Reporting world updates to you
Researchers have isolated a new strain of marine bacteria with unique characteristics from the ocean seabed. The research, published today as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife, is described by the editors as an important study that advances our understanding of physiological mechanisms in deep-sea Planctomycetes bacteria, revealing unique characteristics such…
In response to the low-fat craze of the 1990s, many food companies removed saturated fats from their products, only to replace them with sugars to maintain their palatability. Unfortunately, the resulting products were no healthier than the originals, and the average person today consumes too much saturated fat. Now, a…
The Earth is getting hotter and consequences have been made manifest this summer around the world. Looking back in geological history, global warming events are not uncommon: Around 56 million years ago, during the period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), the temperatures rose by an average of 5…
Though drug developers have achieved some progress in treating Alzheimer’s disease with medicines that reduce amyloid-beta protein, other problems of the disease including inflammation, continue unchecked. In a new study, scientists at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT describe a candidate drug that in human cell cultures…
Every basketball coach has told their players at some point that free throws win games. A new study from the University of Kansas used innovative markerless motion capture technology to determine the mechanics of proficient free-throw shooters and help better understand one of the biggest keys to success in the…
Brucellosis is a disease, caused by the members of bacterial Brucella family, that mainly infects cattle, goats and sheep, leading to pregnancy loss, which has caused billions of dollars in economic losses for livestock producers worldwide. The disease can also jump from animals to humans, mainly through consumption of unpasteurized…
Among the negative impacts of extreme weather events around the world is one that most people may not think of: an increase in child marriages. Researchers at The Ohio State University conducted a systematic review of 20 studies connecting droughts, floods and other extreme weather events to increases in child,…
Sleep is a critical part of a child’s overall health, but it can also be an important factor in the way they behave. According to a new study from the Youth Development Institute at University of Georgia, getting enough sleep can help children combat the effects of stressful environments. “Stressful…
In northern Yellowstone National Park, saplings of quaking aspen, an ecologically important tree in the American West, are being broken by a historically large bison herd, affecting the comeback of aspen from decades of over-browsing by elk. Findings of the research led by Luke Painter of Oregon State University were…
With increased reports of Italian restaurants overcharging customers this year, what are your rights and what can you do if this happens to you? Source link
A French visitor was the latest to be caught trying to make off with a large quantity of pebbles from a protected Sardinian beach, customs officers said on Tuesday. Source link
A town in the Italian Alps woke up to unusual summer snowfall on Monday, as storms, flooding, and even tornadoes hit the north of the country. Source link
CNN — Rare new video has emerged showing detained American Paul Whelan, who has been held in Russia for more than four years, inside his prison camp. The video, released by Russian state-controlled news agency Russia Today (RT), shows Whelan wearing a Russian prison uniform in different parts of the…
CNN — After months of intense lobbying, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is ebullient about the upcoming transfer of Dutch, Norwegian and Danish F-16 fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force. In many ways, the US-made F-16 is the ideal platform for the Ukrainians. It’s multi-role: it can provide air cover…
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister claimed Monday that Kyiv’s forces have made further gains on the southern front, while heavy fighting rages in the east. Follow here for live updates. Source link
After a nearly threefold drop in prescriptions for the antibiotic ciprofloxacin between 2015 and 2021, the rates of ciprofloxacin-resistant E. coli bacteria circulating in the community did not decline. In fact, a study of Seattle-area women over age 50 who had not taken any antibiotics for at least a year…
High-quality sequencing of nearly the entire kākāpō population, funded through a Genomics Aotearoa project, is helping New Zealand to manage the health of this critically endangered species. Not only is it already making a difference to kākāpō survival, but establishing sequencing methods to work with populations under threat is also…
An international research team including the University of Göttingen has described seven previously unknown species of leaf insects, also known as walking leaves. The insects belong to the stick and leaf insect order, which are known for their unusual appearance: they look confusingly similar to parts of plants such as…
A major red tide event occurred in waters off Southern California in the spring of 2020, resulting in dazzling displays of bioluminescence along the coast. The spectacle was caused by exceedingly high densities of Lingulodinium polyedra (L. polyedra),a plankton species renowned for its ability to emit a neon blue glow.…
A team of computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led by Emery Berger, recently unveiled a prize-winning Python profiler called Scalene. Programs written with Python are notoriously slow — up to 60,000 times slower than code written in other programming languages — and Scalene works to efficiently identify…
Fat is a normal and necessary part of the body. Fat cells store and release energy, as well as play significant roles in hormonal regulation and immunity. In recent decades, a concerning rise in metabolic illnesses — such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and diabetes — has focused scientific…
The mosquito-borne infectious disease malaria resulted in about 241 million clinical episodes and 627,000 deaths in 2020. In young children and pregnant women living in areas where the disease is endemic, a major cause of death is Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent, prevalent, and deadly human malaria parasite. Scientists are…
University of Michigan researchers have discovered that the same cellular mechanism involved in a form of cystic fibrosis is also implicated in a form of a rare disease called cystinosis. The mechanism cleans up mutated proteins. In cystinosis, a genetic disease, this allows cystine crystals to build up in the…
Plastics — in particular, microplastics — are among the most pervasive pollutants on the planet, finding their way into the air, water systems and food chains around the world. While the prevalence of microplastics in the environment is well known — as are their negative impacts on marine organisms —…
Researchers at Duke University have implemented a quantum-based method to observe a quantum effect in the way light-absorbing molecules interact with incoming photons. Known as a conical intersection, the effect puts limitations on the paths molecules can take to change between different configurations. The observation method makes use of a…
Before heading to work each day, most people have spent the night dreaming. Studies show that on any given morning, about 40 percent of the working population recalls their dreams. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that when dreams are first recalled, people often draw connections between…
“Every successful medicine has its origin story. And research like this is the soil from which new drugs are born,” says Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Christopher Vakoc. For six years, Vakoc’s lab has been on a mission to transform sarcoma cells into regularly functioning tissue cells. Sarcomas are cancers…
Due to intensifying sea-ice melting in the Arctic, sunlight is now penetrating deeper and deeper into the ocean. Since marine zooplankton respond to the available light, this is also changing their behaviour — especially how the tiny organisms rise and fall within the water column. As an international team of…
While radio waves emitted by radio and television broadcasting and CB radio can disrupt the magnetic compass of migratory birds, those used in mobile communication networks do not because the frequencies are too high to affect their sense of orientation. This was the key finding of a new study published…
Scientists from the University of Birmingham and the University of Cambridge have developed a new method for detecting mid-infrared (MIR) light at room temperature using quantum systems. The research, published today (28th August) in Nature Photonics, was conducted at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and marks a…
