As COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines are lifted, businesses are now faced with the challenge of how to keep their employees who are returning to work motivated and engaged. A study led by a University of Illinois Chicago researcher shows that both employees and managers have an important part to play in promoting employee engagement during the pandemic. The research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, suggests employee engagement and performance are the highest when employees are mentally prepared for their return to work and their managers are strongly committed to employees' health and safety at work. "Given the turmoil and distress during lockdowns ...

To investigate humans' impact on freshwater resources, scientists have now conducted the first global accounting of fluctuating water levels in Earth's lakes and reservoirs - including ones previously too small to measure from space. The research, published March 3 in the journal Nature, relied on NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2), launched in September 2018. ICESat-2 sends 10,000 laser light pulses every second down to Earth. When reflected back to the satellite, those pulses deliver high-precision surface height measurements every 28 inches (70 centimeters) along the satellite's orbit. With these trillions of data points, scientists can distinguish more features of Earth's surface, like small lakes and ponds, and track them over ...

Climate change is generally portrayed as an environmental and societal threat with entirely negative consequences. However, some sectors of the global economy may actually end up benefiting. New economic and philosophical research argues that policymakers must consider both the beneficial effects of climate change to "climate winners" as well as its costs in order to appropriately incentivize actions that are best for society and for the environment. The study by researchers from Princeton University, University College Cork, and HEC Montréal appears to be the first to develop a systematic, ethical framework for addressing climate winners -- as well as those harmed -- using financial transfers. Their approach, called "Polluter Pays, Then Receives," requires ...

A recent survey of the approximately 274,000 City University of New York (CUNY) students published in the Journal of Urban Health found that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on their mental health and financial security. The population-representative survey, conducted by a team of CUNY SPH faculty in collaboration with researchers at Healthy CUNY, found that more than half of CUNY students (54%) reported experiencing depression and/or anxiety in April 2020, at the height of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Further, they found disturbingly high levels of financial instability and noted that food insecurity and housing worries were strong ...

Injecting hydrogels containing stem cell or exosome therapeutics directly into the pericardial cavity could be a less invasive, less costly, and more effective means of treating cardiac injury, according to new research from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Stem cell therapy holds promise as a way to treat cardiac injury, but delivering the therapy directly to the site of the injury and keeping it in place long enough to be effective are ongoing challenges. Even cardiac patches, which can be positioned directly over the site of the injury, have drawbacks in that they require invasive surgical ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A smartphone app called Harbor, currently under development by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, teaches young adults how to talk to a peer if they are concerned about that other person's drinking or drug use. Designed for people ages 18-29, Harbor teaches young adults how they can "act as first responders for their close friends who demonstrate risky substance use behaviors," according to the app's lead developer, social work professor Douglas C. Smith. Smith, the director of the Center for Prevention Research and Development at the U. of I., focuses his ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: GSA's dynamic online journal, Geosphere, posts articles online regularly. Topics for articles posted for Geosphere this month include "a tale of five enclaves"; evidence for mantle and Moho in the Baltimore Mafic Complex (Maryland, USA); and the after effects of the 1964 Mw 9.2 megathrust rupture, Alaska. From Ordovician nascent to early Permian mature arc in the southern Altaids: Insights from the Kalatage inlier in the Eastern Tianshan, NW China Qigui Mao; Jingbin Wang; Wenjiao Xiao; Brian F. Windley; Karel Schulmann ... Abstract: The Kalatage inlier in the Dananhu-Haerlik arc is one of the most important arcs in the Eastern Tianshan, southern Altaids ...

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - Machine-learning (ML) systems are becoming pervasive not only in technologies affecting our day-to-day lives, but also in those observing them, including face expression recognition systems. Companies that make and use such widely deployed services rely on so-called privacy preservation tools that often use generative adversarial networks (GANs), typically produced by a third party to scrub images of individuals' identity. But how good are they? Researchers at the END ...

