Culture
DURHAM , N.C. -- What makes human cultural traditions unique? One common answer is that we are better copycats than other species, which allows us to pass our habits and ways of life down through the generations without losing or forgetting them.
But a new study of birdsong finds that swamp sparrows are good impersonators too. And by faithfully copying the most popular songs, these birds create time-honored song traditions that can be just as long-lasting as human traditions, researchers say.
Paralysis of an arm and/or leg is one of the most common effects of a stroke. But thanks to research carried out by scientists at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface, in association with other members of EPFL's Center for Neuroprothetics, the Clinique Romande de Réadaptation in Sion, and the Geneva University Hospitals, stroke victims may soon be able to recover greater use of their paralyzed limbs.
A polar bear plunges into the icy Arctic waters in search of firmer ice; its world, which was once a sea of white, is melting beneath its paws. 'Research has documented declines in polar bear populations in some regions of the Arctic', says Anthony Pagano from the US Geological Survey, explaining that the bears now have to roam further on the receding ice to locate the seals upon which they dine.
A fulsome smile in a photo makes it easier for people to identify the individual, say researchers at the University of York.
Previous research at York has shown that it is difficult for people to match a pair of unfamiliar faces in photographs, presenting significant issues for authorities to spot identity fraud. Research has also shown that new face morphing technology can not only deceive human eyes, but smartphone software as well.
High altitude is a particularly challenging environment - the terrain is physically challenging and the land has a relatively poor crop yield, so food can be sparse. Most importantly, oxygen levels are lower meaning that conversion of food into energy in an individual's body is not very efficient and leads to relatively limited energy available for growth.
Scientists have discovered the fossil of an unusual large-bodied 'nude' sea-creature from half a billion years ago.
The creature belongs to an obscure and mysterious group of animals known as the chancelloriids - and scientists are unclear about where they fit in the tree of life.
They represent a lineage of spiny tube-shaped animals that arose during the Cambrian evolutionary "explosion" but went extinct soon afterwards. In some ways they resemble sponges, a group of simple filter-feeding animals, but many scientists have dismissed the similarities as superficial.
Climate change will have a rapidly increasing effect on the structure of global ecological communities over the next few decades, with amphibians and reptiles being significantly more affected than birds and mammals, a new report by UCL finds.
The pace of change is set to outstrip loss to vertebrate communities caused by land use for agriculture and settlements, which is estimated to have already caused losses of over ten per cent of biodiversity from ecological communities.
In many species, including humans, the young are often more susceptible to infection than adults, even after accounting for prior exposure to infection. From an evolutionary perspective this may seem puzzling, as dying young or becoming infertile due to infection means organisms will be unable to reproduce. However, new research from the University of Bath suggests that many species may have evolved to prioritise growth over immunity while maturing.
Vaping helps people stop smoking - even when they don't want to, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
A study published today shows that smokers who switch to vaping may be better able to stay smoke-free in the long term.
And that even people who didn't want to stop smoking, have eventually quit because they found vaping more enjoyable.
nonfatal opioid overdose is associated with significant reductions in opioid related mortality. The research, published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was co-funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, both parts of NIH.
Reviewing medical information gathered on more than 6,000 adults over a 10-year period, Johns Hopkins researchers have found that lower than normal blood levels of vitamin D were linked to increased risk of early signs of interstitial lung disease (ILD).
When it comes to understanding what makes people tick -- and get sick -- medical science has long assumed that the bigger the sample of human subjects, the better. But new research led by the University of California, Berkeley, suggests this big-data approach may be wildly off the mark.
That's largely because emotions, behavior and physiology vary markedly from one person to the next and one moment to the next. So averaging out data collected from a large group of human subjects at a given instant offers only a snapshot, and a fuzzy one at that, researchers said.
Individual speech sounds - phonemes - are statistically associated with negative or positive emotions in several languages, new research published in the journal Cognition by Bocconi Professor Zachary Estes, his Warwick colleague James Adelman and Bocconi student Martina Cossu shows. These associations help us quickly avoid dangers, because the phoneme-emotion associations are strongest at the beginning of the word and the phonemes that are spoken fastest tend to have a negative association.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JUNE 19, 2018). Researchers investigated risk factors for the development of opioid dependence in patients undergoing surgery for degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS). They found that, overall, patients were more likely to have a dependency on opioid medications before surgery than afterward.
Scientists have identified the key response that children use to control infections
Children are naturally more resistant to lots of infectious diseases
Sepsis affects more than 20 million people worldwide and is responsible for more deaths in the UK than bowel, breast and prostate cancer combined
Children's immune systems could hold the key to preventing life-threatening infections and sepsis, a new study has revealed.