Berkeley -- The lifestyle of the horned passalus beetle, commonly known as the bessbug or betsy beetle, might seem downright disgusting to the average human: Not only does this shiny black beetle eat its own poop, known as frass, but it uses its feces to line the walls of its living space and to help build protective chambers around its developing young. Gross as it may seem, a new study suggests that this beetle's frass habits are actually part of a clever strategy for protecting the insect's health -- and could help inform human medicine, too. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that the frass of the horned passalus beetle is teeming with antibiotic and antifungal chemicals similar to the ones that humans use to ward off bacterial and ...

In a new study published online in spring 2021 and in the July issue of the journal Contraception, University of Chicago Medicine investigators and colleagues interviewed primary care providers in Illinois about their interest in providing medication abortion care and found that lifting FDA restrictions on mifepristone to allow pharmacy dispensing could normalize medication abortion, facilitate its use in primary care facilities, and address disparities in reproductive health access. "Mifepristone is used in combination with misoprostol to end early pregnancies, during the first trimester," ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Thermoelectric power generators that make electrical power from waste heat would be a useful tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it weren't for a most vexing problem: the need to make electrical contacts to their hot side, which is often just too hot for materials that can generate a current. The heat causes devices to fail over time. Devices known as transverse thermoelectrics avoid this problem by producing a current that runs perpendicular to the conducting device, requiring contacts only on the cold end of the generator. Though considered a promising ...

DURHAM, N.H.--Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have conducted two of the first studies in New England to collectively show that toxic man-made chemicals called PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances), found in everything from rugs to product packaging, end up in the environment differently after being processed through wastewater treatment facilities--making it more challenging to set acceptable screening levels. "PFAS are persistent substances that are not easily broken down and have been linked to adverse health effects," said Paula Mouser, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "They are found in a wide variety of industrial, commercial and medicinal products and can end up in the body, human waste and the environment. If not managed correctly, they ...

In a new study, scientists at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have revealed that most T cell epitopes known to be targeted upon natural infection are seemingly unaffected by current SARS-CoV-2 variants. In their latest research, the team compiled and analysed data from 18 immunological studies of T cell responses involving over 850 recovered COVID-19 patients from across four continents who are well-distributed in age, gender, disease severity and blood collection time. They demonstrated that T cells in these patients targeted fragments (epitopes) of almost all of ...

Rough night of sleep? Relying on caffeine to get you through the day isn't always the answer, says a new study from Michigan State University. Researchers from MSU's Sleep and Learning Lab, led by psychology associate professor Kimberly Fenn, assessed how effective caffeine was in counteracting the negative effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. As it turns out, caffeine can only get you so far. The study -- published in the most recent edition of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition -- assessed the impact of caffeine after a night of sleep deprivation. More than 275 participants were asked to complete a ...

Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has been the gold standard for diagnosis during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the PCR portion of the test requires bulky, expensive machines and takes about an hour to complete, making it difficult to quickly diagnose someone at a testing site. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a plasmofluidic chip that can perform PCR in only about 8 minutes, which could speed diagnosis during current and future pandemics. Rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 and other highly contagious viral diseases is important for timely medical care, quarantining ...

Adults with schizophrenia have an elevated risk of dying from suicide. Yet there's only limited understanding of when and why people with schizophrenia die of suicide --in part because research studies have looked at relatively small groups of patients. Now a new study from Columbia that looked at a large population of adults diagnosed with schizophrenia has found the youngest group (18-34) had the highest suicide risk and those aged 65 and older had the lowest. By comparison, in the general U.S. population, younger adults have less risk and older age groups have greater risk. The Columbia study, published online May 26 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, (LINK TK) also showed that people with schizophrenia, overall, have a 4.5-fold increased risk of dying from suicide, ...

When enjoying a chocolate bar, most people don't think about how the molecules within it are organized. But different arrangements of the fats in chocolate can influence its taste and texture. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Crystal Growth & Design have found that the side of a chocolate bar facing the mold has a more orderly crystalline structure than the side facing air, knowledge that might help chocolatiers produce tastier confections, the researchers say. Chocolate is a mixture of cocoa solids, cocoa butter, sugar and other ingredients that interact with each other in complex ways. In particular, the fat molecules, or triacylglycerols, can remain liquid or crystallize into several phases with different melting points. ...

