Overfishing, illegal fishing and increasing marketing of shark meat pose significant threats to the more than 80 species of sharks and rays that inhabit the Mediterranean Sea, according to a new study. The research examined current levels of legislation in place to protect elasmobranch populations (which include sharks, rays and skates) within each of the 22 coastal states of the Mediterranean region. Across those countries – stretching from Spain and Morocco in the west to Israel, Lebanon and Syria in the east – the researchers identified more than 200 measures that concern elasmobranchs in some ...

Trametinib, a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK) inhibitor, reduces mortality and morbidity in children with severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) caused by pathogenic variants in the RAS/MAPK pathway, according to a study published today in JACC: Basic to Translational Science. The study provides strong evidence for personalized treatment targeting the underlying genetic causes of RASopathies, a group of rare disorders that often lead to life-threatening cardiac complications.  “Our findings represent a breakthrough in the treatment of HCM in children, particularly those suffering from severe forms of the disease due to genetic variants in the RAS/MAPK ...

Genome editing with CRISPR-Cas is often associated with the induction of mutations. However, a team of researchers from the Swiss University of Lausanne now shows that it can also be used to repair natural mutations. All living organisms mutate, which is a major driver of biodiversity and evolution. Humans have been domesticating plants for thousands of years, by selecting mutations that lead to favorable characteristics such as larger or more numerous fruits. However, this process often caused the ...

For a long time, an ultrafast laser has been applied as a point-typed energy source to trigger various material modifications, and the profile of light intensity is mainly considered a Gaussian type. Therefore, the actual morphology and evolution of the light field in the focal volume have been overlooked. In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, researchers indicates that the 3D spatial distribution of the light field at the focus can possess finer structures and is tunable, which offers a novel strategy for highly controllable micro-nano fabrication with more degrees of freedom beyond conventional point-by-point optical modification. It is proposed and experimentally demonstrated ...

A research team led by Prof. WAN Yinhua at the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has recently developed an innovative mix-charged nanofiltration (NF) membrane featuring horizontal charge distribution, designed specifically for wastewater treatment. This novel membrane exhibits remarkable salt permeation and organic matter retention capabilities as well as antifouling properties, making it particularly effective for treating high-salinity organic wastewater. The findings ...

Working out the kinks of mating in the animal kingdom helps to gain insights into the survival of species. Among animals that have multiple partners who deposit eggs outside their body, such as most fish, the males release sperm several times a day, but producing these gametes requires energy and time. Osaka Metropolitan University experts on fish behavior have recently uncovered a daily mating capacity for medaka. In findings published in Royal Society Open Science, Graduate School of Science Specially Appointed Dr. Yuki Kondo, Specially Appointed Professor Masanori Kohda, and Professor Satoshi Awata detailed the effects of continuous mating by medaka ...

People who drink coffee in the morning have a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a lower overall mortality risk compared to all-day coffee drinkers, according to research published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Wednesday).   The research was led by Dr Lu Qi, HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and Professor at the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. He said: “Research so far suggests that drinking coffee doesn’t raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, and it ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The majority of low-income single mothers in Oregon who rely on federal cash assistance around the time of childbirth are in the program for less than a year, suggesting they’re using it as a form of paid family leave, Oregon State University research shows. The first-of-its-kind study has important implications in the state, which in 2023 established a taxpayer-funded paid family leave program, and throughout the United States as poverty has a particularly high incidence among young children. “Understanding how mothers ...

A study co-led by UCLA scientists has found targeting a protein called endocan and its related signaling pathway could be a promising new approach for treating glioblastoma, an aggressive and lethal type of brain cancer. The team of researchers discovered that endocan, which is produced by endothelial cells lining blood vessels in the tumor, activates PDGFRA, a receptor on glioblastoma cells that drives tumor growth and makes the cancer resistant to standard therapies such as radiation. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, suggests a path toward the development of therapies that specifically inhibit ...

A new study, co-led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher, set out to identify the most effective strategies for helping people quit vaping. The findings, published today in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, suggest that varenicline, a prescription medication often used to help people stop smoking, and text message-based interventions can help people quit.   “This is an area of research that is in its infancy, but is growing rapidly and organically from people who vape asking about help to quit vaping,” says senior author Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, assistant professor of health policy and management in the School ...

Regular physical activity before a cancer diagnosis may lower the risks of both disease progression and death, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And even relatively low levels of physical activity may be advantageous, the findings indicate. There is compelling evidence that physical activity has a key part to play in lowering the risk of death from cancer, but the evidence isn’t as conclusive for its role in disease progression, explain the researchers. To explore this further, they analysed anonymised data from the Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS), linked to the Vitality health promotion programme. The DHMS is the ...

Basking too long in a sauna may put bathers at risk of heat stroke, particularly if they haven’t drunk enough water beforehand, warn doctors in the journal BMJ Case Reports, after treating a woman whose condition required admission to hospital. Although relatively rare, heat stroke can be life threatening, even in the absence of various underlying risk factors, such as heart, lung, or neurological disease, and heavy drinking or taking a cocktail of prescription meds, they point out. Heat stroke is defined as a sharp increase in core body temperature above ...

