During the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia was witness to several climate crises. In the long run, these crises prompted the development of stable forms of State and therefore elicited cooperation between political elites and non-elites. This is the main finding of a study published in the journal PNAS and authored by two scholars from the University of Bologna (Italy) and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany). This study investigated the impact of climate shocks in Mesopotamia between 3100 and 1750 bC. The two scholars looked at these issues through the lenses of economics and adopted a game-theory approach. They applied this approach ...

A new paper on college science classes taught remotely points to teaching methods that enhance student communication and collaboration, offering a framework for enriching online instruction as the coronavirus pandemic continues to limit in-person courses. "These varied exercises allow students to engage, team up, get outside, do important lab work, and carry out group investigations and presentations under extraordinarily challenging circumstances--and from all over the world," explains Erin Morrison, a professor in Liberal Studies at New York University and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. "The active-learning toolbox can be effectively used from ...

The placenta forms the interface between the maternal and foetal circulatory systems. As well as ensuring essential nutrients, endocrine and immunological signals get through to the foetus to support its development and growth, the placenta must also protect it from the accumulation of potentially toxic compounds. A study from Cécile Demarez, Mariana Astiz and colleagues at the University of Lübeck in Germany now reveals that the activity of a crucial placental gatekeeper in mice is regulated by the circadian clock, changing during the day-night cycle. The study, which has implications for the timing of maternal drug regimens, is published in the journal Development. The circadian clock translates time-of-day information into physiological signals through rhythmic regulation ...

The combined effect of rapid ocean warming and the practice of targeting big fish is affecting the viability of wild populations and global fish stock says new research by the University of Melbourne and the University of Tasmania. Unlike earlier studies that traditionally considered fishing and climate in isolation, the research found that ocean warming and fishing combined to impact on fish recruitment, and that this took four generations to manifest. "We found a strong decline in recruitment (the process of getting new young fish into a population) in all populations that had been exposed to warming, and this effect was highest where all the largest individuals ...

In an effort to determine the potential for COVID-19 to begin in a person's gut, and to better understand how human cells respond to SARS-CoV-2, the scientists used human intestinal cells to create organoids - 3D tissue cultures derived from human cells, which mimic the tissue or organ from which the cells originate. Their conclusions, published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, indicate the potential for infection to be harboured in a host's intestines and reveal intricacies in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2. "Previous research had shown that SARS-CoV-2 can infect the gut," says Theodore Alexandrov, who leads one of the two EMBL groups involved. "However, it remained unclear how intestinal cells mount their immune response to the infection." In fact, ...

The building of new homes continues in flood-prone parts of England and Wales, and losses from flooding remain high. A new study, which looked at a recent decade of house building, concluded that a disproportionate number of homes built in struggling or declining neighbourhoods will end up in high flood-risk areas due to climate change. The study, by Viktor Rözer and Swenja Surminski from the Grantham Research Institute, used property-level data for new homes and information on the socio-economic development of neighbourhoods to analyse spatial clusters ...

Ship movements on the world's oceans dropped in the first half of 2020 as Covid-19 restrictions came into force, a new study shows. Researchers used a satellite vessel-tracking system to compare ship and boat traffic in January to June 2020 with the same period in 2019. The study, led by the University of Exeter (UK) and involving the Balearic Islands Coastal Observing and Forecasting System and the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (both in Spain), found decreased movements in the waters off more than 70 per cent of countries. Global ...

A study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History has resolved a long-standing controversy about an extinct "horned" crocodile that likely lived among humans in Madagascar. Based on ancient DNA, the research shows that the horned crocodile was closely related to "true" crocodiles, including the famous Nile crocodile, but on a separate branch of the crocodile family tree. The study, published today in the journal Communications Biology, contradicts the most recent scientific thinking about the horned crocodile's evolutionary relationships and also suggests that the ancestor of modern crocodiles likely originated in Africa. "This crocodile was hiding out on the island of Madagascar during the time when people were building ...

A research group at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) has discovered molecular events that determine whether cancer cells live or die. With this knowledge, they found that reduced consumption of a specific protein building block prevents the growth of cells that become cancerous. These findings were published in the scientific journal eLife and open up the possibility of dietary therapy for cancer. A tumor is a group of cancer cells that multiplies--or proliferates--uncontrollably. Tumors originate from single cells that become cancerous when genes that cause cells to proliferate are over-activated. However, because these genes, called oncogenes, often also cause cell death, activation of a single oncogene within a cell is not enough for it to become a cancer cell. ...

