Culture
Life expectancy in the United States has been in decline for the first time in decades, and public health officials have identified a litany of potential causes, including inaccessible health care, rising drug addiction and rates of mental health disorders, and socio-economic factors. But disentangling these variables and assessing their relative impact has been difficult.
Due to the disappearance of its sunlight-reflecting seasonal snowpack, the Colorado River Basin is losing more water to evaporation than can be replaced by precipitation, researchers report. The study resolves a longstanding disagreement in previous estimates of the river's sensitivity to rising temperatures and identifies a growing potential for severe water shortages in this major basin. The Colorado River, a water source that supplies water to roughly 40 million people and supports more than $1 trillion of economic activity each year, is dwindling.
Studying the African turquoise killifish, which enters into a suspended state called "diapause" during dry and unfavorable growing seasons, researchers uncovered mechanisms that allow the arrested fish to be maintained for long periods while being protected from the normal consequences of aging. Their results are potentially relevant to understanding human aging and aging-associated disease. To survive extreme environments, many species throughout the animal kingdom have evolved the ability to enter one of several unique types of suspended life.
How are we able to find things in the dark? And how can we imagine how something feels just by looking at it?
It is because our brain is able to store information in such a way that it can be retrieved by different senses. This multi-sensory integration allows us to form mental images of the world and underpins our conscious awareness.
It turns out that the ability to recognise objects across different senses is present in the tiny brains of an insect.
For three years, anthropologist Alan Rogers has attempted to solve an evolutionary puzzle. His research untangles millions of years of human evolution by analyzing DNA strands from ancient human species known as hominins. Like many evolutionary geneticists, Rogers compares hominin genomes looking for genetic patterns such as mutations and shared genes. He develops statistical methods that infer the history of ancient human populations.
It's not easy to do pregnancy tests on whales. You can't just ask a wild ocean animal that's the size of a school bus to pee on a little stick. For decades, the only way scientists could count pregnant females was by sight and best guesses based on visual characteristics. For the last several years, researchers have relied on hormone tests of blubber collected via darts, but the results were often inconclusive (not negative or positive), and researchers couldn't confidently say if the animal was pregnant or just ovulating.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cancer cells are a wily adversary. One reason the disease outfoxes many potential treatments is because of the diversity of the cancer cell population. Researchers have found this population difficult to characterize and quantify.
Before hitting the track to compete in an officially sanctioned race, some elite Paralympic sprinters must do something most runners would find incredibly unsettling: remove their legs and swap them out with ones that make them shorter.
The unusual mandate results from a recent International Paralympic Committee rule change that lowered the Maximum Allowable Standing Height (MASH) for double, below-the-knee amputees racing in prosthetic legs. The rule, intended to prevent unfair advantages, stems from the long-held assumption that greater height equals greater speed.
The monkeyflower, or Mimulus, though possessing a relatively simple genome is able to produce a stunning array of pigmentation patterns. A team of researchers is one step closer to understanding exactly how this genus of wildflowers is able to achieve such remarkable diversity, their work will be published Thursday in Current Biology.
What The Study Did: Data from 82 prison inmates treated in a glaucoma clinic at an academic hospital were used in this observational study to report on how treatment and follow-up, including medication adherence, were are managed.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
Authors: Levi N. Kanu, M.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.0001)
Researchers said the wavelengths at sunrise and sunset have the biggest impact to brain centers that regulate our circadian clock and our mood and alertness.
Their study, "A color vision circuit for non-image-forming vision in the primate retina," published in Current Biology Feb. 20, identifies a cell in the retina, which plays an important role in signaling our brain centers that regulate circadian rhythms, boost alertness, help memory and cognitive function, and elevate mood.
Image-based sexual abuse in Australia is increasing, according to new research.
A survey of more than 2000 Australians found 1 in 3 had been victims of image-based abuse, compared with 1 in 5 in 2016.
The survey also found the perpetration of image-based abuse had increased, with 1 in 6 people surveyed reporting they had taken, shared or made threats to share a nude or sexual image of a person without that person's consent, compared with 1 in 10 of those surveyed in 2016.
A positive example set by both the mother and the father promotes the consumption of vegetables, fruit and berries among 3-5-year-old children, according to a new study from the University of Eastern Finland. The study explored the association of the home food environment and parental influence with the consumption of vegetables among kindergarten-aged children. The findings were published in Food Quality and Preference.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA February 20, 2020--Viruses are parasites. The only way they can grow is by hijacking their hosts. When they infect a human host, viruses use human proteins to multiply and modify the human cells to sustain the infection. At the same time, the human host activates defense mechanisms to fight the infection.
New scientific findings released today in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, show that expansion Aof the Pacific Remote Islands and Papahanaumokuakea marine national monuments did not cause overall economic harm to the Hawaii-based longline tuna fishing fleet.