Niigata, Japan - Researchers from the Graduate School of Science and Technology at Niigata University, Japan along with their collaborators from Tokyo University of Science (Japan), Yamagata University (Japan) and University of Regensburg (Germany) have published a scientific article which enhances clarity on the understanding of proton conduction mechanism in protic ionic liquids. The findings which were recently published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B sheds light on the transport of hydrogen ions in these liquids, which opens new avenues for the development of novel energy generation and storage devices. With ...

Scientists have found genetic differences between bats killed by white-nose syndrome and bats that survived, suggesting that survivors rapidly evolve to resist the fungal disease, according to a Rutgers-led study with big implications for deciding how to safeguard bat populations. White-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America since 2006, following its introduction from Europe. The syndrome, caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans, is arguably the most catastrophic wildlife disease in history. It has led to unprecedented declines in many North American bat species, including the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus). "Our finding that little brown bat populations have evolved, which could be why they survived, has large implications for ...

Lots of us are feeling pretty anxious about the destruction of the natural world. It turns out, humans aren't the only ones stressing out--by analyzing hormones that accumulate in fur, researchers found that rodents and marsupials living in smaller patches of South America's Atlantic Forest are under more stress than ones living in more intact forests. "We suspected that organisms in deforested areas would show higher levels of stress than animals in more pristine forests, and we found evidence that that's true," says Noé de la Sancha, a research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago, Associate Professor of Biology at Chicago State University, ...

New research published today in the journal Scientific Reports based on the largest-to-date analysis of commercial data on egg-laying hen mortality finds that mortality in higher-welfare cage-free housing systems decreases over time as management experience increases and knowledge accrues. This finding marks a major turning point in the debate over the transition in housing systems for egg-laying hens from battery cages to indoor cage-free systems, which some egg producers have argued would increase hens' mortality even as it allowed birds to stretch their wings. The study, authored by Dr. Cynthia Schuck-Paim and others, included data from 16 countries, 6,040 commercial flocks, and 176 million hens in a variety of caged and ...

DALLAS, Feb. 4, 2021 -- Stroke and heart attack survivors can reduce multiple causes of death and prevent further cardiovascular events by drinking green tea, according to new research published today in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. The study also found daily coffee consumption helps heart attack survivors by lowering their risk of death after a heart attack and can prevent heart attacks or strokes in healthy individuals. Previous research has examined the benefits of green tea and coffee on heart health in people without a history of cardiovascular disease or cancer. Researchers in ...

BOSTON - Medical histories of patients collected and stored in electronic health records (EHR) can be rapidly leveraged to predict the probability of death from COVID-19, information that could prove valuable in managing limited therapeutic and preventive resources to combat the devastating virus, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found. In a study published in npj Digital Medicine, the team described how artificial intelligence (AI) technology enabled it to identify factors such as age, history of pneumonia, gender, race and comorbidities like diabetes and cancer as predictors of poor outcomes in COVID-19 patients. "By combining computational methods and clinical expertise, we developed a set of models to forecast ...

The open ocean is a harsh place for newborn fishes. From the minute larvae hatch from their eggs, their survival depends upon finding food and navigating ocean currents to their adult habitats--all while avoiding predators. This harrowing journey from egg to home has long been a mystery, until now. An international team including scientists from the Arizona State University Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science (GDCS), NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, and the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa have discovered a diverse array of young marine animals finding refuge within so-called 'surface slicks' in Hawai'i. Surface slicks create a superhighway of nursery habitat for more than 100 species of commercially and ecologically ...

To survive the open ocean, tiny fish larvae, freshly hatched from eggs, must find food, avoid predators, and navigate ocean currents to their adult habitats. But what the larvae of most marine species experience during these great ocean odysseys has long been a mystery, until now. A team of scientists from NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa, Arizona State University and elsewhere have discovered that a diverse array of marine animals find refuge in so-called 'surface slicks' in Hawai'i. These ocean features ...

The Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) published a new report today, titled 'Coffee and sleep in everyday lives', authored by Professor Renata Riha, from the Department of Sleep Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. It reviews the latest research into coffee's effect on sleep and suggests that while drinking coffee early in the day can help support alertness and concentration levels1, especially when sleep patterns are disturbed; decreasing intake six hours before bedtime may help reduce its impact on sleep2. Coffee is largely consumed daily for the pleasure of its taste3, as well as its beneficial effect on wakefulness and concentration (due to its caffeine content)4. ...

A new study further highlighting a potential physiological cause of clinical depression could guide future treatment options for this serious mental health disorder. Published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers show differences between the cellular composition of the brain in depressed adults who died by suicide and non-psychiatric individuals who died suddenly by other means. "We found a reduced number of astrocytes, highlighted by staining the protein vimentin, in many regions of the brain in depressed adults," reports Naguib Mechawar, a Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada, and senior author of this article. ...

Researchers from University of Notre Dame, York University (Canada), and University of New England (Australia) published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that identifies a novel reason why people under-save and demonstrates a simple, short, and inexpensive intervention that increases intentions to save and actual savings. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Popping the Positive Illusion of Financial Responsibility Can Increase Personal Savings: Applications in Emerging and Western Markets" and is authored by Emily Garbinsky, Nicole Mead, and Daniel Gregg. People around the world are not saving enough money. Since increasing ...

WASHINGTON--The start of California's annual rainy season has been pushed back from November to December, prolonging the state's increasingly destructive wildfire season by nearly a month, according to new research. The study cannot confirm the shift is connected to climate change, but the results are consistent with climate models that predict drier autumns for California in a warming climate, according to the authors. Wildfires can occur at any time in California, but fires typically burn from May through October, when the state is in its dry season. The start of the rainy season, historically in November, ends wildfire season as plants become too moist to burn. California's rainy season has been starting progressively later in recent decades and climate ...

Researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH) have developed a new way to create "food inks" from fresh and frozen vegetables, that preserves their nutrition and flavour better than existing methods. Food inks are usually made from pureed foods in liquid or semi-solid form, then 3D-printed by extrusion from a nozzle, and assembled layer by layer. Pureed foods are usually served to patients suffering from swallowing difficulties known as dysphagia. To present the ...

Politicians around the world must be held to account for mishandling the covid-19 pandemic, argues a senior editor at The BMJ today. Executive editor, Dr Kamran Abbasi, argues that at the very least, covid-19 might be classified as 'social murder' that requires redress. Today 'social murder' may describe a lack of political attention to the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age that exacerbate the pandemic. When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths, for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, is that not premeditated ...

Piezoelectric materials hold great promise as sensors and as energy harvesters but are normally much less effective at high temperatures, limiting their use in environments such as engines or space exploration. However, a new piezoelectric device developed by a team of researchers from Penn State and QorTek remains highly effective at elevated temperatures. Clive Randall, director of Penn State's Materials Research Institute (MRI), developed the material and device in partnership with researchers from QorTek, a State College, Pennsylvania-based company specializing in smart material devices and high-density power electronics. "NASA's need ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Muscle wasting, or the loss of muscle tissue, is a common problem for people with cancer, but the precise mechanisms have long eluded doctors and scientists. Now, a new study led by Penn State researchers gives new clues to how muscle wasting happens on a cellular level. Using a mouse model of ovarian cancer, the researchers found that cancer progression led to fewer skeletal muscle ribosomes -- particles in the cell that make proteins. Because muscle mass is mainly determined by protein synthesis, having less ribosomes likely explains why muscles waste away in cancer. Gustavo Nader, associate professor of kinesiology and physiology at Penn State, said the findings suggest a mechanism for muscle wasting that could be relevant ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Harsher immigration law enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement leads to decreased use of prenatal care for immigrant mothers and declines in birth weight, according to new Duke University research. In the study, published in PLOS ONE, researchers examine the effects of the federal 287(g) immigration program after it was introduced in North Carolina in 2006. Under 287(g) programs, which are still in effect, local law officers are deputized to act as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, with authority to question individuals about immigration status, detain them, and if necessary, begin deportation proceedings. According to the study findings, the 2006 policy change reduced birth weight ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Hypoxia -- where a tissue is deprived of an adequate supply of oxygen -- is a feature inside solid cancer tumors that renders them highly invasive and resistant to treatment. Study of how cells adapt to this critical stressor, by altering their metabolism to survive in a low-oxygen environment, is important to better understand tumor growth and spread. Researchers led by Rajeev Samant, Ph.D., professor of pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, now report that chronic hypoxia, surprisingly, upregulates RNA polymerase I activity and alters the methylation patterns on ribosomal RNAs. These altered epigenetic marks on the ribosomal RNAs appear to create a pool of specialized ribosomes that can differentially ...