The COVID pandemic appears to have triggered about a 44% increase in insomnia disorder among health care workers at a medical-school affiliated health system, with the highest rates surprisingly among those who spent less time in direct patient care, investigators say. Another surprise was that about 10% of the group of 678 faculty physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, like nurse practitioners and physician assistants, as well as residents and fellows, reported in a 17-question survey that their insomnia actually got better in the early months of the pandemic, says Dr. Vaughn McCall, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical ...

The now-familiar sight of traditional propeller wind turbines could be replaced in the future with wind farms containing more compact and efficient vertical turbines. New research from Oxford Brookes University has found that the vertical turbine design is far more efficient than traditional turbines in large scale wind farms, and when set in pairs the vertical turbines increase each other's performance by up to 15%. A research team from the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics (ECM) at Oxford Brookes led by Professor Iakovos Tzanakis conducted an in-depth study using more than 11,500 hours of computer simulation to ...

(Media note: Interviews with Texas Biomed researchers are available with advanced notice. Photos and video of rhesus macaques and the Biosafety Level 3 & 4 laboratories at Texas Biomed are available upon request.) SAN ANTONIO (April 27, 2021) - When the world was coming to grips with an emerging global pandemic a year ago, scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute sprang into action. The rhesus macaques at the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) at Texas Biomed were quickly validated as models for studying vaccines designed to protect humans ...

New prostate cancer urine test shows how aggressive disease is and could reduce invasive biopsies Researchers from the University of East Anglia have developed a new urine test for prostate cancer which also shows how aggressive the disease is. A new study published today shows how an experimental new test called 'ExoGrail' has the potential to revolutionise how patients with suspected prostate cancer are risk-assessed prior to an invasive biopsy. The research team say their new test could reduce the number of unnecessary prostate cancer biopsies by 35 per ...

New estimates confirm that miscarriages occur in 15% of all pregnancies, with one in 10 women experiencing a miscarriage in their lifetime. Recurrent miscarriage is less common, affecting about 1% of women in their lifetime. Existing care for sporadic or recurrent miscarriage is inconsistent and poorly organised worldwide, and a new system is needed to ensure miscarriages are better recognised and women are given the physical and mental health care they need. Authors recommend at least a minimum service to all women who have had a miscarriage - with increasing care for recurrent miscarriages - to be offered globally, including testing, treatment, pre-pregnancy counselling, and psychological support. With variations in the definition, ...

Nearly 80 percent of higher education faculty report dealing with student mental health issues--issues that more than 90 percent of faculty believe have worsened or significantly worsened during the pandemic, according to a new nationwide survey led by a Boston University mental health researcher. "The vast majority of faculty members, myself included, are not trained mental health professionals, but we have a role to play in supporting student well-being," says survey principal investigator Sarah Ketchen Lipson, a BU School of Public Health assistant professor of health law, policy, and management. "These data underscore a real opportunity to better equip faculty with knowledge and basic skills to ...

As researchers continue to study the neurological impacts of COVID-19, a Houston Methodist international collaboration has documented an unexpectedly frequent occurrence of acute transverse myelitis (ATM) - inflammation of the spinal cord - in 43 COVID-19 patients. Led by Houston Methodist neurologist Dr. Gustavo Roman, the study of existing scientific literature found that patients from 21 countries developed spinal cord lesions after contracting the virus. Symptoms included paralysis and sphincter/bowel dysfunction. The patients ages ranged from 21 to 73 and included about half-and-half women and men. ATM, a rare neurological condition, affects between 1.34 and 4.6 cases per million per year, and researchers believe the unusually high rate in post-COVID-19 patients ...

Each year over 150,000 infants worldwide are infected with HIV in the womb, at birth, or through breastfeeding. Why transmission occurs in some cases but not others has long been a mystery, but now a team led by Weill Cornell Medicine and Duke University scientists has uncovered an important clue, with implications for how to eliminate infant HIV infections. In a study published April 2 in PLoS Pathogens, the researchers found evidence linking mother-to-child transmission of HIV to rare variants of the virus in the mother's blood that are able to escape broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs)--an emerging ...

