We all know that the early bird gets the worm, but new research shows they turn to something far more nutritious for their breakfast. Poo – either their own, or from other birds – provides them with essential nutrients, energy, and helps them adapt to new environments and seasonal variations, especially when they are developing. New research led by the University of South Australia and published in Biological Reviews explains how eating faeces (known as coprophagy) shapes wild birds’ digestive tracts (gut biota), enabling them to absorb lost or deficient nutrients and adjust to seasonal variations in food sources. This ...

The fertility of both female and male tsetse flies is affected by a single burst of hot weather, researchers at the University of Bristol and Stellenbosch University in South Africa  have found. The effects of a single heatwave were even felt in the offspring of heat exposed parents, with more daughters being born than sons. The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, helps explain why tsetse are declining in some parts of their range in Africa and has important implications for the disease they spread, particularly sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in cattle. Lead author ...

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists are developing a new light detection and ranging instrument to help gain a better understanding of space weather enveloping Earth. The new laser radar, or lidar, will be the third for the UAF Geophysical Institute. It will measure temperature and neutrally charged iron in the upper atmosphere at altitudes of 75 to 125 miles, where the mesosphere and thermosphere meet. Understanding the processes and influences at that altitude has become increasingly important as the proliferation of low-Earth orbit satellites continues and more nations send probes through ...

Image A protein engineering method using simple, cost-effective experiments and machine learning models can predict which proteins will be effective for a given purpose, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers. The method has far-reaching potential to assemble proteins and peptides for applications from industry tools to therapeutics. For instance, this technique can help speed up the development of stabilized peptides for treating diseases in ways that current medicines can't, including improving how exclusively antibodies bind to their targets in immunotherapy. "The rules that govern how proteins work, from sequence to structure to function, are ...

EL PASO, Texas (Mar. 12, 2024) – Burnout among health care workers is a well-documented problem that can exacerbate health disparities and limit access to care. Now, researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso are taking a creative approach in their search for a solution – a training program for providers that combines elements of art and science. The project will examine the impact of a movement-based and somatics cross-training intervention on health care providers in the Paso del ...

A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began traveling between the Asian and North American continents roughly 100 million years ago. The findings by an international team of scientists led by paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo were published Jan. 30 in the journal Geosciences. Fiorillo researched in Alaska while at Southern Methodist University. He is now executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. University ...

Recent experiments by psychologists at Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh shed new light on how we learn and how we remember our real-world experiences. The research, described in the March 12 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests that varying what we study and spacing out our learning over time can both be helpful for memory — it just depends on what we’re trying to remember. “Lots of prior research has shown that learning and ...

Encompassing over 16 000 km2 of towering mountains, long fiords, lush valleys, and massive ice caps, Agguttinni Territorial Park is a protected area on northern Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. This park, and all of Nunavut, is Inuit Nunangat – Inuit homeland in Canada – and the park protects sites and biodiversity stewarded by Inuit since time immemorial. Agguttinni means “where the prevailing wind occurs” in the Inuktitut local dialect. The park includes important bird areas, key habitats for polar bears and caribou, and numerous important Inuit cultural sites. It is very remote: no roads lead to it, and access ...

The chikungunya virus, transmitted by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes and responsible for more than 900 deaths in Brazil since it arrived around ten years ago, is capable of spreading through the blood, reaching multiple organs and crossing the blood-brain barrier, which protects the central nervous system. The mechanisms of action observed for the first time in fatal cases by a group of Brazilian, American and British researchers were reported in an article published on March 12 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. The findings reinforce the need ...

Are surgeons giving patients unrealistic expectations about recovery after robotic lung surgery? That’s what CU Department of Surgery faculty member Robert Meguid, M.D., MPH, and surgery resident Adam Dyas, M.D., set out to discover after realizing the guidance they were offering patients might be based on outdated or anecdotal information. “Traditionally, in surgery, we're taught to tell patients that they'll be back to normal from surgery within six weeks,” says Meguid, professor of cardiothoracic ...

ORLANDO – A team of researchers from the University of Central Florida and the University of Delaware’s Institute of Energy Conversion has received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Technologies Office to develop a novel metallization process that could improve the efficiency and lower the cost of solar cells, making solar energy more accessible to consumers. The metallization process produces the metal contacts that are placed on the surface of silicon solar cells to ...

The collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991 had social, political and economic effects worldwide. Among them was a suspected role in slowing human-generated methane emissions. Methane had been rising steadily in the atmosphere until about 1990. Atmospheric scientists theorized that economic collapse in the former USSR led to less oil and gas production, and thus a slowdown in the rise of global methane levels, which has since resumed. But new University of Washington research uses early satellite records to dispute that assumption. The study, published March 12 in the ...

A team of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrated that a light-duty passenger electric vehicle can be wirelessly charged at 100-kW with 96% efficiency using polyphase electromagnetic coupling coils with rotating magnetic fields. ORNL’s patented system transferred power to a Hyundai Kona EV across a five-inch airgap using electromagnetic fields, a process similar to the wireless charging of small consumer devices. “We’ve achieved the highest power density in the world for a wireless charging system for this class of vehicle,” ORNL’s Omer Onar said. “Our ...

