Month: August 2024

Elephant conservation is a major priority in southern Africa, but habitat loss and urbanization mean the far-ranging pachyderms are increasingly restricted to protected areas like game reserves. The risk? Contained populations could become genetically isolated over time, making elephants more vulnerable to disease and environmental change. A recent study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign…

A team of researchers, led by the University of Houston, has discovered two new ways of preventing and treating respiratory viruses. In back-to-back papers in Nature Communications, the team — from the lab of Navin Varadarajan, M.D. Anderson Professor of William A. Brookshire Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering — reports the development and validation of NanoSTING,…

A study of horses — which share many important similarities with humans in their chromosomes and pregnancies — revealed that 42% of miscarriages and spontaneous abortions in the first two months of pregnancy were due to complications from an extra set of chromosomes, a condition called triploidy. “Over that embryonic period [up to eight weeks…

The formation of Earth’s continents billions of years ago set the stage for life to thrive. But scientists disagree over how those land masses formed and if it was through geological processes we still see today. A recent paper from the University of Illinois Chicago’s David Hernández Uribe in Nature Geoscience adds new information to…

Cats are notoriously picky eaters. But what if we could design their foods around flavors that they’re scientifically proven to enjoy? Researchers publishing in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry used a panel of feline taste-testers to identify favored flavor compounds in a series of chicken-liver-based sprays. The cats particularly enjoyed the sprays that…

A research team led by engineers at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science is the first to explore how an emerging plant-based material, cellulose nanofibrils, could amplify the benefits of 3D-printed concrete technology. “The improvements we saw on both printability and mechanical measures suggest that incorporating cellulose nanofibrils in commercial printable…

The rising earth beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet will likely become a major factor in future sea level rise, a new study suggests. Despite feeling like a stationary mass, most solid ground is undergoing a process of deformation, sinking and rising in response to many environmental factors. In Antarctica, melting glacial ice means less weight…

In a new review paper, researchers from the Universities of Arizona, Oxford and Leeds analyzed dozens of previous studies into long COVID to examine the number and range of people affected, the underlying mechanisms of disease, the many symptoms that patients develop, and current and future treatments. Long COVID, also known as Post-COVID-19 condition, is…

Patrick Sullivan, MD, FRANZCP, the Yeargan Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at the UNC School of Medicine, and researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, have developed a comprehensive outline of the genetics of schizophrenia. The review was published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric disorder featuring recurrent episodes of psychosis…

A McGill-led study suggests that Earth’s natural forces could substantially reduce Antarctica’s impact on rising sea levels, but only if carbon emissions are swiftly reduced in the coming decades. By the same token, if emissions continue on the current trajectory, Antarctic ice loss could lead to more future sea level rise than previously thought. The…

Snacks provide, on average, about one-fourth of most people’s daily calories. With nearly one in three adults in the United States overweight and more than two in five with obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health, researchers in the Penn State Sensory Evaluation Center are investigating how Americans can snack smarter. The latest study…

Human-made climate change can lead to a destabilisation of large-scale components of the Earth system such as ice sheets or ocean circulation patterns, the so-called tipping elements. While these components will not tip over night, fundamental processes are put into motion unfolding over tens, hundreds or thousands of years. These changes are of such a…

New research led by scientists at the Smithsonian proposes a plan to safeguard Earth’s imperiled biodiversity by cryogenically preserving biological material on the moon. The moon’s permanently shadowed craters are cold enough for cryogenic preservation without the need for electricity or liquid nitrogen, according to the researchers. The paper, published today in BioScience and written…

People from different cultures show both similarities and differences in how body appreciation, sociocultural pressure, and internalization of thin ideals vary, according to a study published July 31, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Louise Hanson from Durham University, UK, and colleagues. Body image is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon encapsulating how we…