Using English as the language of instruction in higher education has a marked negative impact on learning outcomes when it is not the students’ first language, according to a new study from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. When 2,000 Swedish students were divided up into English-language and Swedish-language versions of an introductory course in programming, those students who were taught in English obtained much worse results, and more dropped out of the course prematurely. English is increasingly used as a global language of instruction in higher education, known as English Medium Instruction or ...

TORONTO, Sept. 14, 2023 – Most wild bees are solitary, but one tiny species of carpenter bees fastidiously cares for and raises their offspring, an act that translates into huge benefits to the developing bee’s microbiome, development and health, found York University researchers. Not unlike the positive affect human mothers can have on their offspring, the maternal care of these carpenter bees (Ceratina calcarata) staves off an overabundance of harmful fungi, bacteria, viruses and parasites in the earliest stage of development. Without maternal care the pathogen load of these ...

To obtain the biggest cherry harvest, trees should be pollinated by both honey bees and mason bees. A new study led by a researcher at the University of Gothenburg shows yet another benefit of biodiversity. Like many other fruit trees, most sweet cherry cultivars depend on cross-pollination to produce their fruit. This means that there need to be several different cultivars of sweet cherry trees in an orchard for the bees to transport pollen from one to another. “Sweet cherry trees are usually planted in alternate rows of different cultivars. In some cases, you can put different cultivars in the same row, but ...

Ahead of the UN’s SDG Summit (18-19 September), Earth4All, an international team of economists and scientists, and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), unveil groundbreaking research showing that policymakers can ensure the implementation of SDGs by 2050. The report ‘SDGs for All: Strategic scenarios’ equips policymakers with practical solutions designed to accelerate SDG implementation and to respond to the planetary emergency. It concludes that policymakers can step up the implementation of the SDGs by 2030 and beyond ...

New research published in the scientific journal Addiction has found that the proportion of US overdose deaths involving both fentanyl and stimulants has increased more than 50-fold since 2010, from 0.6% (235 deaths) in 2010 to 32.3% (34,429 deaths) in 2021.  By 2021, stimulants (such as cocaine and methamphetamine) had become the most common drug class found in fentanyl-involved overdoses in every US state.  This rise in fentanyl/stimulant fatalities constitutes the ‘fourth wave’ in the US’s ...

New UCLA-led research has found that the proportion of US overdose deaths involving both fentanyl and stimulants has increased more than 50-fold since 2010, from 0.6% (235 deaths) in 2010 to 32.3% (34,429 deaths) in 2021.    By 2021, stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine had become the most common drug class found in fentanyl-involved overdoses in every US state.  This rise in fentanyl/stimulant fatalities constitutes the ‘fourth wave’ in the US’s long-running opioid overdose crisis –the death toll of which continues to rise precipitously.    “We’re now seeing ...

Most students who complete manufacturing-related credentials in Ohio do not end up employed in manufacturing in the state, highlighting a challenge that faces policymakers as they push to create more U.S. manufacturing jobs, according to a new RAND Corporation report.   Among those who earned a manufacturing-related credential from a public postsecondary institute in Ohio from 2006 to 2019, fewer than 40% worked in manufacturing in the state within one year after completing their education.   Wages are not a likely contributor to the trend. Students who enter other fields after completing a manufacturing-related credential earn less than their peers who pursued ...

A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a groundbreaking advancement in nanomaterials by successfully developing a highly efficient electrocatalyst which can enhance the generation of hydrogen significantly through electrochemical water splitting.   This major breakthrough has great application potential for the clean energy industry.  Professor Zhang Hua, Herman Hu Chair Professor of Nanomaterials at CityU, and his team have developed an electrocatalyst by using the transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanosheets with unconventional crystal phases as supports. The electrocatalyst exhibits superior activity and excellent ...

Three quarters of trusts in England that responded to a survey by The BMJ are still reliant on paper patient notes and drug charts, despite progress towards electronic records and prescribing. The results came in just as an expert panel convened by a House of Commons committee concluded that the UK government had failed to meet a key target to eliminate paper prescribing in hospitals and to introduce digital or electronic prescribing across the entire NHS by 2024. Jo Best, freelance journalist and doctor, ...

The UK National Clean Maritime Research Hub (UK-MaRes Hub) aims to accelerate the decarbonisation and elimination of air pollution from maritime activity in ports and at sea. As well as environmental impacts, the Hub will also focus on the potential economic and social benefits of transitioning to a clean maritime future.  The UK-MaRes Hub was announced today (Thursday 14 September) by the UK Government’s Maritime Minister, Baroness Vere of Norbiton, during London International Shipping Week. She was joined by the Director of the UK-MaRes Hub, Professor Tony Roskilly, Chair of Energy Systems in the Department of Engineering at Durham University. The Hub will carry out ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, SETEMBER 13, 2023 MINNEAPOLIS – Nearly one in five people on Medicare travel 50 or more miles one way to see a neurologist, a doctor who diagnoses and treats diseases of the brain and nervous system, according to research published in the September 13, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). The study, funded by the American Academy of Neurology, found that people who require specialized neurologic care for diseases such as brain cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS) ...

