New research published in the academic journal Environmental Research Letters reveals that artisan gold mining in the southern Peruvian Amazon has caused more destruction to carbon-rich peatlands in the past two years than in the previous three decades combined, posing a serious threat to the environment and climate.    For decades, small-scale gold mining has thrived along the rivers of the Madre de Dios region, driven by gold frequently found in the surrounding soils. While the deforestation caused by mining has already resulted in significant carbon emissions, scientists have now discovered that the damage ...

Cost, technical performance and environmental impact – these are the three most important aspects for a new type of LED technology to have a broad commercial impact on society. This has been demonstrated by researchers at Linköping University in a study published in Nature Sustainability. “Perovskite LEDs are cheaper and easier to manufacture than traditional LEDs, and they can also produce vibrant and intense colours if used in screens. I’d say that this is the next generation ...

A team of researchers has rediscovered a frog species which has not been seen in more than 130 years. First described in 1902, Alsodes vittatus had evaded detection since then, despite multiple search efforts. The researchers discovered two populations of the frog at the southeastern end of the ancient Hacienda San Ignacio de Pemehue in La Araucanía Region, Chile. The rediscovery is an important milestone for South American herpetology and the conservation of biodiversity in the southern cone. The frog Alsodes vittatus is an elusive creature – described in 1902, it managed to go undetected for more than a century. Now, after a decade of investigation, a research team ...

Earth is absorbing more sunlight and trapping more heat than it releases into space, causing our planet to warm up at an increasing rate. New research shows that cloudy areas over oceans are reflecting less sunlight to space than before, adding to heating from rising greenhouse gas levels and causing climate change to accelerate. The study, published today (Tuesday, 11 March) in Environmental Research Letters, found this dimming effect was occurring in several regions, including cloudy areas off the coasts of California and Namibia, ...

A more affordable, lower-risk polio vaccine is on the horizon, research led by the University of Leeds has found.   Researchers have taken a major step towards producing a more affordable and lower-risk polio vaccine using virus-like particles (VLPs). These particles mimic the outer protein shell of poliovirus, but are empty inside. This means there is no risk of infection, but the VLP still causes the immune system to respond.  Now, a research project led by Professor David Rowlands, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of Leeds, has tested the effectiveness of using different yeast, insect, mammalian and ...

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – Firearm-related injuries are the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, yet research on firearm injury prevention receives significantly less federal funding compared to other major pediatric health concerns. A new paper published in Pediatrics underscores the critical need for an enhanced federal investment in firearm injury prevention research to address the rising rates of fatalities and injuries. “Expanding the field of firearm injury ...

The mass extinction that ended the Permian geological epoch, 252 million years ago, wiped out most animals living on Earth. Huge volcanoes erupted, releasing 100,000 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This destabilized the climate and the carbon cycle, leading to dramatic global warming, deoxygenated oceans, and mass extinction. However, many plants survived, leaving behind fossils which scientists have used to model a dramatic 10 degree rise in global temperatures. “While fossilized spores and pollen of plants from the Early Triassic do not provide strong evidence for a sudden and catastrophic ...

Once described by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance,” quantum entanglement may now seem less intimidating in light of new research findings. Osaka Metropolitan University physicists have developed new, simpler formulas to quantify quantum entanglement in strongly correlated electron systems and applied them to study several nanoscale materials. Their results offer fresh perspectives into quantum behaviors in materials with different physical characteristics, contributing to advances in quantum technologies. Quantum entanglement is a unique phenomenon ...

Toronto, ON – A new study published this week in Child Maltreatment found that in comparison to those who had not been abused in childhood, adults who had experienced both childhood physical and sexual abuse had approximately double the odds of physical and mental health conditions, including angina, arthritis, asthma, COPD, heart attack, depression, and disability -- even after considering respondents’ age, race, income, and health behaviors, as well as obesity. Those who had been sexually abused, but not physically abused, were 55% ...

Energy efficiency is crucial for sustainability, yet vast amounts of low-temperature waste heat remain unused in industrial processes. Now, researchers from Japan have investigated erythritol slurry as a promising heat transfer medium for thermal storage and transport. By analyzing its flow behavior and non-Newtonian properties, they developed a predictive equation for its rheological characteristics. Their findings could help guide the design of industrial waste heat recovery systems, advancing energy efficiency and carbon neutrality. Energy efficiency is one of the most important pillars of our global sustainability goals. Simply put, one of the most straightforward and effective ...

Osaka, Japan – Vaccine effectiveness relies on creating a strong antibody response that can be reactivated to fight future infections. Now, researchers from Japan report that antibody-producing cells are destined for longevity from the moment they are born. In a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, a multi-institutional research team led by Osaka University reveals that a key cell population involved in long-term immunity to infection is programmed early in its lifecycle to travel to protected sites in the body. Plasma cells originate in lymphoid ...

Ann Arbor, March 11, 2025 – An analysis of the global burden and temporal trends of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias (ADODs) reveals significant cross-country inequalities associated with a series of sociodemographic development-related risk factors, such as education, income, fertility, and health expenditure. The new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, calls for the development of targeted prevention and control strategies in different countries. The burden of ADODs has risen globally over the past three decades. The authors of this first systematic and comprehensive global study analyzing ...

