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The last battle of Anne of Brittany: isotopic study of the soldiers of 1491
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from INRAP, CNRS, the universities of Ottawa, Rennes 2, Toulouse III Paul Sabatier and the Max Planck Institute has recognised the soldiers of the last battles of the siege of Rennes in 1491. These are the only witnesses of the forces involved in the conflict between the armies of Duchess Anne of Brittany and the King of France. This research and its methodology are currently the subject of two articles in the PLOS ONE review.
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Gender pay gaps in nonprofits are even greater when there is room for salary negotiations
With increased media attention and political campaigns focusing on the gender pay gap, the fact that women -- on average -- are paid less than men, has become an important public discussion. While much of the focus has been on the corporate sector, a new study that looked at executive compensation at nonprofit organizations found that women earn 8.9% less than men with the gap becoming greater when there is room for salary negotiations.
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Large study links dementia to poor kidney function
Older people with kidney disease have a higher risk of dementia, and the risk increases with the rate and stage of kidney function decline. That is according to a large observational study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the journal Neurology. The findings stress the significance of screening and monitoring for dementia in persons with kidney disease, the researchers say.
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Nanoscope presents novel gene delivery and electrophysiology platforms at ARVO
Nanoscope Technologies LLC, a biotechnology company developing gene therapies for treatment of retinal diseases, is featuring multiple scientific presentations highlighting its groundbreaking research on optical gene delivery for vision restoration and OCT-guided electrophysiology platforms for characterization of retinal degeneration and assessment of efficacy of cell-gene therapy at the 2021 ARVO annual (virtual) meeting, May 1-7. Nanoscope's Multi-Characteristics Opsin (MCO) when delivered into cells to reprograms cells to sense ambient light, thus allowing vision restoration in patients with retinal degeneration.
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Ice core chemistry study expands insight into sea ice variability in Southern Hemisphere
Sea ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere is extremely variable, from summer to winter and from millennium to millennium, according to a University of Maine-led study. Overall, sea ice has been on the rise for about 10,000 years, but with some exceptions to this trend. Researchers uncovered these findings by examining the chemistry of a 54,000-year-old South Pole ice core.
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Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100
A massive collaborative research project covered in the journal Nature this week offers projections to the year 2100 of future sea-level rise from all sources of land ice, offering the most complete projections created to date.
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Scientists find a new anti-hepatic fibrosis drug target
Scientists from Russia and Italy studied a new axis of the pathway that prevents the development of liver fibrosis. The role of GILZ protein in curbing the disease progression was shown in a study using mice models and confirmed by clinical data. These findings can be used in the treatment of liver fibrosis in humans.
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Dark matter detection
University of Delaware's Swati Singh is among a small group of researchers across the dark matter community that have begun to wonder if they are looking for the right type of dark matter. Singh, Jack Manley, a UD doctoral student, and collaborators at the University of Arizona and Haverford College, have proposed a new way to look for the particles that might make up dark matter by repurposing existing tabletop sensor technology.
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Supersymmetry-inspired microlaser arrays pave way for powering chip-sized optical systems
Ring microlasers are eyed as potential light sources for photonic applications, but they first must be made more powerful. Combining multiple microlasers into an array solves only half of the problem, as this adds noisy "modes" to the resulting laser light. Now, thanks to the math behind supersymmetry theory, Penn Engineers have achieved single-mode lasing from such an array. By calculating the necessary properties for "superpartner" arrays, they can cancel out the unwanted extra modes.
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Rapid rovers, speedy sands: fast-tracking terrain interaction modeling
Engineers and scientists from MIT and Georgia Tech are enabling near real-time modeling of wheels, treads, and desert animals traveling at high speeds across sandy terrains. "Dynamic Resistive Force Theory," or DRFT, provides a path to speedier granular modeling -- and help in designing optimal rough terrain vehicles, like Mars and lunar rovers.
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Depression part of daily life for many Black Canadians
The first mental health study of Black communities in Canada has found the majority of Black Canadians display severe depressive symptoms - women, even more so - with racial discrimination confirming the appearance of these signs for nearly all.
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New, almost non-destructive archaeogenetic sampling method developed
An Austrian-American research team (University of Vienna, Department Evolutionary Anthropology and Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics), in collaboration of Hungarian experts from Eötvös Loránd University, has developed a new method that allows the almost non-destructive extraction of genetic material from archaeological human remains. The method allows anthropologists, archaeologists and archaeogeneticists to avoid the risk of serious damage to artefacts of significant scientific and heritage value, which can then be fully examined in future research.
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Can an AI algorithm mitigate racial economic inequality? Only if more black hosts adopt it
A new study investigated the impact of Airbnb's algorithm on racial disparities among Airbnb hosts. Adopting the tool narrowed the revenue gap between White and Black hosts considerably, but because far fewer Black hosts used the algorithm, the revenue gap between White and Black hosts actually increased after the tool's introduction.
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Mantis shrimp eyes inspire six-color imaging platform for cancer surgery
Inspired by the powerful eyes of the mantis shrimp, scientists have designed an imaging system that can distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissues during cancer surgery.
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From 4500 possibilities, one compound emerges as promising treatment for PAH
Experts at Cincinnati Children's and Stanford screened a library of 4500 compounds to find one, called AG1296, that shows promise as a potential treatment for the rare lung disease PAH.
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Greater access to birth control leads to higher graduation rates
When access to free and low-cost birth control goes up, the percentage of young women who leave high school before graduating goes down by double-digits, according to new University of Colorado research.
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How accurate were early expert predictions on COVID-19, and how did they compare to the public?
Who made more accurate predictions about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic - experts or the public? A study from the University of Cambridge has found that experts such as epidemiologists and statisticians made far more accurate predictions than the public, but both groups substantially underestimated the true extent of the pandemic.
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Strange isotopes: Scientists explain a methane isotope paradox of the seafloor
Deep down in the seafloor anaerobic microbes consume large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Even though this process is a crucial element of the global carbon cycle, it is still poorly understood. Scientists from Bremen and Israel now found the solution to a long-standing enigma in this process: why methane carbon isotopes behave so differently than expected. In a joint effort with their colleagues they present the answer in the journal Science Advances.
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Expanded contraception access led to higher graduation rates for young women in Colorado
Increased access to birth control led to higher graduation rates among young women in Colorado, according to a study following the debut of the 2009 Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CPFI). The study identified a statistically significant 1.66 percentage-point increase in high school graduation among young women one year after the initiative was introduced.
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From yeast to hypha: How Candida albicans makes the switch
A protein called Sir2 may facilitate C. albicans' transition from ovoid yeast to thread-like hypha. C. albicans cells that were missing the Sir2 gene were less likely to form true hyphae in lab experiments than cells of the same species that had that gene.
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