Earth
Activists protesting against environmental injustices around the world suffer from high rates of criminalization, physical violence and murder. This is the result of a study developed by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) that presents the largest analysis of environmental conflicts up to date. The study highlights that these impacts are especially frequent when indigenous peoples are involved, and in conflicts related to mining and land use.
Federally funded research contributed to the science underlying each of the 59 new cancer drugs approved by the FDA from 2010-2016 according to a study from Bentley University. The article, titled "NIH funding for research underlying new cancer therapies," suggests that the level of NIH funding for cancer research is substantially higher than previously estimated.
Research from Curtin University has found that pre-historic climate change does not explain the extinction of megafauna in North America at the end of the last Ice Age.
The research, published today in Nature Communications, analysed ancient DNA from bone fragments and soil found inside Hall's Cave, located in central Texas. The researchers discovered important genetic clues to the past biodiversity in North America and provided new insights into the causes of animal extinctions during the Ice Age.
A major interest in brain research is understanding behavioural experiences at the synaptic and circuit level. However, gaining insight into the neural circuits that underlie a specific behavioural experience is a challenge. The perplexity lies in defining which of the large number of neuronal inputs a specific region of the brain receives, expresses a defined behaviour, and yet there are no direct methods available to overcome this challenge.
Jena, Germany (02.06.2020) For some scientific disciplines, such as medical or drug research, experiments with live animals are still indispensable. Scientists are aware of their responsibilities in this sensitive area and strive to keep the number of experiments as low as possible. Extensive standardisation processes are supposed to increase the efficiency of the experiments, thus reducing the number needed. However, biological complexity, and in particular a dependence on the context of the individual experiments, often make it difficult to reproduce and generalise the results.
Scientists from Cardiff University have discovered specific conditions that occur along the ocean floor where two tectonic plates are more likely to slowly creep past one another as opposed to drastically slipping and creating catastrophic earthquakes.
The team have shown that where fractures lie on the ocean floor, at the junction of two tectonic plates, sufficient water is able to enter those fractures and trigger the formation of weak minerals which in turn helps the two tectonic plates to slowly slide past one another.
Integrating behavioral health services into physician medical practices faces cultural and financial barriers, but providing technical support and improved payment models may enhance the long-term sustainability of the approach, according to a new RAND Corporation study conducted in collaboration with the American Medical Association.
A collaboration between Colorado State University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign resulted in a new, 3D imaging technique to visualize tissues and other biological samples on a microscopic scale, with potential to assist with cancer or other disease diagnoses.
A new sensor for detecting carbon dioxide can be manufactured on a simple piece of paper, according to a new study by University of Alberta physicists.
"You can basically think of it as a litmus paper for carbon dioxide," said Al Meldrum, professor in the Department of Physics and co-author on the study led by graduate student Hui Wang. "The work showed that you can make a sensitive carbon dioxide detector out of a simple piece of paper. One could easily imagine mass produced sensors for carbon dioxide or other gases using the same basic methods."
How can the world combat the continued rise in global temperatures? How about shading the Earth from a portion of the sun's heat by injecting the stratosphere with reflective aerosols? After all, volcanoes do essentially the same thing, albeit in short, dramatic bursts: When a Vesuvius erupts, it blasts fine ash into the atmosphere, where the particles can linger as a kind of cloud cover, reflecting solar radiation back into space and temporarily cooling the planet.
Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a risk factor for skin cancer and other diseases. The risk increases when sunlight, the natural source of UV radiation, is combined with artificial sources such as UV lamps for medical therapy, among others. Detecting and measuring UV exposure in different environments was the scope of a research project conducted in Brazil at the São Paulo Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology (IFSP) in collaboration with the University of São Paulo Physics Institute (IF-USP).
AUSTIN, Texas - Beyond fame and fortune, certain traits and behaviors may have pervasive influence in climbing the social ladder, according to a study by evolutionary psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin.
Researchers have long sought to understand the origins of life on Earth. A new study conducted by scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study, the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), and the University of New South Wales, among other participating institutions, marks an important step forward in the effort to understand the chemical origins of life. The findings of this study demonstrate how "continuous reaction networks" are capable of producing RNA precursors and possibly ultimately RNA itself--a critical bridge to life.
Whilst we often think of somatic cells in an organism as containing the same DNA and therefore the same number of chromosomes, it is surprising, how often this is not the case. In humans, such differences in chromosome numbers, so called genetic mosaicism, often occur unintentionally and express themselves in the form of illnesses. Some plants and animals on the other hand, are known to systematically ensure that the DNA content between some of their organs differs.
More than 1,000 bottlenose dolphins live in the Indian River Lagoon year-round. This estuarine system along the southeast coast of Florida is a narrow and convoluted ecosystem with interconnected bodies of water, a handful of ocean inlets, and numerous small rivers, creeks and canals that release freshwater into the lagoon. While this population of dolphins in the lagoon has been studied extensively, what they do at nighttime is still a mystery.