In a trio of papers appearing in Nature on Sept. 13, 2023, the researchers offer the most comprehensive look yet at how malnutrition affects growth in the first two years of life, underscoring a devastating reality for millions of children in the Global South, particularly Asia. In 2022, more than one in five children around the world – nearly 150 million – did not get enough calories to grow normally, and more than 45 million showed signs of wasting, or weighing too little for their height. More than a million children die each year as a consequence of wasting and more than 250,000 die from stunting. People who experienced ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Robust navigation is both critical for survival and dauntingly complex: Think of the speed and agility of an airborne fly. A multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Itai Cohen, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, will use the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to study how the brain forms a coherent representation from multisensory information, corrects for errors from perturbations and generates robust behaviors. The project, supported by a $6.5 million grant from the NIH Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, has potential for insight into human neurological function. “We are gearing up to understand how ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Ecologists have demonstrated that the genetic material that species shed into their environments can reveal not only the presence of the species but also a broad range of information about the genetics of whole populations — information that can help scientists trace the source of a new invasive population as well as prevent further invasion. The advancement in environmental DNA (eDNA) also opens new possibilities for protecting endangered and vulnerable species. “For the benefit of biodiversity conservation, we’re ...

During the Later Stone Age in what is now Namibia, rock artists imbued so much detail into their engravings of human and animal prints that current-day Indigenous trackers could identify which animals’ prints they were depicting, as well as the animals’ general age and sex. Andreas Pastoors of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and colleagues report these findings in a new study published September 13 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Engravings of animal tracks and human footprints appear in numerous ...

People who use both tobacco and cannabis are more likely to report anxiety and depression than those who used tobacco only or those who used neither substance, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nhung Nguyen of the University of California, San Francisco, USA, and colleagues. Tobacco and cannabis are among the most commonly used substances worldwide, and their co-use has been on the rise amid the expanding legalization of cannabis. In the new study, the researchers analyzed data on the substance use and mental health of 53,843 US adults who participated in online surveys as part of the COVID-19 Citizens Health Study, which ...

Europeans may be more willing to help Ukrainian refugees than those from Syria or Somalia in part because they consider Ukrainians less threatening ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290335 Article Title: Emotions, perceived threat, prejudice, and attitudes towards helping Ukrainian, Syrian, and Somali asylum seekers Author Countries: UK Funding: The author received no specific funding for this work. END ...

Wikipedia charts the history of science, per study analyzing evolution of CRISPR-related articles ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290827 Article Title: Wikipedia as a tool for contemporary history of science: A case study on CRISPR Author Countries: France, Israel Funding: Thanks to the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation long term partnership, this work was partly supported by the LPI Research Fellowship, Université de Paris, INSERM U1284, to RAv and OB. RAv’s work was supported in part at the Technion by a fellowship of "The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities”. In either ...

Jail admissions even for minor court debt are common, per analysis of US county-level data from Texas, Wisconsin and Oklahoma ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290397 Article Title: Forgotten but not gone: A multi-state analysis of modern-day debt imprisonment Author Countries: USA Funding: This study was supported by a grant from Arnold Ventures (https://www.arnoldventures.org). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, ...

The California rush hour is spreading and easing with reduced peak congestion following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from 3,500 traffic sensors ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290534 Article Title: Rush hour-and-a-half: Traffic is spreading out post-lockdown Author Countries: USA Funding: SZ: This work was supported in part by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award DGE 2040434. MWBC received no specific funding for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, ...

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed small robotic devices that can change how they move through the air by "snapping" into a folded position during their descent. When these "microfliers" are dropped from a drone, they use a Miura-ori origami fold to switch from tumbling and dispersing outward through the air to dropping straight to the ground. To spread out the fliers, the researchers control the timing of each device's transition using a few methods: an onboard pressure ...

In a survey of cat owners, those who fed their cats vegan diets tended to report better health outcomes for their pets than those who provided meat-based diets, though the differences were not statistically significant. Andrew Knight of the University of Winchester, UK, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 13. Many pet foods contain cooked meat as the primary protein source, but a growing number of available products use alternative protein sources, such as plants or fungi. Some veterinary professionals ...

In a study involving several wolves and dogs, both animals performed better at finding hidden food if they had observed the food being hidden by a person—suggesting that they remembered where the food was, and did not rely solely on scent to find it. Sebastian Vetter of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 13. Many species transmit important information through social learning, where one individual learns by observing ...

A trained detection dog found sea turtle nests in Florida more accurately and efficiently than humans, indicating potential for dog-assisted nest monitoring ### Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0290740 Article Title: Use of a scent-detection dog for sea turtle nest monitoring of three sea turtle species in Florida Author Countries: USA Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...

A new study updates the planetary boundary framework and shows human activities are increasingly impacting the planet and, thereby, increasing the risk of triggering dramatic changes in overall Earth conditions. For over 3 billion years, the interaction between life (represented by the planetary boundary, Biosphere Integrity) and climate have controlled the overall environmental conditions on Earth. Human activities, for example replacing nature with other land uses, changing the amount of water in rivers and in soil, the introduction of synthetic chemicals to the open environment, and the emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere ...