In 1969, the recently independent Republic of Congo discovered an enormous oil field off its coast. The find represented both a rare opportunity for the burgeoning nation, and a potential threat – the revenue generated by oil extraction could either pave the way for a stable socialist society, or doom the country to exploitation much like that it had endured under French colonialism. A new paper in Critical Historical Studies, “Enclosed Futures: Oil Extraction in the Republic of Congo,” demonstrates ...

It could be very informative to observe the pixels on your phone under a microscope, but not if your goal is to understand what a whole video on the screen shows. Cognition is much the same kind of emergent property in the brain. It can only be understood by observing how millions of cells act in coordination, argues a trio of MIT neuroscientists. In a new article, they lay out a framework for understanding how thought arises from the coordination of neural activity driven by oscillating electric fields—also known ...

Recent strides in interdisciplinary archaeological research in Arabia have unveiled new insights into the evolution and historical development of regional human populations, as well as the dynamic patterns of cultural change, migration, and adaptation to environmental fluctuations.  Despite the challenges posed by limited preservation of archaeological assemblages and organic remains in arid environments, these discoveries are reshaping our understanding of the region's rich cultural heritage.  One such breakthrough led by Griffith University’s Australian ...

The US saw a 22% decline in rates of prescription-opioid overdose related emergency department (ED) visits in children 17 and younger between 2008 and 2019, but an uptick in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Henry Xiang of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, US, and colleagues. The authors also note that rates of pediatric opioid overdoses remain high in many populations. Opioid overdose has been declared a public health emergency in the United States but much of the focus has been on adults. In the new study, researchers analyzed overdoses ...

From a survey of about 12,000 adolescents from Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the US, and the UK, about 17 percent of respondents reported experiencing weight-related bullying online, especially users of Twitter and Twitch, according to a study published April 17, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kyle Ganson from University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues. Screen time and social media use are common among adolescents—and people in general—for entertainment and social connection, though many cons exist, including cyberbullying. Here, Ganson and colleagues investigated weight-related bullying in adolescents across different ...

A large lava tube in Saudia Arabia provided valuable shelter for humans herding livestock over at least the past 7,000 years, according to a study published April 17, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Mathew Stewart of Griffith University, Brisbane and colleagues. Research in northern Arabia over the last decade has highlighted a diverse Holocene archaeological record. However, the timing of human occupations and their connections with the nearby Levant remain poorly understood, primarily due to poor preservation of organic remains in the region’s arid conditions. To circumvent this problem, Stewart ...

Watching a video could change your attitude to rattlesnakes - though results varied by age, gender, religion and rattlesnake experience ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0298737 Article Title: Effects of relational and instrumental messaging on human perception of rattlesnakes Author Countries: USA Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

The clinical knowledge and reasoning skills of GPT-4 are approaching the level of specialist eye doctors, a study led by the University of Cambridge has found. GPT-4 - a ‘large language model’ - was tested against doctors at different stages in their careers, including unspecialised junior doctors, and trainee and expert eye doctors. Each was presented with a series of 87 patient scenarios involving a specific eye problem, and asked to give a diagnosis or advise on treatment by selecting from four options. GPT-4 scored significantly better in the ...

As carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, the Earth will get hotter. But exactly how much warming will result from a certain increase in CO2 is under study. The relationship between CO2 and warming, known as climate sensitivity, determines what future we should expect as CO2 levels continue to climb. New research led by the University of Washington analyzes the most recent ice age, when a large swath of North America was covered in ice, to better understand the relationship between CO2 and global temperature. It finds that while most future warming ...

Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History have found that over the last 120 years, the porosity—or small-scale holes—in mussel shells along the East Coast of the United States has increased, potentially due to warming waters. The study, which analyzed modern mussel shells in comparison to specimens in the Museum’s historic collection, was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. “Mussels are important on so many levels: they provide habitats on reefs, they filter water, they protect coasts during storms, and they are important commercially as well—I love mussels and I know many other people do, too,” said Leanne Melbourne, ...

The fossilised remains of a second gigantic jawbone measuring more than two metres long has been found on a beach in Somerset, UK. Experts have identified the bones as belonging to the jaws of a new species of enormous ichthyosaur, a type of prehistoric marine reptile. Estimates suggest the oceanic titan would have been more than 25 metres long. Father and daughter, Justin and Ruby Reynolds from Braunton, Devon, found the first pieces of the second jawbone to be found in May 2020, while searching for fossils on the ...

Waltham — March 15, 2024 — For patients undergoing carpometacarpal (CMC) joint surgery for treatment of thumb osteoarthritis, the use of online video instruction for postoperative hand therapy is associated with outcomes similar to in-person therapy visits – while substantially reducing travel time and distance, reports a clinical trial in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.  Video-administered hand therapy provides an "efficient and effective" alternative to in-person therapy after CMC arthroplasty, ...

Researchers have shown that an Amazonian butterfly is a hybrid species, formed by two other species breeding together almost 200,000 years ago.  The discovery, by an international team led by scientists at the University of York and Harvard University, demonstrates how the formation of new species can be more complex than previously imagined. Species are often thought of as the tips, or leaves in a ‘tree of life’. In this model, new species are produced by the tips splitting over thousands to millions of years.  Scientists now understand, however, that the branches in the tree of life are ...