As a native animal, kangaroos aren't typically considered a threat to Australian vegetation. While seen as a pest on farmland - for example, when competing with livestock for resources - they usually aren't widely seen as a pest in conservation areas. But a new collaborative study led by UNSW Sydney found that conservation reserves are showing signs of kangaroo overgrazing - that is, intensive grazing that negatively impacts the health and biodiversity of the land. Surprisingly, the kangaroos' grazing impacts appeared to be more damaging to the land than rabbits, an introduced species. "The kangaroos had severe impacts on soils and vegetation that were symptomatic of overgrazing," says Professor Michael Letnic, senior author of the paper and ...

Mathematicians from RUDN University suggested and tested a new method to assess the productivity of fifth-generation (5G) base stations. The new technology would help get rid of mobile access stations and even out traffic fluctuations. The results of the study were published in the IEEE Conference Publication. Stations of the new 5G New Radio (NR) communication standard developed by the 3GPP consortium are expected to shortly be installed in large quantities all over the world. First of all, the stations will be deployed in places with high traffic ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -Wind energy scientists at Cornell University have released a new global wind atlas - a digital compendium filled with documented extreme wind speeds for all parts of the world - to help engineers select the turbines in any given region and accelerate the development of sustainable energy. This wind atlas is the first publicly available, uniform and geospatially explicit (datasets tied to locations) description of extreme wind speeds, according to the research, "A Global Assessment of Extreme Wind Speeds For Wind Energy Applications," published in Nature Energy. "Cost-efficient expansion of the wind-energy industry is enabled by access ...

One of the most important ways to stop the spread of COVID-19 is for people who have tested positive, or have symptoms, to isolate themselves from the other people they live with. But a new University of Michigan poll suggests that nearly one in five older adults don't have the ability to do this - and that those who are Hispanic or Black, or who have lower incomes or poor health to begin with, are more likely to lack a safe isolation place in their home. The poll also shows significant inequality in another key aspect of staying safe and healthy during the pandemic: the ability to get outside for fresh air and exercise, and to engage safely with friends, ...

Despite worldwide use of lithium batteries, the exact dynamics of their operation has remained elusive. X-rays have proven to be a powerful tool for peering inside of these batteries to see the changes that occur in real time. Using the ultrabright X-rays of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, a research team recently observed the internal evolution of the materials inside solid-state lithium batteries as they were charged and discharged. This detailed 3D ...

The speed of light has come to 3D printing. Northwestern University engineers have developed a new method that uses light to improve 3D printing speed and precision while also, in combination with a high-precision robot arm, providing the freedom to move, rotate or dilate each layer as the structure is being built. Most conventional 3D printing processes rely on replicating a digital design model that is sliced into layers with the layers printed and assembled upwards like a cake. The Northwestern method introduces the ability to manipulate the original design layer by layer and pivot the printing direction without recreating the model. This "on-the-fly" ...

How do the normal pains of everyday life, such as headaches and backaches, influence our ability to think? Recent studies suggest that healthy individuals in pain also show deficits in working memory, or the cognitive process of holding and manipulating information over short periods of time. Prior research suggests that pain-related impairments in working memory depend on an individual's level of emotional distress. Yet the specific brain and psychological factors underlying the role of emotional distress in contributing to this relationship are not well understood. A new study, titled "Modeling neural and self-reported factors of affective distress in the relationship between pain and working memory in healthy individuals," and published in the journal ...