UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Two opposing evolutionary forces explain the presence of the two different colors of spotted salamander egg masses at ponds in Pennsylvania, according to a new study led by a Penn State biologist. Understanding the processes that maintain biological diversity in wild populations is a central question in biology and may allow researchers to predict how species will respond to global change. Spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) are a widespread species that occur across the eastern United States and return to temporary ponds in the spring to reproduce. Female salamanders lay their eggs in clumps called egg masses, which are either opaque white or completely clear. Females lay the same color ...

Though noise may change moment by moment for humans, it has a more lasting effect on trees and plants. A new Cal Poly study reveals that human noise pollution affects the diversity of plant life in an ecosystem even after the noise has been removed. This is the first study that explores the long-term effects of noise on plant communities. It was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In a study conducted twelve years ago near natural gas wells in New Mexico, researchers found that there were 75% fewer piñon pine seedlings in noisy sites as in quiet ones. This was most likely due to the noise driving away the Woodhouse's scrub jay, which ...

PASADENA, Calif. -- A Kaiser Permanente study of nearly 50,000 people with COVID-19 suggested that regular physical activity provided strong protection from hospitalization, intensive care unit admission, and death. Even exercising inconsistently lowered the odds for severe COVID-19 outcomes when compared to people who were not active at all. The study, led by investigators in Kaiser Permanente Southern California, was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. "This is a wake-up call for the importance of healthy lifestyles and especially physical activity," said Robert E. Sallis, MD, a family and sports medicine physician at the Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center. "Kaiser Permanente's motivation is to keep people healthy, and this study truly shows how important ...

DALLAS - April 13, 2021 - A chemical modification of RNA that can be influenced by diet appears to play a key role in polycystic kidney disease, an inherited disorder that is the fourth leading cause of kidney failure in the U.S., UT Southwestern researchers report in a new study. The findings, published online today in Cell Metabolism, suggest new ways to treat this incurable condition. About 600,000 Americans and 12.5 million people worldwide have autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (PKD), a condition caused by mutations in either of two genes, PKD1 or PKD2. These mutations cause kidney tubules ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Half of the children who developed the serious condition associated with COVID-19 called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) had neurologic symptoms or signs when they entered the hospital, according to preliminary research released today, April 13, 2021, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 73rd Annual Meeting being held virtually April 17 to 22, 2021. Those symptoms included headaches, encephalopathy and hallucinations. "With this new inflammatory syndrome that develops after children are infected with ...

PITTSBURGH, April 13, 2021 - Wheezing, coughing that doesn't stop, a pale and sweaty face: clinically, severe asthma attacks look very similar from patient to patient. But biologically, not all severe asthma is the same--and a team of scientists has, for the first time, identified the key difference in people, a finding that has important implications for treatment. In a paper published today in Cell Reports, a group of scientists led by immunologists and pulmonologists at the University of Pittsburgh, in collaboration with Stanford University, used advanced tools of immunology, molecular biology and unbiased computational and bioinformatic approaches to characterize immune profiles of patients with severe ...

Skoltech researchers have developed a prototype of a fluorescence-based sensor for continuous detection of cortisol concentrations in real time, which can help monitor various health conditions. The paper was published in the journal Talanta. Cortisol, a steroid hormone commonly known as the "stress hormone," plays a significant role in the regulation of a range of physiological processes from glucose levels to blood pressure and inflammation. Reduced or elevated cortisol levels are linked to various diseases and symptoms, but accurate and reliable continuous cortisol monitoring in vivo ...

A new study finds that brachytherapy, a common procedure that delivers radiation directly to cancer cells, may continue safely, potentially without delay or antibiotics, in cervical cancer patients following uterine perforation. According to the World Health Organization, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women. Treatment for cervical cancer often involves brachytherapy combined with daily radiation therapy. Brachytherapy delivers radiation directly to cancer cells through a tube placed within the uterus. "At times this tube can pierce the uterus and lead to a perforation," said William Small, Jr., MD, lead study author and professor and chair of radiation ...

