Culture
A new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows that individualised and family-based physical activity and dietary counselling considerably slows down the development of insulin resistance, which is a precursor of type 2 diabetes, in 6-9-year-old children. Published in Diabetologia, the study focused on predominantly normal-weight children.
For the first time, researchers have compared air pollution in urban and suburban areas across all of China. Using data from the China National Environmental Monitoring Center (CNEMC), the researchers found that one air pollutant, called particulate matter (PM2.5), may be overestimated in winter, while another pollutant, called ozone (O3), is significantly underestimated.
Plants can be infected by multiple viruses at once. However, the composition of the pathogen community varies, even if individuals belong to the same species and the same population. Ecologists at the University of Zurich have now shown that these differences are primarily due to genetic variation among the hosts. The loss of genetic diversity could thus render species more vulnerable to infections and extinction.
Musculoskeletal disorders--which affect muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, and joints--can severely affect individuals' physical and mental health, and they're especially prevalent among aging adults. Although many researchers are studying these conditions and their rates in different regions of the world, no study to date has provided an overview of the burden of all musculoskeletal disorders.
Researchers from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Tilburg University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the rise of click-and-collect services and examines their most appropriate settings.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Navigating the Last Mile in Grocery Shopping: The Click and Collect Format" and is authored by Katrijn Gielens, Els Gijsbrechts, and Inge Geyskens.
The first fossils of a duckbilled dinosaur have been discovered in Africa, suggesting dinosaurs crossed hundreds of kilometres of open water to get there.
The study, published in Cretaceous Research, reports the new dinosaur, Ajnabia odysseus, from rocks in Morocco dating to the end of the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago. Ajnabia was a member of the duckbill dinosaurs, diverse plant-eating dinosaurs that grew up to 15 meters long. But the new dinosaur was tiny compared to its kin - at just 3 meters long, it was as big as a pony.
DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke Health-led research team has identified a key marker that will help speed effective vaccine designs for cytomegalovirus (CMV), the most common congenital infection worldwide and a leading cause of infant brain damage.
In a study appearing online Nov. 4 in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers describe an immune surrogate that demonstrates when a vaccine has elicited the necessary antibodies that protect against CMV infection. The finding is already being applied to screen potential vaccines.
For centuries, historians and scientists mostly agreed that when early human groups sought food, men hunted and women gathered. However, a 9,000-year-old female hunter burial in the Andes Mountains of South America reveals a different story, according to new research conducted at the University of California, Davis.
Researchers discovered that a specific brain region monitors food preferences as they change across thirsty and quenched states. By targeting neurons in that part of the brain, they were able to shift food choice preferences from a more desired reward (think: chocolate cake) to a less tasty one (think: stale bread).
Their findings, published in the journal Science Advances, built upon the same team's discovery two years ago that neural activity in this brain region called the ventral pallidum is related to the preference for different food options.
New data from a Canadian-led team of astronomers, including researchers from the McGill Space Institute and McGill University Department of Physics, strongly suggest that magnetars - a type of neutron star believed to have an extremely powerful magnetic field - could be the source of some fast radio bursts (FRBs). Though much research has been done to explain the mysterious phenomenon, their source has thus far remained elusive and the subject of some debate.
First detection of an intense radio burst from a Galactic magnetar
Rising sea levels will affect coasts and human societies in complex and unpredictable ways, according to a new study that examined 12,000 years in which a large island became a cluster of smaller ones.
Researchers reconstructed sea-level rise to produce maps of coastal changes at thousand-year intervals and found that today's Isles of Scilly, off the UK's south-west coast, emerged from a single island that only became the current configuration of more than 140 islands less than 1,000 years ago.
The arthropods have been among the most successful animals on Earth since the Cambrian Period, about 520 million years ago. They are the most familiar and ubiquitous, and constitute nearly 80 percent of all animal species today, far more than any other animals.
But how did arthropods evolve and what did their ancestors look like? These have been a major conundrum in animal evolution puzzling generations of scientists for more than a century.
New York University researchers have created a "developmental atlas" of gene expression in neurons, using gene sequencing and machine learning to categorize more than 250,000 neurons in the brains of fruit flies. Their study, published in Nature, finds that neurons exhibit the most molecular diversity during development and reveals a previously unknown type of neurons only present before flies hatch.
A new study suggests that it is possible to design drugs that can target a type of shape-shifting protein involved in Alzheimer's disease, which was previously thought to be undruggable.
A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have identified a new mechanism of targeting amyloid-beta, a protein fragment that clumps together and kills healthy brain cells in people with Alzheimer's disease.
Exposure to high temperatures in pregnancy is associated with an increase in adverse pregnancy outcomes, especially preterm birth and stillbirth, and among women in lower socioeconomic groups, finds a study published by The BMJ today.
Although the effects may appear small in size, the researchers say the findings "could have a major impact on public health as exposure to high temperatures is common and escalating." Moreover, conditions such as preterm birth often have lifelong implications for affected newborns.