Tech

The recent extreme heat in the Western United States and Canada may seem remarkable now, but events like these are made more likely, and more severe, under climate change. The consequences are likely to be far-reaching, with overwhelmingly negative impacts on land and ocean ecosystems, biodiversity, food production and the built environment.

A team of the University of Barcelona has analysed for the first time what the dry and hot periods could be like in the area of the Pyrenees depending on different greenhouse emission scenarios. The results, published in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, show that under an intermediate scenario, where these emissions that accelerate the climate change could be limited, there would not be a rise in long-lasting dry episodes, but temperatures would rise during these periods.

Philadelphia, July 8, 2021 - Fifty-five percent of Midwest university students had tried a plant-based meat alternative and attributed this choice to the enjoyment of new food, curiosity about the products, and environmental concern, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.

Thyroid hormones are amino acid-based molecules produced by the thyroid gland. Involved in direct or indirect regulation of key metabolic pathways, these molecules play critical roles in the development and normal functioning of the body. The mechanism of how thyroid hormones exert their effect on each other as well as on other metabolic pathways is complex, but a two-way feedback loop is central to their biological activity.

As luck would have it, the air quality sensors that University of Utah researcher Daniel Mendoza and his colleagues installed in Park City, Utah in September 2019, hoping to observe how pollution rose and fell through the ski season and the Sundance Film Festival, captured a far more impactful natural experiment: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers from the University of Sussex have determined the structure of a tiny multi-protein biological machine, furthering our understanding of human cells and helping to enhance research into cancer, neurodegeneration and other illnesses.

A biological nanomachine is a macromolecular machine commonly found within the cell, often in the form of multi-protein complexes, which frequently perform tasks essential for life.

ORLANDO, July 8, 2021 - A new University of Central Florida study indicates that smaller loggerhead and green sea turtles are nesting on Florida beaches than in the past; however, researchers aren't sure why.

The findings, published this month in the journal Ecosphere, give clues to the status of the turtles, which is important to researchers who are monitoring the population health of the threatened species.

A new study shows that individuals with bipolar disorder who are exposed to significant trauma may be at greater risk for suicide death, suggesting that clinical diagnosis of or genetic predisposition to trauma-related conditions could be important factors to consider in suicide prevention.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for over 40,000 deaths each year, and suicide death rates are 10 to 30 times higher for people with bipolar disorder than for the general population.

Ever since the 1986 discovery that copper oxide materials, or cuprates, could carry electrical current with no loss at unexpectedly high temperatures, scientists have been looking for other unconventional superconductors that could operate even closer to room temperature. This would allow for a host of everyday applications that could transform society by making energy transmission more efficient, for instance.

Nonprofits and companies planting trees in the tropics may often pick species for their commercial rather than ecological value, researchers found in a new analysis of organizations' publicly available data. They also found many may not have tracked the trees' survival.

Tree planting is a promising, but controversial, restoration strategy for fighting climate change. A new study in the journal Biological Conservation provides a detailed look at what restoration organizations across the tropics are actually doing on the ground.

A new paper in Nature lays out the way natural ecosystems parallel U.S. supply chains and how American cities can use these tools to strengthen their supply chains.

As light detection and ranging (lidar) technology evolves, forest ecology and ecological restoration researchers have been using these tools in a wide range of applications.

"We needed an accounting of relative accuracy and errors among lidar platforms within a range of forest types and structural configurations," said associate professor Andrew Sánchez Meador, executive director of NAU's Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI).

For decades, there has been great interest in whether omega-3 fatty acids can lower rates of cardiovascular events. In 2018, results from the Reduction of Cardiovascular Events with Icosapent Ethyl-Intervention Trial (REDUCE-IT) were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and showed that a high dose of a purified ethyl ester of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in patients at elevated cardiac risk significantly reduced cardiovascular events. Results from the trial led to US.

An estimated 8.4 billion people could be at risk from malaria and dengue by the end of the century if emissions keep rising at current levels, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

The research team estimates that this worst-case scenario would mean the population at risk of the diseases might increase by up to 4.7 additional billion people (relative to the period 1970-1999), particularly in lowlands and urban areas, if temperatures rise by about 3.7°C 1 by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels.