Culture
Climbing the social ladder is a ruff business for dogs, new research shows.
Top dogs in a pack are known to assert their dominance, but scientists studied a group of free-roaming mongrels and found high levels of aggression in the middle of the dominance hierarchy.
Most theories predict more aggression higher up the ladder. However, the researchers say the difficulty of working out the pecking order in the crowded middle leads to aggression.
The role of an excited black hole in the death of an exotic 'jellyfish' galaxy will be presented today (3 July) by Callum Bellhouse of the University of Birmingham at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Lancaster. The supermassive black hole at the centre of jellyfish galaxy JO201 is stripping away gas and throwing it out into space, accelerating suppression of star formation and effectively 'killing' the galaxy.
The longer a pregnancy continues past 37 weeks gestation, the higher the risk of a stillbirth, according to a new meta-analysis published this week in PLOS Medicine by Shakila Thangaratinam of Queen Mary University of London, UK, and colleagues.
Commensal gut microbes stimulate antiviral signals in non-immune lung cells to protect against the flu virus during early stages of infection, researchers report July 2nd in the journal Cell Reports. Enhanced baseline type I interferon (IFNα/β) signaling, which drives antiviral responses, reduced flu virus replication and weight loss in mice, but this protective effect was attenuated by antibiotic treatment.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - UNC School of Medicine scientists unveiled how a particular gene helps organize the scaffolding of brain cells called radial progenitors necessary for the orderly formation of the brain. Previous studies have shown that this gene is mutated in some people with autism.
Bottomline: This Arts and Medicine feature reviews "Three Identical Strangers" and "The Twinning Reaction," two documentaries telling the story of identical twins and triplets adopted as infants into separate families who were unknowing participants in a two-decade nature vs. nurture study of child development beginning in 1960.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Current guidelines recommend lowering cholesterol for heart disease risk reduction. New findings indicate that if cholesterol dips too low, it may boost the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, according to researchers.
Over a period of nine years, a Penn State-led study examined the relationship between low-density lipoprotein cholesterol -- LDL, commonly known as "bad" cholesterol -- and hemorrhagic stroke. This type of stroke occurs when a blood vessel bursts in the brain.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - You could call this a neat discovery.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that a tissue-specific, non-coding RNA called NEAT1 has a major, previously undescribed role in memory formation. The findings are presented in a paper published in Science Signaling on July 2.
Antibiotics can leave the lung vulnerable to flu viruses, leading to significantly worse infections and symptoms, finds a new study in mice led by the Francis Crick Institute.
The research, published in Cell Reports, discovered that signals from gut bacteria help to maintain a first line of defence in the lining of the lung. When mice with healthy gut bacteria were infected with the flu, around 80% of them survived. However, only a third survived if they were given antibiotics before being infected.
Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) and UK-based Liverpool John Moores University have determined for the first time the maximum weight a child should carry using a school backpack trolley: a maximum of 20% of their body weight.
In an article published in the prestigious Applied Ergonomics journal, ranked second in the Ergonomics area of Journal Citation Reports, the scientists describe how they have established--in a worldwide first--recommendations on the appropriate load that primary school-age children should carry when using a backpack trolley.
Advances in the treatment of children and adolescents with cancer have led to substantial improvements in survival, with a 5-year survival rate of childhood cancer close to 80%.
However, treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation can have long-term effects on bone health, potentially impacting on the attainment of peak bone mass, predisposing to premature onset of low bone mineral density, or causing other bone-related side-effects, such as impairment of bone quality or avascular necrosis of bone.
Salmonella and listeria are among the most widely distributed and deadliest causes of foodborne infections. Their rapid and reliable detection on food and industrial food processing equipment is very important. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have introduced a new, ultrasensitive, chemiluminescence-based method for the direct detection of Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes. Because of the simplicity and sensitivity, this test is significantly faster than conventional methods and can be carried out in the field.
New research suggests that a particular type of carbohydrate plays an important role in regulating the blood pressure in the human body. This has been shown by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Rigshospitalet in a new study using rats. The researchers believe that the finding may have a vast potential for improved medications for high blood pressure.
The fly agaric with its red hat is perhaps the most evocative of the diverse and variously colored mushroom species. Hitherto, the purpose of these colors was shrouded in mystery. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), in collaboration with the Bavarian Forest National Park, have now put together the first pieces of this puzzle.
The middle of the South Pacific is as far away from land as you can possibly get. Solar irradiance is dangerously high, reaching a UV-index that is labelled 'extreme'. There are no dust particles or inflows from the land and as a result these waters have extremely low nutrient concentrations, and thus are termed 'ultraoligotrophic'. Chlorophyll-containing phytoplankton (minute algae) are found only at depths greater than a hundred meters, making surface South Pacific waters the clearest in the world.