Lessons learned from the world's protected forests: Just declaring a plot of land protected isn't enough - conservation needs thoughtful selection and enforcement. A group of scientists, many tied to Michigan State University, examined nearly 55,000 protected areas across the world to understand what it took to effectively protect their forests - a key benchmark to protecting habitat and preserving natural resources. They conclude that it's important to protect the forests exposed to the most threats in areas close to cities and be prepared to be strict in enforcing rules intended to stop deforestation. In a recent issue of Science of the Total Environment, researchers noted that more than 4 million square kilometers ...

In the southern sky, situated about 4,300 light years from Earth, lies RCW 120, an enormous glowing cloud of gas and dust. This cloud, known as an emission nebula, is formed of ionized gases and emits light at various wavelengths. An international team led by West Virginia University researchers studied RCW 120 to analyze the effects of stellar feedback, the process by which stars inject energy back into their environment. Their observations showed that stellar winds cause the region to expand rapidly, which enabled them to constrain the age of the region. These findings indicate that RCW 120 must be less than 150,000 years old, which is very young for such ...

Behind every heartbeat and brain signal is a massive orchestra of electrical activity. While current electrophysiology observation techniques have been mostly limited to extracellular recordings, a forward-thinking group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia has identified a flexible, low-cost, and biocompatible platform for enabling richer intracellular recordings. The group's unique "across the ocean" partnership started two years ago at the Bioelectronics Winter School (BioEl) with libations and a bar napkin sketch. It has evolved into research published today in Science ...

Slow down. Baby on board. So says UBC Okanagan researcher and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Hadi Mohammadi. His new research, conducted in collaboration with Sharif University of Technology, determines that accelerating over speed bumps poses a danger for pregnant women and their fetuses. "There is lots of research about the importance of movement for women during pregnancy," explains Mohammadi, who teaches in the School of Engineering. "Our latest research looked specifically at the impacts of sudden acceleration on a pregnant woman." Using new modelling based on data from ...

When the Webster-Kirkwood Times, a community newspaper in the greater St. Louis, Missouri area, had to endure layoffs and stop publishing its print edition -- due to a loss in revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic -- its readers felt the loss and began supporting the newspaper in earnest. "A lot of times people don't know what they've got until it's gone," said Jaime Mowers, editor-in-chief of the Webster-Kirkwood Times. "Now, there is such a newfound appreciation for the newspaper. It's amazing to have the community's support, knowing we are loved that much and appreciated enough to ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Mindfulness is big business. Downloads of mindfulness apps generate billions of dollars annually in the U.S., and their popularity continues to rise. In addition to what individual practitioners might have on their phones, schools and prisons along with 1 in 5 employers currently offer some form of mindfulness training. Mindfulness and meditation are associated with reducing stress and anxiety, while increasing emotional well-being. Plenty of scholarship supports these benefits. But how does mindfulness affect the range of human behaviors -- so-called prosocial behaviors -- that can potentially help or benefit other people? What happens when the research looks outwardly at social effects of mindfulness rather than inwardly at its personal effects? It's ...

Human screams signal more than fear and are more acoustically diverse than previously thought, according to a study published April 13th 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Sascha Fru?hholz of the University of Zurich, and colleagues. Remarkably, non-alarming screams are perceived and processed by the brain more efficiently than alarming screams. In nonhuman primates and other mammalian species, scream-like calls are frequently used as an alarm signal exclusively in negative contexts, such social conflicts or the presence of predators or other environmental threats. Humans are also assumed to use screams to signal danger and to scare predators. But humans scream not only when they are ...

First study to examine suicides occurring around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic finds that - in high-income and upper-middle-income countries - suicide numbers have remained largely unchanged or have declined in the early months of the pandemic, compared with expected levels. However, the authors stress that governments must remain vigilant as the longer-term mental health and economic effects of the pandemic unfold and be poised to respond if the situation changes. Study looked at numbers of suicides in 21 countries between 1 April and 31 July 2020 and compared these with trends in the previous one to four years. A new observational study ...

Screaming can save lives. Non-human primates and other mammalian species frequently use scream-like calls when embroiled in social conflicts or to signal the presence of predators and other threats. While humans also scream to signal danger or communicate aggression, they scream when experiencing strong emotions such as despair or joy as well. However, past studies on this topic have largely focused on alarming fear screams. Humans respond to positive screams more quickly and with higher sensitivity In a new study, a team at the University of Zurich Department of Psychology led by Sascha Frühholz ...

