative that we find efficient and sustainable ways to avoid being wasteful. One area with much room for improvement is the recycling of waste heat from industrial processes and technological devices into electricity. Thermoelectric materials are at the core of research in this field because they allow for clean power generation at little cost. For thermoelectric materials to be used in vastly different fields such as steel works and transportation, they need to be able to operate in both high and low temperature regimes. In this regard, "half-Heusler Ni-based ...

VANCOUVER, Wash. -When entrepreneurs dream up ideas for new businesses, cannabis use might help, and hinder, their creativity, according to a new study in the Journal of Business Venturing by Washington State University researchers. The study found that cannabis-using entrepreneurs generated new business ideas such as a weightless, gravity-free virtual reality workout, that were more original, but less feasible, compared to those who do not use cannabis. "Originality and feasibility are both crucial in entrepreneurship--one without the other limits potential value creation," said Benjamin Warnick, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the ...

LONDON, ON - Neurofeedback, also called 'brain training,' consists of exercises where individuals regulate their own brain activity. In a new study from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University, researchers have found that neurofeedback may be an effective treatment for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Published in END ...

A new study found that talented dogs can learn new words after hearing them only four times. While preliminary evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words (i.e. names of objects), unless eventually very extensively trained, a few individuals have shown some exceptional abilities. The Family Dog Project research team at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest is investigating on these exceptionally talented dogs who seem to learn words in the absence of any formal training, but simply by being exposed to playing with their owners in the typical way ...

Toddlers with high daily touchscreen use are quicker to look at objects when they appear and are less able to resist distraction compared to toddlers with no or low touchscreen use - according to new research from Birkbeck, University of London, King's College London and University of Bath. The research team say the findings are important for the growing debate around the role of screen time on toddlers' development especially given the increased levels of screen time seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lead researcher Professor Tim Smith, from Birkbeck's ...

New research from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Maryland, has reignited the debate around the behaviour of the giant dinosaur Spinosaurus. Since its discovery in 1915, the biology and behaviour of the enormous Spinosaurus has puzzled palaeontologists worldwide. It was recently argued that the dinosaur was largely an aquatic predator, using its large tail to swim and actively pursue fish in the water. The new study, published today in Palaeontologia Electronica, challenges this recent view of Spinosaurus suggesting that whilst it likely fed ...

Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Addiction, or substance use disorder (SUD), is a complex neurological condition that includes drug-seeking behavior among other cognitive, emotional and behavioral features. Synaptic plasticity, or changes in the way neurons communicate with one another, drives these addictive behaviors. These lasting brain changes are at the crux of why addiction is so hard to treat. A new study in Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, now shows that players in the extracellular environment - not just at neuronal interfaces - contribute to addiction plasticity. Neurons in a brain area called the nucleus accumbens are known to undergo addiction-related plasticity. Specifically, changes at synapses of medium spiny neurons (MSN), which sense the ...

By 2020, massive losses of large populations of corals have been observed throughout Florida and into the greater Caribbean basin. Taking into account the high mortality and the large number of susceptible species affected, this is likely the most lethal case of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) ever recorded in modern history. However, for too long, the tremendous decline in coral reefs has wrongly been attributed to the local dredge project, which had been ongoing at the time of the initial reports. In a recent Perspectives paper, END ...

Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania found female and male collegiate athletes take approximately the same amount of time to recover from a concussion, with subtle differences in recovery time depending on the type of sports being played and the division level of the sport. The findings suggest that equity in access to sports medical care among college athletes may be contributing to these similar outcomes. The findings, derived as part of the CARE (Concussion Assessment, Research and Education) Consortium, ...

New research coming out of UBC's Okanagan campus may take the current 'gold standard' for heart valves to a new level of reliability. A team of researchers at UBCO's Heart Valve Performance Lab (HVPL) has developed a way to improve overall blood flow through the valves, so the design of mechanical heart valves will more closely match the real thing. "Despite more than 40 years of research, we are still chasing the goal of creating mechanical heart valves that perform consistently and seamlessly inside the human body," explains Dr. Hadi Mohammadi, an associate professor ...

Researchers with the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) and collaborators at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and in Orange County, CA, have published the first direct evidence that higher omega-3 blood levels may reduce risk for death from COVID-19 infection. The report was published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids on January 20, 2021. There are several papers in the medical literature hypothesizing that omega-3 fatty acids should have beneficial effects in patients with COVID-19 infection, but up until now, there have been no published peer-reviewed studies supporting that hypothesis. This study included ...

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Tohoku University, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Nippon Institute of Technology, demonstrated by experiment that a clean electrolyte/electrode interface is key to realizing high-capacity solid-state lithium batteries. Their findings could pave the way for improved battery designs with increased capacity, stability, and safety for both mobile devices and electric vehicles. Liquid lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, being found in the majority of everyday mobile devices. While they possess a fair share of advantages, liquid-based batteries carry notable risks as well. This has become clear to the public in recent years after ...