SAN FRANCISCO—A multidisciplinary research team at Gladstone Institutes, led by Senior Investigator Katie Pollard, PhD, has received $5 million in funding through a newly launched grant program designed to ignite a fresh wave of cancer discoveries using computational biology and artificial intelligence. The new Transformative Computational Biology Grant Program from the Biswas Family Foundation, in partnership with the nonpartisan think tank Milken Institute, is providing a total of nearly $14 million to five research groups. At Gladstone, the grant establishes ...

In the race to achieve a net-zero future based on clean energy, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have emerged as potential champions in the battle against climate change. However, as traditional synchronous generators are replaced by inverter-based renewable energy resources, the transition creates a low-inertia challenge within the existing power grids leading to stability and reliability concerns. Xingpeng Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston, is working on a solution that will allow seamless integration of renewable energy ...

Trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services constitutes an important topic in ecosystem management. The value of each service is substantially influenced by human activities, and changes will affect human decisions. Given the variability in trade-offs and synergies, the simultaneous optimization of multiple ecosystem services presents a considerable challenge. In a study published in Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, a team from the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, which has completed ...

“[...] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.” BUFFALO, NY- March 12, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as "Aging (Albany NY)" and "Aging-US" by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 4, entitled, “Associations of prenatal one-carbon metabolism nutrients and metals with epigenetic aging biomarkers at birth and in childhood in a US cohort.” Epigenetic gestational age acceleration (EGAA) at birth and epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) in childhood may be biomarkers of ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Gun manufacturers are appealing to women as “serious students” of firearms in their advertising – a shift in strategy over the last two decades that may be contributing to increased gun sales, a new study shows. From 2007 through 2022, women’s gun ownership rose from 16% to 22%, while the rate for men stayed roughly steady at 43%. And more than half of new gun owners in the United States between 2019 and 2021 were women. “Those trends in gun ownership ...

Adults 65 and older, who were hospitalized for a variety of medical conditions, had highly satisfying conversations about whether they wanted CPR, regardless of whether doctors used the terms “allow a natural death” or “do not resuscitate” for indicating no CPR, according to a pilot study by Rutgers Health researchers. The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, sought to determine the best language doctors could use when discussing a patient’s code ...

Building on its more than 70 years pioneering the study of fusion energy, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has added a new field to its research portfolio — quantum information science. On March 11, PPPL opened its new Quantum Diamond Lab (QDL), a space devoted to studying and refining the processes involved in using plasma, the electrically charged fourth state of matter, to create high-quality diamond material for quantum information science applications. Scientists around the ...

People with depression face an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, more women experience CVD following a depression diagnosis than men, according to a new study published today in JACC: Asia. The study investigates the connection between depression and CVD, shedding light on potential mechanisms that contribute to its sex-based differences and underscoring the importance of tailoring CVD prevention and management strategies according to sex-specific factors.   Depression is the third leading cause of morbidity worldwide. Prior research shows that it is associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular events, ...

Oak Brook, IL (March 12, 2024) – The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) is pleased to announce Lan Mi, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (Amherst, Massachusetts, USA), as the 2024 SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship Grant recipient. The SLAS grant will support Mi's research regarding the synthesis and applications of fluorogenic RNA aptamers for extensive in vitro and in vivo investigations. It will also support her work in developing and assessing fluorogenic RNA-based sensors, employing high-throughput ...

A Texas A&M AgriLife animal nutritionist believes precision livestock management — utilizing an extra set of eyes and ears and a little artificial intelligence — can go a long way toward making today’s livestock operations more efficient. Computer monitors and cameras, along with artificial intelligence, are part of a precision livestock management system being researched by Luis Tedeschi, Ph.D., in the Texas A&M Department of Animal Science. (Michael Miller/Texas A&M AgriLife) Luis Tedeschi, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research Fellow and Chancellor EDGES Fellow in the Texas A&M ...

(Toronto, March 12, 2024) JMIR Publications is pleased to announce a new theme issue titled “Diversity in Dermatology” in JMIR Dermatology. The premier, peer-reviewed journal is indexed in Sherpa Romeo, Scopus, DOAJ, CABI, and PubMed Central/PubMed and is the official journal of the International Society of Digital Health in Dermatology (ISDHD).  Diversity plays a significant role in dermatology, influencing various aspects of health care delivery in community health. Current research consistently highlights the advantages of diversity in the health care sector in patient outcomes and dermatological research. JMIR Dermatology places a special emphasis on exchanging ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- More than 20 million Americans undergo colonoscopy screenings every year, and in many of those cases, doctors end up removing polyps that are 2 cm or larger and require additional care. This procedure has greatly reduced the overall incidence of colon cancer, but not without complications, as patients may experience gastrointestinal bleeding both during and after the procedure. In hopes of preventing those complications from occurring, researchers at MIT have developed a new gel, GastroShield, that can be sprayed onto the surgical sites through an endoscope. This gel forms a tough but flexible protective layer that ...