Curiosity is the motivational drive for exploring and investigating the unknown and making new discoveries. It is as essential and intrinsic for survival as hunger. Until recently, the brain mechanisms underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior were unclear. However, researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have now discovered a new brain circuit underlying curiosity and novelty seeking behavior. The results have been published in the scientific journal Science. Curiosity, hunger and appetitive aggression drive three different goal-directed behaviors: novelty seeking, food eating and hunting. In animals these behaviors are composed of similar actions. This similarity of actions has made it challenging ...

A group of the world's leading experts in the transmission of airborne pathogens is calling for a tightened regulatory system to control air quality in buildings - as a way of reducing the spread of covid-19 and other illnesses. Writing in the journal Science, the 40 scientists say: "A paradigm shift is needed on the scale that occurred when Chadwick's Sanitary Report in 1842 led the British government to encourage cities to organise clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems. "In the 21st century we need to establish the foundations to ensure that the air in our buildings is clean with a significantly reduced ...

Epidemic. Pandemic. These terms have become second nature to us, popping up in everyday conversation, and for good reason -- COVID-19 is the latest pandemic to pose a threat to humanity. But in recent months, far less attention has been paid to another widely spread problem that has been proliferating since the late 1970s: Lyme disease. Lyme disease is the most reported vector-borne disease in the country. Over the past 20 years, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in both the number of reported cases and the geographic distribution of the disease. In Virginia, the disease is transmitted by blacklegged ticks, which are infected with the Lyme disease-causing bacterium Borrelia ...

Scientists reveal that the deterioration of modern concrete and asphalt structures is due to the presence of trace quantities of organic matter in these structures. Cement and asphalt are vital to modern construction materials; cement is used for the construction of various buildings and structures, while asphalt is primarily used for highways and runways. They have been widely used for these purposes since the 1800s. It has been observed modern concrete structures and asphalt structures tend to deteriorate much faster than historical structures, but the reason for this phenomenon was unknown. A team of scientists from six institutions, including Akihiro ...

One-third of the water catchments included in a Victorian study had not recovered from a severe drought nearly eight years later, Australian-first research from Monash University shows. Globally, science holds the common view that rivers and underground water supplies eventually replenish following periods of severe drought or flood. This study, led by Dr Tim Peterson from Monash University's Department of Civil Engineering and published today in the prestigious international journal Science, is the first in the world to challenge this widely held view. Researchers used statistical ...

A new approach to genomic species delineation could impact policy and lend clarity to legislation for designating a species as endangered or at risk. The coastal California gnatcatcher is an unassuming little gray songbird that's been at the epicenter of a legal brawl for nearly 28 years, ever since U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Found along the Baja California coast, from down south in El Rosario, Mexico to Long Beach, Calif., its natural habitat is the rapidly declining coastal sagebrush that occupies prime, pristine real estate along the West Coast. When this particular gnatcatcher, Polioptila californica, was granted protection, the region's real estate developers went to court to get it delisted. ...

Viruses require the resources of an infected cell to replicate and then infect further cells, and transfer to other individuals. One essential step in the viral life cycle is the production of new viral proteins based on the instructions in the viral RNA genome. Following these construction plans, the cell's own protein synthesis machine, called the ribosome, produces the viral proteins. In the absence of viral infection, the ribosome moves along the RNA in strictly defined steps, reading three letters of RNA at a time. This three-letter code defines the corresponding amino acid that is being attached to the growing protein. It almost never happens that the ribosome slips one or two RNA letters forward or backward instead of following the regular three-letter steps. When such a slip ...

Irvine, CA - May 13, 2021 - A new University of California, Irvine-led study finds low serum levels of the sugar N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), is associated with progressive disability and neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis (MS). The study, done in collaboration with researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and the University of Toronto, Canada, is titled, "Association of a Marker of N-Acetylglucosamine With Progressive Multiple Sclerosis and Neurodegeneration," The study was published this week in JAMA Neurology. The study suggests that GlcNAc, which has been previously shown to promote re-myelination and suppress neurodegeneration in animal models of MS, ...