A new study from the University of Adelaide and The Australian National University (ANU) has outlined the first genomic evidence of early migration from New Guinea into the Wallacea, an archipelago containing Timor-Leste and hundreds of inhabited eastern Indonesian islands. The study, published in PNAS, addresses major gaps in the human genetic history of the Wallacean Archipelago and West Papuan regions of Indonesia – a region with abundant genetic and linguistic diversity that is comparable to the Eurasian ...

Children and young people with high levels of mental health needs are struggling to receive the help they need, or to have their difficulties recognised, according to a new study. The STADIA trial, which is published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, was led by experts from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, and was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The large study, which spans different parts of England, involved 1,225 children and young people with emotional difficulties who had been referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for help, and followed them up over 18 months to see ...

MADISON — How and when did dinosaurs first emerge and spread across the planet more than 200 million years ago? That question has for decades been a source of debate among paleontologists faced with fragmented fossil records. The mainstream view has held that the reptiles emerged on the southern portion of the ancient supercontinent Pangea called Gondwana millions of years before spreading to the northern half named Laurasia.             But now, a newly described dinosaur whose fossils were uncovered by University of Wisconsin–Madison paleontologists is challenging ...

-With images-   Scientists at Durham University have developed a theoretical framework to predict the efficacy of quenching of electrical pulses in excitable media, such as those found in the human heart.   This breakthrough could significantly accelerate the development of more efficient defibrillation techniques for treating cardiac arrhythmias.   The study, published in Physical Review E, addresses a longstanding challenge in understanding how stable excitation waves in systems like cardiac tissue can be effectively neutralised through small changes.   These electrical waves, when irregular, are thought to underly serious conditions such as fibrillation, ...

Around the globe day and night, the microelectronics behind much of modern technology help run computers, medical devices and state-of-the-art instruments that power scientific discoveries. But all of that technology consumes energy, and adding artificial intelligence to the mix increases our energy needs dramatically. Some experts caution that this pace of energy usage is unsustainable. To tackle this challenge, the Department of Energy (DOE) has announced funding $179 million for three Microelectronics ...

Researchers from Southern Methodist University and University of Michigan published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines platforms’ A-B testing of online ads and uncovers significant limitations that can create misleading conclusions about ad performance. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Where A-B Testing Goes Wrong: How Divergent Delivery Affects What Online Experiments Cannot (and Can) Tell You About How Customers Respond to Advertising” and is authored by Michael Braun and Eric M. Schwartz. Consider a landscaping company whose designs focus ...

A recent study analyzing data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) found that past-year recreational ketamine use among adults has increased dramatically since 2015, including significant shifts in associations with depression and sociodemographic characteristics such as race, age and education status. Ketamine use has shown promise in clinical trials therapy for several mental illnesses, including treatment-resistant depression, and the new research suggests that ongoing monitoring of recreational use trends is crucial to balancing these ...

A study of Chinese agriculture recommends planting areas currently growing maize and rapeseed with alternative crops to reduce environmental costs while maximizing food production as the climate changes.  Chinese food production has nearly doubled since the 1980s, mainly thanks to intensified nutrient usage and irrigation. Given that China’s demand for food is forecast to increase further, Qi Guan and colleagues modeled the country’s agricultural system under varying climate change scenarios in the 21st century, using a dynamic global vegetation model. The authors created scenarios ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – In a large-animal model study, researchers have found that heart attack recovery is aided by injection of heart muscle cell spheroids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, or hiPSCs, that overexpress cyclin D2 and are knocked out for human leukocyte antigen classes I and II. This research, published in the journal Circulation Research, used a pig model of heart attacks. Pig hearts more closely resemble the human heart in size and physiology, and thus have a higher clinical relevance to human disease, compared to studies in mice. University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers, led by Jianyi “Jay” ...

Recycling takes place in our cells at all times: in a process called autophagy, cell components that are no longer needed are enclosed by membranes and broken down into their basic building blocks. This vital process prevents the formation of harmful aggregates and makes nutrients available again. A research team co-led by Prof. Dr. Claudine Kraft from the CIBSS Cluster of Excellence at the University of Freiburg and Dr. Florian Wilfling from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt has now discovered the conditions necessary for autophagy to start. They were also able ...

New Haven, Conn. — If you like the smell of spring roses, the sounds of summer birdsong, and the colors of fall foliage, you have the stabilization of the ozone layer to thank for it. Located in the stratosphere, where it shields the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, the ozone layer plays a key role in preserving the planet’s biodiversity. And now we may have a better idea of why that took so long — more than 2 billion years — to happen. According to a new, Yale-led study, ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, January 7, 2025 Contact: Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu  Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu  ##  More than half of US college students experienced alcohol-related harms caused by others, according to the first national probability-based survey of such harms conducted in 20 years. The findings, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review in December, shed light on how others’ drinking affects students’ health, academics, and safety.  “Our research ...

URBANA, Ill.– Food drying is a common process for preserving many types of food, including fruits and meat; however, drying can alter the food’s quality and nutritional value. In recent years, researchers have developed precision techniques that use optical sensors and AI to facilitate more efficient drying. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign discusses three emerging smart drying techniques, providing practical information for the food industry. “With traditional drying systems, you need to remove samples to monitor the process. But with smart drying, or precision drying, you can continuously ...