Nature Communications Publishes Paper by Lundquist Institute Investigator Dr. Wei Yan and Colleagues on New Promising Compound for Male Contraceptive Pill The Lundquist Institute researchers discovered a natural compound that exhibits almost ideal male contraceptive effects in pre-clinical studies LOS ANGELES (March 3, 2021) -- In a new paper published by Nature Communications, The Lundquist Institute (TLI) Investigator Wei Yan, MD, PhD, and his research colleagues spell out an innovative strategy that has led to the discovery of a natural compound as a safe, effective and reversible male contraceptive agent in pre-clinical animal models. ...

A recent analysis of the latest generation of climate models -- known as a CMIP6 -- provides a cautionary tale on interpreting climate simulations as scientists develop more sensitive and sophisticated projections of how the Earth will respond to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Miami reported that newer models with a high "climate sensitivity" -- meaning they predict much greater global warming from the same levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide as other models -- do not provide a plausible scenario of Earth's future climate. Those ...

Inspired by the eyes of mantis shrimp, researchers have developed a new kind of optical sensor that is small enough to fit on a smartphone but is capable of hyperspectral and polarimetric imaging. "Lots of artificial intelligence (AI) programs can make use of data-rich hyperspectral and polarimetric images, but the equipment necessary for capturing those images is currently somewhat bulky," says Michael Kudenov, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University. "Our work here makes smaller, more user friendly devices possible. And that would allow us to better bring those AI capabilities to bear in fields from astronomy to biomedicine." In the context of this research, ...

Researchers have analyzed tracking data for 5,775 birds across 39 species of albatrosses and large petrels -- threatened seabirds whose ranges span many countries and the high seas -- to estimate how responsibility for their protection should be distributed among nations and international organizations. The authors note that albatrosses and large petrels from all breeding countries spend much of their time on the high seas, indicating that effectively managing these waters is of global interest. These estimates are critical to inform ongoing United Nations discussions to design a global treaty for conserving biodiversity in the high seas, beyond national jurisdictions, the authors write. Many species of albatrosses and ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - First-year college students are reporting symptoms of depression and anxiety significantly more often than they were before the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study, embargoed for release until March 3, 2021, at 2 p.m. EST, in the journal PLOS ONE, is based on surveys of 419 Carolina students, and reflects the challenge of colleges nationwide to support student well-being. The study is unique among the growing reports of COVID-19's toll on mental health: researchers followed the ...

The source of potentially hazardous solar particles, released from the Sun at high speed during storms in its outer atmosphere, has been located for the first time by researchers at UCL and George Mason University, Virginia, USA. These particles are highly charged and, if they reach Earth's atmosphere, can potentially disrupt satellites and electronic infrastructure, as well as pose a radiation risk to astronauts and people in airplanes. In 1859, during what's known as the Carrington Event, a large solar storm caused telegraphic systems across Europe and America to fail. With the modern world ...

A huge volume of digital data has been harvested, stored and shared in the last few years - from sources such as social media, geolocation systems and aerial images from drones and satellites - giving researchers many new ways to study information and decrypt our world. In Switzerland, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) has taken an interest in the big data revolution and the possibilities it offers to generate predictive statistics for the benefit of society. Conventional methods such as censuses and surveys remain the benchmark for generating socio-economic indicators at the municipal, cantonal and national levels. But these methods can now be supplemented with secondary, mostly pre-existing data, from sources such as cell-phone ...

More than five years after receiving an experimental immunotherapy drug, half of a group of people at high risk of developing Type 1 diabetes remained disease-free compared with 22% of those who received a placebo, according to a new trial overseen by Yale School of Medicine researchers. And those who developed diabetes did so on average about five years after receiving the new drug, called teplizumab, compared with 27 months for those who received the placebo. The study, which was done in collaboration with researchers from Indiana University, was published March 3 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "If approved for use, this will be the first drug to delay or prevent Type 1 diabetes," ...

A series of nanoparticle-based vaccines elicits protective antibodies against various strains of the influenza virus in nonhuman primates, according to work from Nicole Darricarrère and colleagues. Although more research is needed, the vaccines mark an important step toward a universal flu vaccine for humans, which has long been a major goal for infectious disease researchers. Current seasonal flu vaccines can prevent disease but often only work for a year, after which a new vaccine must be developed. This occurs because influenza viruses evolve extremely quickly, meaning that a year-old vaccine may not prepare the immune system to recognize a new ...