First co-author, Junior Research Associate of the Rheological and Thermochemical Research Lab Richard Djimasbe, comments, "To obtain bitumen as a half-solid product from heavy oil, you have to extract light fractions, and the rest is non-oxidized bitumen. Because of the relatively low ratio of light fractions in heavy oil, it's a simple and cheap way of bitumen production. The method allows for rational use of both heavy oil and light oil." Lab Head Mikhail Varfolomeev adds, "One of the priorities of our World-Level Research Center in Liquid Hydrocarbons is the use of heavy oils, which constitute the majority of reserves both in Russia and in the world. One of the most important parts of this is extraction and refining of heavy ...

Laura Riesenberg was visiting a local amusement park with three of her children when she suffered a massive heart attack. "I was down for about 20 minutes and they defibrillated me twice on site, possibly three times," she says. "Obviously, I was unaware of it. I know from reading the reports what happened." "I was extremely fortunate that someone found me within seconds of collapsing," says Riesenberg. "Had it happened anywhere else I wouldn't be talking to you right now. If I had been in the basement doing laundry, I would have been in trouble." The 51-year-old Loveland, Ohio, resident ...

Pregnant Aussie mums are being denied access to medications which treat severe nausea and vomiting by pharmacists and medical practitioners because of misleading labels and a lack of awareness about clinical guidelines. A new study surveyed 249 Australian women who suffered from severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP) or hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) and examined their experiences in accessing medications during pregnancy. One in four women reported being denied medications for NVP/ HG at some stage during pregnancy. This most commonly involved the over-the-counter medicine doxylamine and interactions ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- May 13, 2021 -- In the largest study of the associations between smoking and cardiovascular disease on cognitive function, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, found both impair the ability to learn and memorize; and that the effects of smoking are more pronounced among females, while males are more impaired by cardiovascular disease. The results appear today in the journal Scientific Reports. Previous attempts to quantify cognitive function among smokers and assess sex differences produced mixed results. The TGen researchers attribute this to the limited size of previous data sets. By ...

College Park, Md. - Companies have often considered app adoption among their customers to have a positive impact on customer spending. According to new research from marketing professor P.K. Kannan at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, higher app adoption among hotel chains could be linked to lower spending among lower-level loyalty customers, who are more likely to use apps to get the best deals. Kannan worked with Xian Gu, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University, for the research, published as "The Dark Side of Mobile App Adoption: Examining the Impact on Customers' Multichannel ...

When a piece of conducting material is heated up at one of its ends, a voltage difference can build up across the sample, which in turn can be converted into a current. This is the so-called Seebeck effect, the cornerstone of thermoelectric effects. In particular, the effect provides a route to creating work out of a temperature difference. Such thermoelectric engines do not have any movable part and are therefore convenient power sources in various applications, including propelling NASA's Mars rover Perseverance. The Seebeck effect is interesting for fundamental physics, too, as the magnitude and sign of the induced thermoelectric current is characteristic of the material and indicates ...

A small drug molecule that appears to protect normal tissue from the damaging effects of radiation, may simultaneously be able to boost the cancer-killing effect of radiation therapy, according to a new study led by scientists at University of Iowa, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and Galera Therapeutics, Inc. The study, published online May 12 in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that the drug's dual effect is based on a fundamental difference between the ability of cancer cells and healthy cells to withstand the damaging effects of a highly reactive molecule called hydrogen peroxide, which is produced during the dismutation of superoxide. The drug, known as Avasopasem manganese, is made by Galera Therapeutics. ...

The stock market is a staple of business news, but it is unclear how meaningful stock prices are to the larger economy. Do changes in stock prices directly affect shorter-term consumption, or are they just leading indicators for subsequent economic activity? The U.S. Federal Reserve, for its part, usually seems to act as if stock-based wealth does help drive spending and employment. But is this correct? A new study co-authored by an MIT economist brings data to the discussion and finds that increased stock market wealth has moderate but clear economic effects. After looking at the U.S. on a county-by-county basis, the study finds that after large market ...

Sydney, Australia; New York City, USA (May 13, 2021)--In a collaborative report published today in Cell, scientists from Sydney and New York describe the critical worldwide need to improve the diversity of cells used in medical research. Currently, 95% of all human cell lines used in research are of European descent. The authors provide actionable steps that researchers and the biomedical community can take to promote more inclusivity in preclinical and basic science research. The commentary, "Ancestry Matters: Building inclusivity into preclinical study design," is co-authored by Sophie Zaaijer, PhD, who co-founded FIND Genomics (findgen.bio), a company that aims to improve reproducible ...

