In ancient European settlements, livestock use was likely primarily determined by political structure and market demands, according to a study published February 17, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ariadna Nieto-Espinet and colleagues of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Barcelona. Zooarchaeology - the study of animal remains from archaeological sites - has great potential to provide information on past human communities. Livestock preferences are known to have changed over time in Europe, but little is known about how much these changes are influenced by environmental, economic, or political conditions of ancient settlements. In ...

The new method works without extremely high temperatures, is therefore more energy-efficient and has a significantly higher recovery rate (approx. 96 per cent of the starting material) than established processes. These findings will be published on 17 February 2021 in the scientific journal Nature. Mechanical recycling vs. chemical recycling "The direct re-utilization of plastics is often hampered by the fact that, in practice, mechanical recycling only functions to a limited degree - because the plastics are contaminated and mixed with additives, which impairs the properties ...

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have created a four-legged soft robot that doesn't need any electronics to work. The robot only needs a constant source of pressurized air for all its functions, including its controls and locomotion systems. The team, led by Michael T. Tolley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, details its findings in the Feb. 17, 2021 issue of the journal Science Robotics. "This work represents a fundamental yet significant step towards fully-autonomous, electronics-free walking robots," said Dylan Drotman, a Ph.D. student in Tolley's research group and the paper's first author. Applications include low-cost robotics for entertainment, such ...

The unprecedented and deadly blazes that engulfed the American West in 2020 attest to the increasing number, size and severity of wildfires in the region. And while scientists predict the climate crisis will exacerbate this situation, there's still much discussion around its contributing factors. With this in mind, scientists at five western universities, including UC Santa Barbara, investigated the effects of human-driven climate change and more than a century of fire suppression, which has produced dense forests primed to burn. Their research, published in the journal Environmental ...

In the search for planets capable of sustaining life, an international research team with members from ETH has taken a significant step forward. As the researchers reported recently in the journal Nature Communications, they found signs of a Neptune-sized planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, a mere 4.4 light years away from Earth. This exoplanet is located in a zone that may offer suitable conditions for life. The team was able to collect data with unprecedented sensitivity, thus registering even very weak signals. Earth is a disruptive factor Thanks to the new process, the researchers have advanced one step closer to ...

In the paper, 'Tracking Reactions of Asymmetric Organo-Osmium Transfer Hydrogenation Catalysts in Cancer Cells', published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers from the University of Warwick have, for the first time, used the new 185 m beamline to track Osmium in a single cancer cell at a scale of 100 nanometers. They used two techniques to track potential treatments in cancer cells, the first, ICP-MS, which stands for Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry, can quantify a wide range of natural and drug elements in millions of cells. However, to investigate a single cancer cell, researchers used synchrotron X-ray Fluorescence ...

Gravity might play a bigger role in the formation of elementary particles than scientists used to believe. A team of physicists from RUDN University obtained some solutions of semi-classical models that describe particle-like waves. They also calculated the ratio between the gravitational interaction of particles and the interaction of their charges. The results of the study were published in the Universe journal. Due to their small size, the gravitational interaction between elementary particles (electrons, protons, and neutrons) is weak compared to Coulomb forces--attraction ...

Experts say English slang and regional dialect should not be banned from classrooms but when you're getting to grips with a second language how helpful is it to learn non-standard lingo? Very, says Sascha Stollhans, of the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University, who argues that standardised language norms are artificial and language learners should learn about all aspects of language, even the controversial ones. In his policy paper, just published in the Languages, Society & Policy Journal, he says: There are concerns among professionals that introducing learners to 'non-standard' language could lead to ambiguity and confusion and that students might be penalised for using it in assessments. Linguistic variation is a rich area of study that can appeal to language ...

