Culture
For more than a century, the humble and ubiquitous fruit fly has helped scientists shed light on human genetics, disease, and behavior. Now a new study by University of Miami researchers reveals that the tiny, winged insects have an innate time- and color-dependent preference for light, raising the intriguing possibility that our own color choices depend on the time of day.
PULLMAN, Wash.--Being a human couch potato can greatly increase fat accumulation, hasten the onset of Type II diabetes symptoms, result in detrimental blood chemistry and cardiovascular changes, and eventually, bring about one's death.
Large hibernators such as bears however have evolved to adapt to and reverse similar metabolic stressors they face each year before and during hibernation to essentially become immune to these ill effects.
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A U.S. Army project took a new approach to developing robots -- researchers built robots entirely from smaller robots known as smarticles, unlocking the principles of a potentially new locomotion technique.
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Northwestern University published their findings in the journal Science Robotics.
New Orleans, LA - LSU Health New Orleans-led research reports that the key to improving community resiliency following disasters is a dynamic partnership between community-based organizations and public health agencies established pre-disaster. The results are published in the American Journal of Public Health available here.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Visit a public space. Chances are you'll see people wearing earbuds or earphones.
The pervasiveness of this old-meets-new technology, especially on college campuses, intrigued University at Buffalo computer scientist Zhanpeng Jin.
"We have so many students walking around with speakers in their ears. It led me to wonder what else we could do with them," says Jin, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Reading is a recent invention in the history of human culture--too recent for dedicated brain networks to have evolved specifically for it. How, then, do we accomplish this remarkable feat? As we learn to read, a brain region known as the 'visual word form area' (VWFA) becomes sensitive to script (letters or characters). However, some have claimed that the development of this area takes up (and thus detrimentally affects) space that is otherwise available for processing culturally relevant objects such as faces, houses or tools.
It is well known that individuals who work night-shifts, or travel often across different time zones, have a higher tendency to become overweight and suffer from gut inflammation. The underlying cause for this robust phenomenon has been the subject of many studies that tried to relate physiological processes with the activity of the brain's circadian clock, which is generated in response to the daylight cycle.
One of the most successful candidate HIV vaccines to date - initially tested in Thailand, where it had modest effects - showed surprisingly strong efficacy when evaluated in a South African cohort, where a different strain of HIV is known to circulate. The research hints the RV144 vaccine regimen could provide protection against multiple strains of HIV, whose genetic diversity is a challenge for vaccine strategies.
The global conservation community has been urged to adopt a specific target to protect the world's remaining wilderness areas to prevent large scale loss of at-risk species.
A University of Queensland and CSIRO study has found that wilderness areas - where human impact is minimal or absent - halves the global risk of species extinction.
UQ Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science Director Professor James Watson said vital wilderness areas could not be restored so urgent action was needed to ensure these areas were marked for conservation and remained protected.
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time that severe brain cancers integrate into the brain's wiring.
The tumors, called high-grade gliomas, form synapses that hijack electrical signals from healthy nerve cells to drive their own growth. Experiments demonstrated that interrupting these signals with an existing anti-epilepsy drug greatly reduced the cancers' growth in human tumors in mice, providing the first evidence for a possible new way to treat gliomas.
An international study led by researchers from Lund University in Sweden has found that a collision in the asteroid belt 470 million years ago created drastic changes to life on Earth. The breakup of a major
asteroid filled the entire inner solar system with enormous amounts of dust leading to a unique ice age and, subsequently, to higher levels of biodiversity. The unexpected discovery could be relevant for tackling global warming if we fail to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Babies born vaginally have different gut bacteria - their microbiome - than those delivered by Caesarean, research has shown. Scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UCL, the University of Birmingham and their collaborators discovered that whereas vaginally born babies got most of their gut bacteria from their mother, babies born via caesarean did not, and instead had more bacteria associated with hospital environments in their guts.
Strategies to limit climate change that focus on warming in the next couple of decades would leave less of a burden for future generations.
Research led by Imperial College London and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, suggests a new underpinning logic for strategies that seek to limit climate change. Their new proposal is published today in Nature.
Wilderness areas, long known for intrinsic conservation value, are far more valuable for biodiversity than previously believed, and if conserved, will cut the world's extinction risk in half, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
Malaysia's plans to create a Pan-Borneo Highway will severely degrade one of the world's most environmentally imperilled regions, says a research team from Australia and Malaysia.
"This network of highways will cut through some of the last expanses of intact forest in Borneo, greatly increasing pressures from loggers, poachers, farmers and oil-palm plantations," said Professor Bill Laurance, project leader from James Cook University in Australia.