Researchers have discovered toxic protein particles, shaped like umbrellas, that soil bacteria known as Streptomyces secrete to squelch competitors, especially others of their own species. The discovery of the umbrella toxin particles and related information about their structures, composition and mode of action were published April 17 in Nature. The umbrella toxin proteins are the latest example of these bacteria’s varied, combative strikes on their microscopic rivals. The crowded, diverse bacteria communities ...

Traditionally, estimates of how climate change will affect global economies have focused on the effects of annual temperature changes. However, the additional impacts of variability and extremes in rainfall and temperature have remained largely unexplored, until now. Using projections from 33 global climate models, an international research team, led by Paul Waidelich at ETH Zurich, conducted a pioneering study, published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, to quantify such impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) across the globe. Revealing the additional ...

Lost your keys? Can’t remember where you parked the car? If only you had the memory of a mountain chickadee.  These half-ounce birds, with brains slightly larger than a pea, stash tens of thousands of food items like seeds in tree bark, under dead leaves and inside pinecones across the mountains. When winter arrives, they can recall the exact locations of their caches, a skill that helps them survive the bitter cold and deep snow.    In a new study published April 17 in the journal Current Biology, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the ...

April 17, 2024-- Policing of intimate partner violence (IPV) may result in adverse consequences for survivors, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. However, the evidence concerning the generalized consequences of IPV policing has not been comprehensively evaluated until now and the results call into question whether IPV policing benefits survivors. This is the first review on the consequences of IPV policing in the U.S. The findings are published in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior. IPV, which includes physical violence, sexual violence, psychological abuse, and other forms of coercion between current or former spouses or ...

The warming climate shifts the dynamics of tundra environments and makes them release trapped carbon, according to a new study published in Nature. These changes could transform tundras from carbon sinks into a carbon source, exacerbating the effects of climate change. A team of over 70 scientists from different countries used so called open-top chambers (OTCs) to experimentally simulate the effects of warming on 28 tundra sites around the world. OTCs basically serve as mini-greenhouses, blocking wind and trapping heat to create local warming. The warming experiments led to a 1.4 degrees Celsius increase in air temperature and a 0.4 degrees increase ...

Anyone who regularly watches news or sports has likely noticed the steady creep of content competing for screen space, whether it be stock market prices, social media posts, game scores or some other graphic display. Previous studies have indicated that high intensity visuals that employ vibrant displays of information tend to hamper both long- and short-term memory.   With that in mind, a new study set out to answer a narrower question: how does the inclusion of social media in the televised presidential primary debates impact the viewer’s experience?  If the purpose of primary debates is to help viewers differentiate between candidates they would ...

When a single bacterial cell divides into two during periods of rapid growth, it doesn’t split in half once it reaches a predetermined size. Instead, data has shown, a cell will divide once it has added a certain amount of mass. The two processes sound similar, but they each carry different risks. Many researchers believed it was a safer bet for the cell if it split once it reached a certain size. New mathematical modeling from the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences shows the risks may have been miscalculated, however, because previous calculations ...

When you see an advertisement for a detergent promising to brighten your clothes, something called a fluorescent whitening compound, or optical brightener, is probably involved. Such material absorbs UV light and emits visible blue light via fluorescence. The result? Brighter whites, vibrant colors. Yes, your clothes are glowing.   As it turns out, these brighteners can make their way into the water supply. Luka Vucinic, a lecturer and environmental engineer at Glasgow Caledonian University in London, considers the problem of pollutants like fluorescent whitening compounds, microplastics, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – World governments and other leadership bodies are taking vital steps to protect the ocean but more progress is urgently needed, Oregon State University scientists reported today at the eighth Our Ocean Conference in Athens. “Highly protected areas can safeguard against destructive activities such as high-impact fishing, mining and drilling, allowing marine life to recover and in many cases support nearby human communities,” OSU’s Kirsten Grorud-Colvert said. “We’re honored to ...

To make weeding easier, scientists suggest bioengineering crops to be colorful or to have differently shaped leaves so that they can be more easily distinguished from their wild and weedy counterparts. This could involve altering the crops’ genomes so that they express pigments that are already produced by many plants, for example, anthocyanins, which make blueberries blue, or carotenoids, which make carrots orange. Then, they say, weeding robots could be trained to remove only the weeds using machine learning. The authors outline their proposed strategy on April 17 in the journal Trends in Plant Science. “To improve ...

If evolution was originally depicted as a tree, with different species branching off as new blooms, then new research shows how the branches may actually be more entangled. In "Hybrid speciation driven by multilocus introgression of ecological traits," published in Nature, Harvard researchers show that hybrids between species of butterflies can produce new species that are genetically distinct from both parent species and their earlier forebears. Writing to Charles Darwin in 1861, naturalist Henry Walter Bates described brightly colored Heliconius butterflies of the Amazon as “a glimpse into the laboratory where Nature manufactures ...

Cedars-Sinai investigators have discovered how brain cells responsible for working memory—the type required to remember a phone number long enough to dial it—coordinate intentional focus and short-term storage of information. The study detailing their discovery was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature. “We have identified for the first time a group of neurons, influenced by two types of brain waves, that coordinate cognitive control and the storage of sensory information in working memory,” ...