Air pollution is linked to a heightened risk of progressive and irreversible sight loss, known as age related macular degeneration (AMD), reveals a large long term study led by UCL researchers. They found that people in the most polluted areas were at least 8% more likely to report having AMD, according to the findings published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Lead author Professor Paul Foster (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) said: "Here we have identified yet another health risk posed by air pollution, strengthening the evidence that improving the air we breathe should ...

DES PLAINES, IL -- In patients matched on complexity and acuity presenting to the emergency department with chest pain and abdominal pain, the care delivered by advanced practice providers (APPs) and emergency physicians is largely similar with respect to diagnostic test ordering and admission decisions. That is the finding of a study just published in the January 2021 issue of Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM), a journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). The lead author of the study is Jesse M. Pines, MD, MBA, MSCE of US Acute Care Solutions, Canton, Ohio and the Department of Emergency Medicine, Allegheny Health Network, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ...

An analysis undertaken by Faculty of Law professors and a physician-researcher from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa feels provincial and territorial governments should set clear rules for vaccinating health care workers against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in public and private settings. Mandatory vaccination for health care workers: an analysis of law and policy, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), describes legal precedents from attempts to mandate influenza vaccines for health care workers and ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - There could be an intervention on the horizon to help prevent heart damage caused by the common chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, new research suggests. Scientists found that this chemo drug, used to treat many types of solid tumors and blood cancers, is able to enter heart cells by hitchhiking on a specific type of protein that functions as a transporter to move a drug from the blood into heart cells. By introducing another anti-cancer drug in advance of the chemo, the researchers were able to block the transporter protein, effectively stopping the delivery of doxorubicin to those cardiac ...

Leesburg, VA, January 25, 2021--According to an open-access article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), in lumbar spine MRI, presumptive pain generators diagnosed using symptom information from brief electronic questionnaires showed almost perfect agreement with pain generators diagnosed using symptom information from direct patient interviews. "Using patient-reported symptom information from a questionnaire, radiologists interpreting lumbar spine MRI converged on diagnoses of presumptive pain generators and distinguished these from incidental abnormalities," wrote Rene Balza of the ...

Restricting eating to an eight-hour window, when activity is highest, decreased the risk of development, growth and metastasis of breast cancer in mouse models, report researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Moores Cancer Center and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (VASDSH). The findings, published in the January 25, 2021 edition of Nature Communications, show that time-restricted feeding -- a form of intermittent fasting aligned with circadian rhythms -- improved metabolic health and tumor circadian rhythms in mice with obesity-driven postmenopausal breast cancer. "Previous research has shown that obesity increases the risk of a variety of cancers by negatively affecting how the body ...

Corals, like all animals, must eat to live. The problem is that most corals grow in tropical waters that are poor in nutrients, sort of like ocean deserts; it's this lack of nutrients that makes the water around coral reefs so crystal clear. Because food is not readily available, corals have developed a remarkable feeding mechanism that involves a symbiotic relationship with single-celled algae. These algae grow inside the corals, using the coral tissue as shelter and absorbing the CO2 that the corals produce. In exchange, the algae provide corals with nutrients they produce through photosynthesis. These algae contain a variety of pigments, which give the coral reefs the ...

Scientists conducted the first study to examine the fetal health impact of light pollution based on a direct measure of skyglow, an important aspect of light pollution. Using an empirical regularity discovered in physics, called Walker's Law, a team from Lehigh University, Lafayette College and the University of Colorado Denver in the U.S., found evidence of reduced birth weight, shortened gestational length and preterm births. Specifically, the likelihood of a preterm birth could increase by approximately 1.48 percentage points (or 12.9%), according to the researchers, as a result of increased nighttime brightness. Nighttime brightness is characterized by being able to see only one-fourth ...

WASHINGTON (Jan. 25, 2021) - The majority of dermatology patients surveyed find telehealth appointments to be a suitable alternative to in-person office visits, according to a survey study from researchers at the George Washington University (GW) Department of Dermatology. The results are published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology. The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of everyday life, including how patients interact with the health care system and seek medical care. Social distancing and stay-at-home orders have led to a move from in-office to virtual visits. While many specialties had to shift to the virtual format because ...

The Special Issue, Volume 10, of Inter Faculty takes up the theme of resonance in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and its ensuing societal shifts. For, the pandemic this year (2020) reminded us more than ever that we live in 'VUCA' - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Many things that used to be taken for granted up until a year ago crumbled abruptly and globally. The pandemic struck many aspects or our societies such as public health, economy and social bonds thereby uncovering the vulnerability of the modern society. Universities are no exception to this. Just as one nation by itself cannot tackle these global challenges, neither can these challenges be solved ...

Using machine learning, researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have identified several patterns of maternal autoantibodies highly associated with the diagnosis and severity of autism. Their study, published Jan. 22 in Molecular Psychiatry, specifically focused on maternal autoantibody-related autism spectrum disorder (MAR ASD), a condition accounting for around 20% of all autism cases. "The implications from this study are tremendous," said Judy Van de Water, a professor of rheumatology, allergy and clinical immunology at UC Davis and the lead author of the study. "It's the first time that machine learning has been used to identify with 100% accuracy MAR ASD-specific patterns as potential biomarkers of ASD risk." Autoantibodies are immune proteins ...