Researchers from the University of Granada warn that an accumulation of fatty tissue in the neck (both the double chin and the deeper deposits, located between muscles and around the cervical vertebrae) is a predictor of central and overall adiposity, cardiometabolic risk, and a pro-inflammatory profile in sedentary young adults. A study conducted by researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) has revealed that an accumulation of fatty tissue in the neck is a predictor of central and overall adiposity, cardiometabolic risk (heart problems), and a pro-inflammatory profile in sedentary young adults. Traditionally, the accumulation of visceral adipose tissue has been considered one of the factors most strongly ...

Research teams from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and the University of Copenhagen have therefore developed an approach that can predict the optimal composition and confirm its accuracy with high-throughput experiments. They report in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition of 28. December 2020. Much less expensive elements than previous catalysts Many electrochemical reactions go through several steps. Each should be optimized on a catalyst surface if possible, but different requirements apply to each step. "Since previous catalysts usually had only one optimized ...

Blockchain is a decentralized technology used to protect the security and privacy of online transactions and is usually associated with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. However, it is a mechanism that can be applied to all kinds of digital exchanges. In a new study, researchers from the K-riptography and Information Security for Open Networks (KISON) group at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) Amna Qureshi and professor David Megías (who is also the director of the IN3) analysed existing blockchain-based multimedia content protection systems and established a taxonomy to classify them according ...

Research has found fidaxomicin, an antibiotic usually used to treat bowel infections, prevents growth of resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTb) in the lab. Published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology, the research found that fidaxomicin was more effective than existing tuberculosis (TB) medication at preventing growth of the bacterium that causes TB. Researchers compared the activity of fidaxomicin and rifampicin, an antibiotic currently used to treat TB, against 72 different strains of MTb. Of these strains, 34 were resistant to multiple antibiotics. They found that fidaxomicin could prevent growth of all 72 strains at lower doses than rifampicin. Both of the drugs tested work in a similar way and ...

Ground-breaking research led by University of Limerick has revealed for the first time that the immune system directly links personality to long-term risk of death. The study sheds new light on why people who are more conscientious tend to live longer. Results from the new international study published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity have found that the immune system plays a previously unknown role in the link between personality traits and long-term risk of death. "Personality is known to be associated with long-term risk of death, it is a well replicated ...

Women who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic report having felt greater stress in the delivery process, and rate lower the quality of care received. Furthermore, almost 15% more women developed symptoms of postpartum depression after giving birth during the pandemic A study carried out by researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) indicates that psychological variables have contributed to more severe anxiety and depression among pregnant women since the COVID-19 pandemic began. These psychological variables include the general stress suffered, the concerns that women have about the pregnancy itself, personal resilience, insomnia, fear of catching the virus, or the feeling of loneliness. This study, published in the journal Medicina Clínica, has revealed that feeling ...

Studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 remains active on aerosols and surfaces for between several hours and several days, depending on the nature of the surface and environmental conditions. Presently, researchers from Tel Aviv University have demonstrated that ozone, which has already long been used as an antibacterial and antiviral agent in water treatment, effectively sanitizes surfaces against Coronavirus after short exposure to low concentrations of ozone. The research team was led by Dr. Ines Zucker from the School of Mechanical Engineering at the Ivy and Eldar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and the Porter School of the ...

People with attention-deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) combined with disruptive behaviour disorders (DBDs) share about the 80% of genetic variants associated with aggressive and antisocial behaviours. This is one of the conclusions of a study published in the journal Nature Communications which counts on the participation of professor Bru Cormand, from the Faculty of Biology and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute (IRSJD) and the Rare Diseases Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBERER), and researchers Marta Ribasés and Josep Antoni ...

Since Wilhelm Röntgen discovered them in 1895, X-rays have become a staple of medical imaging. In fact, barely a month after Röntgen's famous paper was published, doctors in Connecticut took the first ever radiograph of a boy's broken wrist. There has been a lot of progress since. Aside from radiographs, which most people have taken at least once in their lives, today's X-ray medical uses includes fluoroscopy, radiotherapy for cancer, and computer tomography (CT), which takes multiple X-ray scans of the body from different angles and then combines them in a computer to generate ...