3D printing has opened up a completely new range of possibilities. One example is the production of novel turbine buckets. However, the 3D printing process often induces internal stress in the components which can in the worst case lead to cracks. Now a research team has succeeded in using neutrons from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) research neutron source for non-destructive detection of this internal stress - a key achievement for the improvement of the production processes. Gas turbine buckets have to withstand extreme conditions: under high pressure and at high temperatures they are exposed to tremendous centrifugal forces . In order to further maximize ...

Fixing traumatic injuries to the skin and bones of the face and skull is difficult because of the many layers of different types of tissues involved, but now, researchers have repaired such defects in a rat model using bioprinting during surgery, and their work may lead to faster and better methods of healing skin and bones. "This work is clinically significant," said Ibrahim T. Ozbolat, Hartz Family Career Development Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Biomedical Engineering and Neurosurgery, Penn State. "Dealing with composite defects, fixing hard and soft tissues at once, is difficult. And for the craniofacial area, the results have to be esthetically pleasing." Currently, fixing a hole in the skull involving both bone and soft tissue requires using bone ...

The hormone prolactin has long been understood to play a vital role in breast growth and development and the production of milk during pregnancy. But a pair of recent studies conducted at VCU Massey Cancer Center finds strong evidence that prolactin also acts as a major contributor to breast cancer development and that the hormone could inform the creation of targeted drugs to treat multiple forms of the disease. Hormones have proteins on their cell surface called receptors that receive and send biological messages and regulate cell function. Through research published in npj Breast Cancer, VCU Massey Cancer Center ...

One in five pharmacies refuse to dispense a key medication to treat addiction, according to new research. The study, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, was conducted by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon State University College of Pharmacy. Researchers called hundreds of pharmacies around the country to ask whether they would dispense Suboxone, also known as buprenorphine. "Buprenorphine is a vital, lifesaving medication for people with opioid use disorder, but improving access has been a problem for a variety of reasons," said senior author Daniel Hartung, Pharm.D., M.P.H., professor in the College of Pharmacy. "Although anecdotes and smaller studies have suggested problems, our study is the first to systematically characterize this ...

A partnership between UC Davis and Maurice J. Gallagher, Jr., chairman and CEO of Allegiant Travel Company, has led to a new rapid COVID-19 test. A recent study published Nature Scientific Reports shows the novel method to be 98.3% accurate for positive COVID-19 tests and 96% for negative tests. "This test was made from the ground up," said Nam Tran, lead author for the study and a professor of pathology in the UC Davis School of Medicine. "Nothing like this test ever existed. We were starting with a clean slate." The novel COVID-19 test uses an analytical instrument known as a mass spectrometer, which is paired with a powerful machine-learning platform to detect SARS-CoV-2 in nasal swabs. The mass spectrometer can analyze samples in minutes, with the ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Climate problems alone were not enough to end periods of ancient Pueblo development in the southwestern United States. Drought is often blamed for the periodic disruptions of these Pueblo societies, but in a study with potential implications for the modern world, archaeologists have found evidence that slowly accumulating social tension likely played a substantial role in three dramatic upheavals in Pueblo development. The findings, detailed in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that Pueblo farmers often persevered through droughts, but when social tensions were increasing, even modest droughts could spell the end of an era of ...

The risk of childhood undernutrition varies widely among villages in India, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in collaboration with researchers at Harvard's Center for Geographic Analysis, Harvard's Center for Population and Development Studies, Korea University, Microsoft, and the Government of India. The study is the first to predict and map the burden of childhood undernutrition across all of the nearly 600,000 villages in rural India, and the methods developed to do so could be applied to other health indicators and help advance the field of "precision public health," in which interventions and policies are tailored to smaller populations that are disproportionally ...

One of the great mysteries of modern space science is neatly summed up by the view from NASA's Perseverance, which just landed on Mars: Today it's a desert planet, and yet the rover is sitting right next to an ancient river delta. The apparent contradiction has puzzled scientists for decades, especially because at the same time that Mars had flowing rivers, it was getting less than a third as much sunshine as we enjoy today on Earth. But a new study led by University of Chicago planetary scientist Edwin Kite, an assistant professor of geophysical sciences and an expert on climates of other worlds, uses a computer model to put forth a promising explanation: Mars ...