Endangered Southern Resident killer whales prey on a diversity of Chinook and other salmon. The stocks come from an enormous geographic range as far north as Alaska and as far south as California's Central Valley, a new analysis shows. The diverse salmon stocks each have their own migration patterns and timing. They combine to provide the whales with a "portfolio" of prey that supports them across the entire year. The catch is that many of the salmon stocks are at risk themselves. "If returns to the Fraser River are in trouble, and Columbia River returns are strong, then prey availability to the whales potentially balances out ...

Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Design, Manufacturing and Materials (CDMM) and the Institute for Metals Superplasticity Problems (IMSP RAS) have studied the fatigue behavior of additive-manufactured high-entropy alloys (HEA). The research was published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds. Conventional 20th century materials that are extensively used in industries and mechanical engineering have reached their performance limit. Nowadays, alloying is commonly used to improve the alloys' mechanical performance and increase their operating temperature. ...

Coastal communities at the forefront of climate change reveal valuable approaches to foster adaptability and resilience, according to a worldwide analysis of small-scale fisheries by Stanford University researchers. Globally important for both livelihood and nourishment, small-scale fisheries employ about 90 percent of the world's fishers and provide half the fish for human consumption. Large-scale shocks -- like natural disasters, weather fluctuations, oil spills and market collapse -- can spell disaster, depending on the fisheries' ability to adapt to change. In an assessment of 22 small-scale fisheries that experienced stressors, researchers revealed that diversity and flexibility are among the most important adaptive capacity factors ...

Humans were present in Florida by 14,000 years ago, and until recently, it was believed the Bahamas - located only a few miles away - were not colonized until about 1,000 years ago. But new findings from a team including a Texas A&M University at Galveston researcher prove that the area was colonized earlier, and the new settlers dramatically changed the landscape. Peter van Hengstum, associate professor in the Department of Marine and Coastal Environment Science at Texas A&M-Galveston, and colleagues have had their findings published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Researchers generated a new ...

A detailed analysis of mental health treatment trends during the COVID-19 pandemic found a 7% increase in visits during the initial shelter-in-place period in 2020, compared with the same 3-month period in 2019. The study, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry March 3, examined patient visits for psychiatric diagnoses among members of Kaiser Permanente in Northern California. The greatest increases in visits were for substance use (up 51%), adjustment disorder (up 15%), anxiety (up 12%), bipolar disorder (up 9%), and psychotic disorder (up 6%). Adjustment disorder is diagnosed when someone responds ...

Breakthrough greatly enhances the ultrafast resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers. A large international team of scientists from various research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a method that dramatically improves the already ultrafast time resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs). It could lead to breakthroughs on how to design new materials and more efficient chemical processes. An XFEL device is a powerful combination of particle accelerator and laser technology producing extremely brilliant and ultrashort pulses of X-rays for scientific research. "With this technology, scientists can now track processes that occur within millions of a billionth of ...

HOUSTON - (March 3, 2021) - In one of the first studies of its kind, an analysis of camera-trap data from 15 wildlife preserves in tropical rainforests has revealed a previously unknown relationship between the biodiversity of mammals and the forests in which they live. Tropical rainforests are home to half of the world's species, but with species going extinct at a rapid pace worldwide, it's difficult for conservationists to keep close tabs on the overall health of ecosystems, even in places where wildlife is protected. Researchers found that observational data from camera traps can help. "In general, rainforest ecosystems ...

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 2.0°C and, ideally, to 1.5°C, over preindustrial levels. However, even before that treaty was signed, scientists had already warned that those "best case" targets were unlikely to be achievable. Consequently, many fire weather studies are built with models that simulate much higher levels of climate warming. Recently, researchers from South Korea, Japan, and the United States have found that by projecting the fire weather conditions under two mildly varying warming levels -- one in which the global climate warms by 1.5°C and the other by 2°C -- even just a half-degree of warming could ...