The international research collaboration involving the research team led by evolutionary biologist Professor Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz and researchers from China and Singapore was able to identify factors that led to the success of the seahorse from a developmental biology perspective: its quickness to adapt by, for example, repeatedly evolving spines in the skin and its fast genetic rates of evolution. The results will be published on 17 February 2021 in Nature Communications. Seahorses of the genus Hippocampus emerged about 25 million years ago in the Indo-Pacific region from pipefish, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Though Ohio never formally enacted a so-called "heartbeat bill" banning abortions after six weeks of gestation, legislative and legal actions appear to have fueled beliefs that abortion is illegal in the state, a new study has found. One in 10 Ohio women surveyed for the study thought abortion was prohibited. The percentage with that belief increased from 5% to 16% during the study period, corresponding to sustained activity to limit abortions from fall of 2018 through summer of 2019. The study appears in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Maria Gallo, the study's lead author and a professor of epidemiology at The Ohio State University, said repeated legislative attempts at extreme restrictions on abortion, the veto by ...

In Switzerland and other European countries, drug prices are regulated to ensure affordable access to drugs. In the last few years, many European countries have introduced rebate schemes for drugs. In most cases, however, the rebates negotiated with the manufacturer are confidential. This means that a country basically has two prices for a drug: an official, higher price and an actual, lower price. Price comparisons of drugs between countries is frequently based on the higher price. Switzerland too has introduced such rebates, which are often confidential, and plans to anchor this practice in the regulation. The Federal Social ...

Scientists have little understanding of the role fishes play in the global carbon cycle linked to climate change, but a Rutgers-led study found that carbon in feces, respiration and other excretions from fishes - roughly 1.65 billion tons annually - make up about 16 percent of the total carbon that sinks below the ocean's upper layers. Better data on this key part of the Earth's biological pump will help scientists understand the impact of climate change and seafood harvesting on the role of fishes in carbon flux, according to the study - the first of its kind - in the journal Limnology and Oceanography. Carbon flux means the movement of carbon in the ocean, including from the surface to the deep sea - the focus of this study. "Our study is the first to review ...

Robotic clothing that is entirely soft and could help people to move more easily is a step closer to reality thanks to the development of a new flexible and lightweight power system for soft robotics. The discovery by a team at the University of Bristol could pave the way for wearable assist devices for people with disabilities and people suffering from age-related muscle degeneration. The study is published today [17 February] in Science Robotics. Soft robots are made from compliant materials that can stretch and twist. These materials can be made into artificial muscles that contract when air is pumped into them. The softness of these muscles makes then suited to powering assistive clothing. Until now, however, these ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists used accelerometers to track daily activity levels for a week in 89 adults with obesity or overweight and, in a series of tests, measured their ability to multitask and maintain their attention despite distractions. The study revealed that individuals who spent more sedentary time in bouts lasting 20 minutes or more were less able to overcome distractions. Reported in the International Journal of Obesity, the research adds to the evidence linking sedentary behaviors and cognition, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign kinesiology and ...

Escherichia coli bacteria are constitutive members of the human gut microbiota. However, some strains produce a genotoxin called colibactin, which is implicated in the development of colorectal cancer. While it has been shown that colibactin leaves very specific changes in the DNA of host cells that can be detected in colorectal cancer cells, such cancers take many years to develop, leaving the actual process by which a normal cell becomes cancerous obscure. The group of Thomas F. Meyer at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin together with their collaborators have now been able to "catch colibactin in the act" of inducing genetic changes that are characteristic of colorectal cancer cells and cause a transformed ...

Scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health developed a method using a DNA biomarker to easily screen pregnant women for harmful prenatal environmental contaminants like air pollution linked to childhood illness and developmental disorders. This approach has the potential to prevent childhood developmental disorders and chronic illness through the early identification of children at risk. While environmental factors--including air pollutants--have previously been associated with DNA markers, no studies to date have used DNA markers to flag environmental exposures in children. Study results are published ...