Two years ago, Chance Ward began opening boxes of horse remains that had been shipped to the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History from other institutions around the country. What he saw made his heart sink. At the time, Ward was a master’s student in Museum and Field Studies at CU Boulder. The researcher, who had grown up riding horses, was taking part in a large-scale study exploring the history of these iconic animals in the American West. But when he looked inside the packages, he sometimes found ...

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers have spent countless hours in videoconferences—now a fixture of office life. As more people work and live remotely, videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, FaceTime, Slack, and Discord are a huge part of socializing among family and friends as well. Some exchanges are more enjoyable and flow better than others, raising questions about how the medium of online meetings could be improved in order to raise both efficiency and job satisfaction.  A team of New York University scientists has developed an AI model that can identify aspects ...

(New York, NY – March 10) – For the third straight year, The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked the top hospital in New York State on Newsweek/Statista’s “World’s Best Hospitals” list for 2025. The Mount Sinai Hospital moved up to No. 7 in the United States and No. 19 in the world on the same list. Hospitals within the Mount Sinai Hospital Health System continue to make gains on the global and local stage, with Mount Sinai Morningside and Mount Sinai West ranked at no. 4 in New York City and no. 8 statewide on the same list, which recognizes and ranks 600 leading hospitals across the nation as well as the top hospitals from 30 countries. “These honors ...

EMBARGOED: FOR RELEASE 7:01 A.M. (ET), MARCH 10, 2025    Tempe, Ariz., March 10, 2025 – Life with a dog is a matter of give and take. Especially when it comes to communication. With no common human-dog language, our ability to communicate relies on understanding and reading our pet, and vice versa. That process can seem seamless. You give your dog a treat, you look into her eyes and she says “I am delighted to have that cookie.” With a slight wag of her tail, she accepts the treat ...

Whales are not just big, they’re a big deal for healthy oceans. When they poop, whales move tons of nutrients from deep water to the surface. Now new research shows that whales also move tons of nutrients thousands of miles—in their urine. In 2010, scientists revealed that whales, feeding at depth and pooping at the surface, provide a critical resource for plankton growth and ocean productivity. Today, a new University of Vermont-led study shows that whales also carry huge quantities ...

University of Florida researchers are addressing a critical gap in medical genetic research — ensuring it better represents and benefits people of all backgrounds.  Their work, led by Kiley Graim, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, focuses on improving human health by addressing "ancestral bias" in genetic data, a problem that arises when most research is based on data from a single ancestral group. This bias limits advancements in precision medicine, Graim said, and leaves large portions ...

It is widely believed that Earth’s atmosphere has been rich in oxygen for about 2.5 billion years due to a relatively rapid increase in microorganisms capable of performing photosynthesis. Researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, provide a mechanism to explain precursor oxygenation events, or “whiffs,” which may have opened the door for this to occur. Their findings suggest volcanic activity altered conditions enough to accelerate oxygenation, and the whiffs are an indication of this taking place. Take a deep breath. Do you ever think about the air entering your lungs? It’s ...

Water is unique. It is one of the only substances that can exist in nature as a solid, liquid and gas at the same time under ambient conditions (think of solid ice over a pond, which is liquid underneath while storm clouds float overhead). It is also one of the only substances whose solid form is less dense than its liquid — this is why ice floats. Now scientists from the University of California San Diego have uncovered a key finding to another unique property: at high pressure and low temperature, liquid water separates into two distinct liquid phases — one high-density ...

The Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) became the second open-access peer-reviewed scholarly title to make use of the hosted portals service provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): an international network and data infrastructure aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.  The Biodiversity Data Journal portal, hosted on the GBIF platform, is to support biodiversity data use and engagement at national, institutional, regional and thematic scales by facilitating access and reuse of data by users with various expertise ...

Gene mutations caused by exposure to certain chemical compounds have been linked to the development of gliomas, the most common type of malignant brain tumor. New research reveals that among patients with gliomas, these mutations are more common in firefighters than in individuals with other occupations. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The gene mutations of interest in this study make up a mutational pattern or “signature” that other investigators previously associated with exposure to haloalkanes, which ...

With soaring egg prices and ongoing bird flu headlines, many parents are uncertain about the risks and facts surrounding the virus, a national poll suggests. Most parents say they don’t know if there have been cases of bird flu in their state, and less than half feel that they are able to find accurate and current information about it, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s health. “Many parents may hear about bird flu in the news but don’t feel well-informed or know if they should be taking action to protect their families,” said Mott Poll Co-Director Sarah Clark, M.P.H. “This ...

A University of Oxford study has determined that the widely used tools available to businesses for assessing their biodiversity impacts depend on broad assumptions and can have large uncertainties that are poorly understood or communicated. If used appropriately, they can be powerful tools to help guide effective action to address biodiversity loss – but if not, they can lead to misguided effort and can be insufficient for robust biodiversity strategy design. Businesses across a range of industries and sectors are under growing pressure to develop biodiversity strategies that not only minimise their negative impacts but ...

Politicians learned this lesson a long time ago: a well-placed joke is a valuable tool for capturing public attention and building trust. Scientists, however, are much more reluctant to use humor when engaging in science communication. They may fear that a lighthearted approach could make them seem less authoritative and, consequently, make scientific findings appear less credible. The good news, however, is that science itself seems to contradict this assumption. A new study led by Alexandra Lynn Frank, a ...