Several indicators point to the adverse impacts of climate change on the planet’s vegetation, but a little-known positive fact is the existence of climate-change refugia in which trees are far less affected by the gradual rise in temperatures and changing rainfall regimes. Climate-change refugia are areas that are relatively buffered from climate change, such as wetlands, land bordering water courses, rocky outcrops, and valleys with cold-air pools or inversions, for example. A study conducted in Peruaçu Caves National Park in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, with FAPESP’s support, confirmed and quantified ...

A mathematical model which can predict landslides that occur unexpectantly has been developed by two University of Melbourne scientists, with colleagues from GroundProbe-Orica and the University of Florence. Professors Antoinette Tordesillas and Robin Batterham led the work over five years to develop and test the model SSSAFE (Spatiotemporal Slope Stability Analytics for Failure Estimation), which analyses slope stability over time to predict where and when a landslide or avalanche is likely to occur. In a study published in Scientific Reports, ...

Annapolis, MD; May 26, 2021--A new study has mounted perhaps the most intricate, detailed look ever at the diversity in structure and form of bees, offering new insights in a long-standing debate over how complex social behaviors arose in certain branches of bees' evolutionary tree. Published today in Insect Systematics and Diversity, the report is built on an analysis of nearly 300 morphological traits in bees, how those traits vary across numerous species, and what the variations suggest about the evolutionary relations between bee species. The result offers strong evidence that complex social behavior developed just once in pollen-carrying bees, rather than twice or more, separately, in different evolutionary branches--but ...

Travelling elephants pay close attention to scent trails of dung and urine left by other elephants, new research shows. Scientists monitored well-used pathways and found that wild African savannah elephants - especially those travelling alone - were "highly attentive", sniffing and tracking the trail with their trunks. This suggests these scents act as a "public information resource", according to researchers from the University of Exeter and Elephants for Africa. More research is now needed to find out whether humans can create artificial elephant trails to divert elephants away from farms and villages, where conflict with humans can cause devastation to communities. Alternatively, scent trails could be placed to improve the efficiency of routes ...

HOUSTON - Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered a novel function for the metabolic enzyme medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) in glioblastoma (GBM). MCAD prevents toxic lipid buildup, in addition to its normal role in energy production, so targeting MCAD causes irreversible damage and cell death specifically in cancer cells. The study was published today in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Preclinical findings reveal an important new understanding of metabolism in GBM and support the development of MCAD inhibitors as a novel treatment strategy. The researchers currently are working to develop targeted therapies against the enzyme. "With ...

Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disorder in which neurons gradually die off, leading to dementia. The exact mechanism and causes of this disorder have not yet been identified. However, it is known that amyloid plaques form in the brains of patients. Plaques consist of amyloid fibrils, which are special filamentous assemblies formed by amyloid proteins. 'The number of patients with neurodegenerative disorders will continue to grow in the future. Thanks to the success of humanity in the treatment of cancer and cardiovascular diseases, more and more people are living into their 80s. At this age, the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, becomes very high. Unfortunately, no cures for these diseases have yet ...

Killer flies can reach accelerations of over 3g when aerial diving to catch their prey - but at such high speeds they often miss because they can't correct their course. These are the findings of a study by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge, Lincoln, and Minnesota, published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Killer flies (Coenosia attenuata) perform high-speed aerial dives to attack prey flying beneath them, reaching impressive accelerations of up to 36 m/s2, equivalent to 3.6 times the acceleration due to gravity (or 3.6g). This happens because they beat their wings as they fall, combining the acceleration of powered flight with the acceleration of gravity. This is an impressive feat: diving Falcons, the fastest animals that predate ...

The researchers Juan A. Fernández-Ontiveros, of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Rome and Teo Muñoz-Darias, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), have written an article in which they describe the different states of activity of a large sample of supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies. They have classified them using the behaviour of their closest "relations", the stellar mass black holes in X-ray binaries. The article has just been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). Black holes range in mass from objects which have only a few ...

