Earth
Florida's sea turtle nesting surveying comes to a close on Halloween and like everything else in 2020, the season was a bit weird.
The number of green sea turtle nests on central and southern Brevard County, Florida beaches monitored by University of Central biologists were way up during a year they should have been down based on nearly 40 years of historical data.
Society will require more food in the coming years to feed a growing population, and seafood will likely make up a significant portion of it. At the same time, we need to conserve natural habitats to ensure the health of our oceans. It seems like a conflict is inevitable.
Boulder, Colo., USA: If you've visited the beach recently, you might think sand is ubiquitous. But in construction uses, the perfect sand and gravel is not always an easy resource to come by. "Not all sand is equal in terms of what it can be used for," notes Zack Sickman, coauthor of a new study to be presented on Thursday at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. He says concrete aggregate needs sand with a certain size and angularity--the kind that is considered "immature" and often, but not always, found in rivers.
DALLAS - Oct. 28, 2020 - Mice fed diets high in sugar developed worse colitis, a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and researchers examining their large intestines found more of the bacteria that can damage the gut's protective mucus layer.
A team of scientists including two physicists at the University of Sussex has found a way to circumvent a 178-year old theory which means they can effectively cancel magnetic fields at a distance. They are the first to be able to do so in a way which has practical benefits.
A single-step, plasma-enhanced catalytic process to convert sulfur dioxide to pure sulfur from tail gas streams may provide a promising, more environmentally-friendly alternative to current multistage thermal, catalytic and absorptive processes, according to scientists at Penn State.
Seabird populations in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean are facing direct and indirect impacts of climate change due to rising temperatures and ocean acidification. However, long-term monitoring of seabird populations in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean typically only began in the 1950s, posing a challenge to understanding the long-term responses of seabirds to global change.
PHILADELPHIA - Police shootings of unarmed Black people in the United States were three times higher than that of white people between 2015 and the beginning of 2020, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, Yale University, and Drexel University.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Since 2017, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers Casey Morrow, Ph.D., and Hyunmin Koo, Ph.D., have used powerful genomic tools and supercomputers that analyze massive amounts of genetic data to identify individual strains within single species of the gut microbiome.
This microbiome "fingerprint" method has helped show the maternal sources of microbes for the human infant or mouse pup microbiomes, as well as showing extreme persistence of gut microbial strains in adult human twins who lived apart after cohabitating for decades.
Ocean acidification is no longer a sombre forecast for the Great Barrier Reef but a present-day reality, a new study reveals.
The study, published in the international Journal Scientific Reports, shows carbon dioxide (CO2) and ocean acidification are rapidly increasing on the Reef. Seawater CO2 has risen 6 per cent over the past 10 years and matches the rate of CO2 increases in the atmosphere, confirming the influence of atmospheric CO2 on seawater CO2 levels.
Judges' decisions are an integral part of combat sports, from boxing and wrestling to mixed martial arts (MMA). However, a new study suggests the rate at which competitors fight is more likely to result in judges awarding victory than the skill with which they attack their opponents.
The research was conducted by experts in animal behaviour from the University of Plymouth's School of Biological and Marine Sciences.
Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People
New study of older adults (aged 70 or over) in Stockholm, Sweden, suggests older people living in care homes had higher COVID-19 mortality risk than those living in single houses or apartment buildings.
Those living in multigenerational homes had higher COVID-19 mortality risk, compared to those who live only with other older individuals, according to the study.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered a new inflammatory disorder called vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory and somatic syndrome (VEXAS), which is caused by mutations in the UBA1 gene. VEXAS causes symptoms that included blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, pulmonary abnormalities and vacuoles (unusual cavity-like structures) in myeloid cells. The scientists reported their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.
An international team of coastal scientists has dismissed suggestions that half the world's beaches could become extinct over the course of the 21st century.
The claim was made by European researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change in March 2020 (Sandy coastlines under threat of erosion by Vousdoukas et al).
However, academics from the UK, France, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the USA have re-examined the data and methodology that underpinned the original study and say they strongly disagree with its conclusion.
Death rates from people with severe COVID-19 in hospital have dropped to around a half of the rate at the peak of the pandemic, new research has revealed.
An analysis of over 21,000 hospital admissions, published in Critical Care Medicine, found a significant drop in death rates for both high dependency unit admissions and intensive care admissions between March and the end of June.