Krapivsky drew inspiration from the famous “secretary problem” or “optimal marriage problem”. In one of its many versions, a princess must choose her future husband from a pool of 100 candidates at a grand reception. However, strict rules apply: she may meet only one suitor at a time and has limited time to get to know him. At the end of each encounter, she must decide immediately whether to accept or reject the suitor. She cannot revisit previous candidates, nor can she ask any of them to wait while she considers others. How can the princess hope to make the best choice? The secret lies in a number: 37, to be precise (raise your hand if you ...

High demand for eel combined with decline in stock have resulted in soaring prices for this food item, which in many cultures, is considered a delicacy. This has fuelled a concern globally as the prized food item is now being illegally traded from Europe to Asia. Current research has focused on the critically endangered Anguilla anguilla, commonly known as the European eel. While its export outside the European Union is tightly regulated, large quantities of A. anguilla juveniles continue to be smuggled ...

Next-generation imaging technology is rapidly expanding beyond smartphones into intelligent devices, robotics, extended reality (XR) devices, healthcare, CCTV, and various other industries. At the core of these technological advances are highly efficient, ultra-compact image sensors that convert light signals into electrical signals. Image sensors capture and process visual information from objects and environments, enabling precise reconstruction of their shape, size, and spatial position. Currently, commercial image sensors are primarily based on silicon semiconductors. ...

A new study examining the effects of sleep patterns and shift work on the immune system has found that sleep debt and night shifts increase the risk of several common infections in nurses.  Modern society relies on shift work, which requires employees to work outside of traditional hours. While essential in sectors such as healthcare, growing evidence suggests that these work patterns may negatively impact worker’s health.  This study, which analysed self-reported data from 1,335 Norwegian nurses, found that shift work – particularly night shifts – was associated with a higher risk of several infections, including the ...

CHICAGO — A new scientific study provides many new insights into the biology of the prehistoric gigantic shark, Megalodon or megatooth shark, which lived nearly worldwide 15-3.6 million years ago. Paleobiology professor Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University led the study along with 28 other shark, fossil, and vertebrate anatomy experts around the globe. Findings from the study will be published in the journal “Palaeontologia Electronica.” Formally called Otodus megalodon, it is primarily known only from its serrated teeth, vertebrae, ...

The megalodon has long been imagined as an enormous great white shark, but new research suggests that perception is all wrong. The study finds the prehistoric hunter had a much longer body—closer in shape to a lemon shark or even a large whale. The study team, which included researchers from University of California, Riverside and across the globe, used a novel approach to estimate the shark’s total body length, moving beyond traditional methods that rely primarily on tooth size. By examining megalodon’s vertebral column and comparing ...

Research Highlights: Increased physical activity including taking more daily steps was linked to a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease among postmenopausal women with a history of cancer. The study found that engaging in one hour per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity reduced participants’ risk of death from any cause by 40% and risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 60%. Each additional 2,500 steps per day for a participant was associated with a 34% reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Note: The study featured in this news release is a research abstract. Abstracts presented ...

A recent study published in Engineering delves into the latest progress in intracortical neural interface technologies for freely moving animals. These interfaces, which establish a connection between the nervous system and external devices, have the potential to revolutionize neuroscience research and clinical medicine. The researchers, led by Xinxia Cai, Zhaojie Xu and Yirong Wu, analyzed four key technological directions for ideal implantable neural interface devices: higher spatial density, improved biocompatibility, enhanced multimodal detection of electrical/neurotransmitter signals, and more effective neural modulation. In terms of high spatial density, microelectrode ...

A recent paper published in the journal Engineering delves into the future of artificial intelligence (AI) beyond large language models (LLMs). LLMs have made remarkable progress in multimodal tasks, yet they face limitations such as outdated information, hallucinations, inefficiency, and a lack of interpretability. To address these issues, researchers explore three key directions: knowledge empowerment, model collaboration, and model co-evolution. Knowledge empowerment aims to integrate external knowledge into LLMs. This can be achieved through various methods, including integrating knowledge ...

Tokyo, Japan – The XRISM collaboration have discovered flows of hot gas in the core of the Centaurus Cluster. By comparing state-of-the-art X-ray measurements from the XRISM satellite with numerical simulations, they showed this is evidence for collisions between galaxy clusters, causing gas inside to “slosh”. This solves the longstanding mystery of how cluster cores stay hot, and sheds light on how our universe continues to evolve.   Astronomers have long envisioned how vast gravitational forces ...

Incidents of children in the U.S. being poisoned by the synthetic opioid fentanyl “increased and became more severe”, a new study reveals. Launched today as Congress continues to review the HALT Fentanyl Act, the research follows an analysis of nonfatal fentanyl pediatric (aged 0-19) exposures reported to poison centers in 49 U.S. states from 2015 through to 2023. In total, some 3,009 cases were detailed across the eight-year period. In 2023 alone, 44.6% were life-threatening incidents in which there was extreme harm ...

Humans may not be the only ones who aid their friends when they’re hurt. Mice may do it, too, as shown by a new research study led by scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC published recently in Science. Scientists have been trying to understand why social mammals appear to help injured members of their species. There are numerous factors that determine empathetic behavior and social bonding in mammals, said Li Zhang, the principal investigator of the study and professor of physiology and neuroscience ...