The once-abundant California condor briefly went extinct in the wild, with only 22 individuals living in captivity by 1982. Today, 300 condors live freely in the wild and another 200 are in captivity. But, despite the condor's struggles, a new study of the California condor genome reported in the journal Current Biology on May 13 has found a surprising amount of genetic diversity. The study is the first to begin quantifying diversity across the entire California condor genome, which offers researchers needed baseline information to inform future research and conservation of this iconic species, ...

New York, NY (May 13, 2021)-- Artificial food colorants can cause disease when the immune system has become dysregulated, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai researchers report. The study, published in Cell Metabolism in May, was the first to show this phenomenon. The study, conducted in mice, found that the mice developed colitis when they consumed food with the artificial food colorants FD&C Red 40 and Yellow 6 when a specific component of their immune system, known as cytokine IL-23, was dysregulated. While it remains unclear whether food colorants have similar effects in humans, researchers plan to investigate exactly how cytokine IL-23 promotes the development of colitis after food colorant exposure. Colitis is a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and cytokine ...

Fossilised footprint tracks, recently discovered within the Hanna Formation in Wyoming, USA, which have been dated to 58 million years ago, may represent the earliest evidence of mammals gathering by the sea, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings suggest that mammals may have first used marine habitats at least 9.4 million years earlier than previously thought, in the late Paleocene (66-56 million years ago), rather than the Eocene (56-33.9 million years ago). Drs. Anton Wroblewski and Bonnie Gulas-Wroblewski examined and photographed over 1,000 metres of fossilised footprints in an area dated back to 58 million years ago by plant and pollen fossils. The authors identified various different tracks. One set showed relatively large, five-toed ...

Climate change may be accelerating the degradation of ancient rock paintings in Indonesia, including the oldest known hand stencil in the world which dates back to 39,900 years ago, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Rock paintings made using red and mulberry-coloured pigments in the limestone caves and rock shelters of Maros-Pangkep, Indonesia have been dated to between 20,000 and 45,000 years old. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the paintings have been deteriorating at an accelerated rate in recent decades, but the reasons for this have been unclear. Jillian Huntley and colleagues investigated the potential causes of accelerated rock art degradation at 11 cave art sites in Maros-Pangkep, by analysing ...

Radical changes to the food system are needed to safeguard our food supply and combat malnutrition in the face of climate change, environmental degradation and epidemics, says new report. Researchers at the University of Cambridge say our future global food supply cannot be safeguarded by traditional approaches to improving food production. They suggest state-of-the-art, controlled-environment systems, producing novel foods, should be integrated into the food system to reduce vulnerability to environmental changes, pests and diseases. Their report is published today in the journal Nature Food. The researchers say that global malnutrition could be eradicated by farming foods including spirulina, chlorella, larvae of insects such as the house fly, mycoprotein (protein derived ...

A new study with zebrafish shows that a deadly form of skin cancer -- melanoma -- alters the metabolism of healthy tissues elsewhere in the body. The research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that these other tissues could potentially be targeted to help treat cancer. "Tumors rely on a constant supply of nutrients to grow. Instead of competing with tumors for nutrients, other tissues can reprogram their metabolism to be complementary. In some instances, this may even allow healthy tissues to feed the tumor," said Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and a professor of chemistry and medicine at the School of Medicine. Patti is the corresponding author of the study published May 13 in Cell Metabolism. Cancer ...

Scientists exploring the drivers of Antarctic climate change have discovered a new and more efficient pathway for the creation of natural aerosols and clouds which contribute significantly to temperature increases. The Antarctic Peninsula has shown some of the largest global increases in near-surface air temperature over the last 50 years, but experts have struggled to predict temperatures because little was known about how natural aerosols and clouds affect the amount of sunlight absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back into space. Studying data from seas around the Peninsula, experts have discovered that most new particles are formed in air masses arriving from the partially ice-covered Weddell Sea - a significant source ...

Today, the rocks of the Hanna Formation in south-central Wyoming are hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean. But around 58 million years ago, Wyoming was oceanfront property, with large hippo-like mammals traipsing through nearshore lagoons. In a study published in Scientific Reports, geologist Anton Wroblewski, an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and applied biodiversity scientist Bonnie Gulas-Wroblewski of the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute, report the discovery of several sets of ...