What do albatrosses searching for food, stock market fluctuations, and the dispersal patterns of seeds in the wind have in common? They all exhibit a type of movement pattern called Lévy walk, which is characterized by a flurry of short, localized movements interspersed with occasional, long leaps. For living organisms, this is an optimal strategy for balancing the exploitation of nearby resources with the exploration of new opportunities when the distribution of resources is sparse and unknown. Originally described in the context of particles drifting through liquid, Lévy walk has been found to accurately describe a very wide range of phenomena, from cold atom dynamics to ...

CAM is proposed to highlight the class-related activation regions for an image classification network, where feature positions related to the specific object class are activated and have higher scores while other regions are suppressed and have lower scores. For specific visual tasks, CAM can be used to infer the object bounding boxes in weakly-supervised object location(WSOL) and generate pseudo-masks of training images in weakly-supervised semantic segmentation (WSSS). Therefore, obtaining the high-quality CAM is very important to improve the recognition performance of weakly supervised pixel-wise ...

Fukuoka, Japan — Medical researchers in Japan have discovered a way to predict a potentially life-threatening side effect of cancer immunotherapy before it occurs. By analyzing cerebrospinal fluid collected pre-treatment, researchers at Kyushu University identified specific proteins associated with a damaging immune response that can affect the central nervous system after therapy. Their findings, published in Leukemia on 11 March, 2025, could make immunotherapy cancer treatment safer by helping doctors identify high-risk patients in advance, ...

Juveniles grow up hearing a multitude of adages about life, such as: “True friends are forever,” “Fake it ’til you make it,” and “Change is a good thing.” However, these adages — and other life advice about behavior in society — are difficult to process for juveniles who were incarcerated at a young age and served long sentences, says J.Z. Bennett, a criminologist at the University of Cincinnati whose research focuses on prison reform. “Spending decades in prison removes individuals from social structures and sources of informal social control, such as education, employment, marriage and parenting,” he writes ...

Conservation scientists from UNSW Sydney have used DNA technology to identify feral cats as the primary predators responsible for the deaths of reintroduced native animals at two conservation sites in South Australia. The finding fits in with research data that suggests feral cats have killed more native animals than any other feral predators in Australia, and are believed to be responsible for two thirds of mammal extinctions since European settlement. But in a study published recently in the ...

After taking the helm of Plant Physiology 2022, Yunde Zhao's celebrated term as Editor-in-Chief of the journal, during which he introduced changes that saw the journal flourish, will come to a close on December 31, 2026. The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) is seeking a prominent plant scientist to assume the duties and responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief of Plant Physiology effective January 1, 2027. ASPB’s EIC Search Committee is charged with evaluating candidates for the position and invites members of the plant science community to participate in the process by nominating someone who they ...

Researchers from the University of Michigan are hoping their new study will inspire some Americans to rethink their relationship with laundry. Because, no matter how you spin it, clothes dryers use a lot of comparatively costly energy when air works for free. Household dryers in the U.S. consume about 3% of our residential energy budget, about six times that used by washing machines. Collectively, dryers cost more than $7 billion to power each year in this country, and generating that energy emits the equivalent of more than ...

This new article published in Genes & Diseases highlights the critical role of tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) in digestive tract diseases, positioning these molecules as potential biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and targeted therapies. The comprehensive review explores the biogenesis, classification, and biological functions of tsRNAs, shedding light on their influence over cellular processes such as translation regulation, epigenetic modification, and protein interactions.   Recent findings emphasize the significance of tsRNAs in both tumor and non-tumor digestive diseases, demonstrating their ability to regulate cell proliferation, ...

Does triggering certain emotions increase willingness to pay for sustainably produced food? In social media, emotional messages are often used to influence users' consumer behaviour. An international research team including the University of Göttingen investigated the short- and medium-term effects of such content on consumers' willingness to pay for bars of chocolate. They found that in the short term, provoking certain emotions increases willingness to pay, but the effect weakens after a very short time. The results were published in the journal Q Open.   Food ...

Prostate cancer statistics can look scary: 34,250 U.S. deaths in 2024. 1.4 million new cases worldwide in 2022.   Dr. Bruce Montgomery, a UW Medicine oncologist, hopes that patients won’t see these numbers and just throw up their hands in fear or resignation.   “Being diagnosed with prostate cancer is not a death knell,” said Montgomery, senior author of a literature and trial review that appeared in JAMA today. Montgomery is the clinical director of Genitourinary Oncology at Fred Hutch Cancer ...

  A new review article published in Genes & Diseases sheds light on the complex molecular mechanisms through which tumor-infiltrating immune cells regulate endometrial carcinoma (EC). As one of the most prevalent gynecological cancers, EC continues to challenge researchers and clinicians due to its dynamic interaction with the immune microenvironment. This comprehensive review presents crucial insights into how immune cells influence tumor progression and how immune evasion strategies enable cancer cells to thrive. The tumor microenvironment ...

Innovative insights into the role of ferroptosis, a unique form of programmed cell death, are reshaping the landscape of disease treatment. This growing field highlights how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can effectively modulate ferroptosis, offering novel therapeutic approaches for various conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and organ injuries. The powerful bioactive compounds in TCM have demonstrated the ability to regulate iron metabolism, lipid peroxidation, and redox balance, positioning them as key players in advancing modern medicine.   With its rich history of holistic ...

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. EAST LANSING, Mich. – A team of researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan found new insights on the timing of prenatal stress and its effect on infant stress reactivity and temperament — including differences between genders. The study, published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, is the first to examine weekly stress across 27 weeks of pregnancy to pinpoint when it most affects a newborn’s stress response and temperament — two measures that indicate infant biobehavioral reactivity. “Prenatal ...