Month: November 2024

The sooner a lay rescuer (bystander) starts cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a person having a cardiac arrest at home or in public, up to 10 minutes after the arrest, the better the chances of saving the person’s life and protecting their brain function, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Heart Association’s…

Much of modern life depends on the coding of information onto means of delivering it. A common method is to encode data in laser light and send it through optic cables. The increasing demand for more information capacity demands that we constantly find better ways of encoding it. Researchers at Aalto University’s Department of Applied…

Blistering heat, freezing cold, and overflowing sewage water: These were the living conditions that formerly incarcerated people in Colorado said they suffered inside the state’s prisons and jails. In a new paper, drawing on accounts from nearly three dozen previously incarcerated people, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder reveal a disturbing story of how…

Any boomer, gen xer, millennial, gen zer or alpha who’s studied geology has likely gained foundational knowledge from Edwin Dinwiddie McKee’s landmark studies of the Grand Canyon’s sedimentary record — even if they don’t readily recognize McKee’s name. The legendary scientist, who lived from 1906-1984, studied and documented the stratigraphy and sedimentation of Colorado Plateau…

New research reveals for the first time how a major Antarctic ice shelf has been subjected to increased melting by warming ocean waters over the last four decades. Scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) say the study — the result of their autonomous Seaglider getting accidentally stuck underneath the Ross Ice Shelf —…

By studying tomato varieties that produce fruit in exceptionally hot growing seasons, biologists at Brown University identified the growth cycle phase when tomatoes are most vulnerable to extreme heat, as well as the molecular mechanisms that make the plants more heat tolerant. The discovery, detailed in a study in Current Biology, could inform a key…

Teams of mountaineering mice are helping advance understanding into how evolutionary adaptation to localized conditions can enable a single species to thrive across diverse environments. In a study led by Naim Bautista, a postdoctoral researcher in Jay Storz’s lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the team took highland deer mice and their lowland cousins on…

Facebook and Instagram can boost wildlife conservation efforts through public awareness and engagement, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Communication. The findings based on the caracal — a wild cat native to Africa with distinctive tufted ears — demonstrate how social media can harness support for the predators, which some farmers…

When it comes to electrically conductive nanomaterials, graphene — stronger and lighter than steel and more conductive than copper — has been shown to be an excellent choice for a wide range of technologies. Physicists are working to learn more about this impressive form of naturally occurring elemental carbon, which is composed of a single…

New research suggests that adding a small amount of physical activity — such as uphill walking or stair-climbing — into your day may help to lower blood pressure. The study, published in Circulation, was carried out by experts from the ProPASS (Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep) Consortium, an international academic collaboration led by the…

Higher temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change made an ordinary drought into an exceptional drought that parched the American West from 2020-2022. A study by UCLA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists has found that evaporation accounted for 61% of the drought’s severity, while reduced precipitation only accounted for 39%. The research found…

When performing knee replacement surgery, also called total knee arthroplasty, doctors traditionally try to align the hip, knee, and ankle in a straight line, forming a neutral alignment, rather than replicating the patient’s original alignment. Now, in an effort to understand which approach is better, researchers from Kyushu University collected convincing evidence in favor of…

Large language models can do impressive things, like write poetry or generate viable computer programs, even though these models are trained to predict words that come next in a piece of text. Such surprising capabilities can make it seem like the models are implicitly learning some general truths about the world. But that isn’t necessarily…

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are warning that artificial intelligence tools gaining popularity in the fields of genetics and medicine can lead to flawed conclusions about the connection between genes and physical characteristics, including risk factors for diseases like diabetes. The faulty predictions are linked to researchers’ use of AI to assist genome-wide association studies. Such…

Mosquito larvae grow faster if they’re exposed to particular bacteria, according to a new study that could help global health programmes. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread illnesses including dengue, yellow fever and Zika. Anti-disease programmes breed and release non-biting male mosquitoes that are either sterile or prevent transmission of diseases. These mass release programmes can be…

Researchers including a Johns Hopkins University evolutionary biologist report they have analyzed a fossil of an extinct giant meat-eating bird — which they say could be the largest known member of its kind — providing new information about animal life in northern South America millions of years ago. The evidence lies in the leg bone…

Windblown dust from the shrinking Salton Sea harms the respiratory health of children living nearby, triggering asthma, coughing, wheezing and disrupted sleep, USC research shows. The findings also indicate that children living closest to the sea, who are exposed to more dust in the air, may be the most affected. The study, published in Environmental…

A new USC study involving 8,500 children from across the country reveals that a form of air pollution, largely the product of agricultural emissions, is linked to poor learning and memory performance in 9- and 10-year-olds. The specific component of fine particle air pollution, or PM2.5, ammonium nitrate, is also implicated in Alzheimer’s and dementia…