Mercury pollution is an issue of global concern due to its toxic effects. High levels have already been measured in Arctic organisms - with worrying effects on ecosystems and the food chain. So far, the Greenland Ice Sheet has not been taken into account as a part of the Arctic mercury cycle. Now, researchers led by Jon Hawkings of the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam and Florida State University show that meltwaters in the southwest of Greenland transport considerable amounts of mercury into the Arctic Ocean. Due to the large quantities detected, the researchers assume that they are of geological origin. They present their measurements in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. Mercury: poison for humans and the environment - ...

LAWRENCE -- For two weeks in June 2020, a massive dust plume from Saharan Africa crept westward across the Atlantic, blanketing the Caribbean and Gulf Coast states in the U.S. The dust storm was so strong, it earned the nickname "Godzilla." Now, researchers from the University of Kansas have published a new study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society parsing the mechanism that transported the dust. Their results explain a phenomenon that could occur more frequently in the years ahead due to climate change, affecting human health and transportation systems. African dust darkened the skies of the Caribbean and American Gulf States thanks to a trio of atmospheric patterns, ...

Mitochondria are the cell's power plants and produce the majority of a cell's energy needs through an electrochemical process called electron transport chain coupled to another process known as oxidative phosphorylation. A number of different proteins in mitochondria facilitate these processes, but it's not fully understood how these proteins are arranged inside mitochondria and the factors that can influence their arrangement. Now, scientists at the University of Copenhagen have used state-of-the-art proteomics technology to shine new light on how mitochondrial proteins gather into electron transport chain complexes, and further into so-called supercomplexes. The research, which is published in Cell Reports, also examined ...

Over the years, robots have gotten quite good at identifying objects -- as long as they're out in the open. Discerning buried items in granular material like sand is a taller order. To do that, a robot would need fingers that were slender enough to penetrate the sand, mobile enough to wriggle free when sand grains jam, and sensitive enough to feel the detailed shape of the buried object. MIT researchers have now designed a sharp-tipped robot finger equipped with tactile sensing to meet the challenge of identifying buried objects. In experiments, the aptly named ...

A mathematical model which can predict landslides that occur unexpectantly has been developed by two University of Melbourne scientists, with colleagues from GroundProbe-Orica and the University of Florence. Professors Antoinette Tordesillas and Robin Batterham led the work over five years to develop and test the model SSSAFE (Spatiotemporal Slope Stability Analytics for Failure Estimation), which analyses slope stability over time to predict where and when a landslide or avalanche is likely to occur. In a study published in Scientific Reports, the research team was ...

Discovered by Victor Hess in 1912, cosmic rays, relativisitic particles that shower Earth, contribute a signicant part of the energy density in the universe and carries unambiguous informations on various astrophysical processes . Yet until now, origin of cosmic rays is still a mystery. A key problem in understanding the origin of cosmic rays is the searching for the acceleration site up to or even beyond Ultra-high energy (UHE). Such extreme accelerators are dubbed as PeVatrons. However, composed of subatomic particles, such as protons or atomic nuclei, cosmic rays are charged and lose ...

Using intermittent electric energy to convert excessive CO2 into C2 products, such as ethylene and ethanol, is an effective strategy to mitigate the greenhouse effect. Copper (Cu) is the only single metal catalyst which can converts CO2 into C2 products by electrochemical method, but with undesirable selectivity of C2 product. Therefore, how to improve the conversion efficiency of Cu-based catalysts for reducing CO2 to C2 product has attracted great attention. Recently, a research team led by Prof. Min Liu from Central South University, China designed a Cu-Pd bimetallic electrocatalyst possessing CuPd(100) interface which can lower the energy barrier of C2 product generation. The electrocatalyst was obtained through using ...

WASHINGTON--People who eat too many refined carbs and fatty meats for dinner have a higher risk of heart disease than those who eat a similar diet for breakfast, according to a nationwide study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Cardiovascular diseases like congestive heart failure, heart attack and stroke are the number one cause of death globally, taking an estimated 17.9 million lives each year. Eating lots of saturated fat, processed meats and added sugars can raise your cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease. Eating a heart-healthy diet with more whole carbohydrates like vegetables and grains and less meat can significantly offset the risk of cardiovascular disease. "Meal timing along with food quality are important factors ...