Living near a hazardous waste or Superfund site could cut your life short by about a year, reports Hanadi S. Rifai, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston. The study, published in Nature Communications and based on evaluation of 65,226 census tracts from the 2018 Census, is the first nationwide review of all hazardous waste sites and not just the 1,300 sites on the national priority list managed by the federal government. The analysis shows a decrease of more than two months in life expectancy for those living near a Superfund site. When coupled with high disadvantage of sociodemographic factors like age, sex, marital status and income, the decrease could be nearly 15 months, ...

A group of researchers led by Brazilians has used an innovative model to map gaps in the Amazon rainforest and identify factors that contribute to tree mortality.  Water stress, soil fertility, and anthropic forest degradation have the most influence on gap dynamics in the world's largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforest, according to an article on the study published in Scientific Reports. Forest gaps are most frequent in the areas with the highest levels of soil fertility, possibly because the abundance of organic material drives faster tree growth and shorter life cycles. The main method of data collection ...

The electronic properties of solid materials are highly dependent on crystal structures and their dimensionalities (i.e., whether the crystals have predominantly 2D or 3D structures). As Professor Takayoshi Katase of Tokyo Institute of Technology notes, this fact has an important corollary: "If the crystal structure dimensionality can be switched reversibly in the same material, a drastic property change may be controllable." This insight led Prof. Katase and his research team at Tokyo Institute of Technology, in partnership with collaborators at Osaka University and National Institute for Materials Science, to embark on research into the possibility of switching the crystal structure dimensionality of a lead-tin-selenide alloy semiconductor. Their results appear in a paper published ...

A study carried out by the University of Granada indicates that smoking cannabis significantly alters key visual functions, such as visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, three-dimensional vision (stereopsis), the ability to focus, and glare sensitivity Yet, more than 90% of users believe that using cannabis has no effect on their vision, or only a slight effect A group of researchers from the Department of Optics of the University of Granada (UGR) has studied the effects of smoking cannabis on various visual parameters compared to the effect that the users themselves perceive the drug to have on their vision. This study, led by Carolina Ortiz Herrera and Rosario González Anera, has been published in the journal Scientific Reports. Its main author, Sonia Ortiz Peregrina, explains that ...

Concerns about climate change are driving a growing number of states, utilities, and corporations to set the goal of zeroing out power-sector carbon emissions. To date 17 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have adopted laws or executive orders to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity in the next couple of decades. Additionally, 46 U.S. utilities have pledged to go carbon free no later than 2050. Altogether, these goals cover about half of the U.S. population and economy. These are ambitious targets, but a new look at the past 15 years in the electricity sector shows that large reductions in emissions are possible. New research from the Department of Energy's Lawrence ...

As the Rhode Island legislature considers designating the Northern Star Coral an official state emblem, researchers are finding that studying this local creature's recovery from a laboratory-induced stressor could help better understand how to protect endangered tropical corals. A new study published today in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, investigates antibiotic-induced disturbance of the coral (Astrangia poculata) and shows that antibiotic exposure significantly altered the composition of the coral's mucus bacterial microbiome, but that all the treated corals recovered ...

A new study published in Elementa by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and NOAA examines traditional aspects of seafood sustainability alongside greenhouse gas emissions to better understand the "carbon footprint" of U.S. tuna fisheries. Fisheries in the United States are among the best managed in the world, thanks to ongoing efforts to fish selectively, end overfishing, and rebuild fish stocks. But climate change could bring dramatic changes in the marine environment that threaten seafood productivity and sustainability. That's one reason why researchers ...

Physicists from Swansea University are part of an international research collaboration which has identified a new technique for testing the quality of quantum correlations. Quantum computers run their algorithms on large quantum systems of many parts, called qubits, by creating quantum correlations across all of them. It is important to verify that the actual computation procedures lead to quantum correlations of desired quality. However, carrying out these checks is resource-intensive as the number of tests required grows exponentially with the number of qubits involved. Researchers from the College of Science, working with colleagues from Spain ...