Brain
New research has revealed when it comes to flying the largest of birds don't rely on flapping to move around. Instead they make use of air currents to keep them airborne for hours at a time.
The Andean condor - the world's heaviest soaring bird which can weigh in at up to 15kg - actually flaps its wings for one per cent of its flight time.
Boulder, Colo., USA: The impact event that formed the Chicxulub crater (Yucatán Peninsula, México) caused the extinction of 75% of species on Earth 66 million years ago, including non-avian dinosaurs. One place that did not experience much extinction was the deep, as organisms living in the abyss made it through the mass extinction event with just some changes to community structure.
Infancy is a sensitive developmental period that presents opportunities and challenges for caregivers to feed their infants in ways that support healthy growth and development. A new integrative review examined evidence related to infants' self-regulation of behavior and emotion, and how that relates to interactions when they are fed by their caregivers, including how those interactions may derail infants' ability to regulate their intake of food.
A research group led by Daniel Aili, associate professor at Linköping University, has developed a bioink to print tissue-mimicking material in 3D printers. The scientists have developed a method and a material that allow cells to survive and thrive.
A first-in-human study presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2020 Annual Meeting has demonstrated the safety, favorable pharmacokinetic and dosimetry profile of 64Cu-EBRGD, a new, relatively long-lived PET tracer, in patients with glioblastomas. The radiotracer proved to be a superior, high-contrast imaging diagnostic in patients, visualizing tumors that express low or moderate levels of αvβ3 integrin with high sensitivity.
Calling in the ultrasonic range enables small bats to orient themselves in the dark and track down tiny insects. Louder calls travel farther, improving a bat's ability to detect their prey. It was long assumed that echolocation does not contribute much to energy expenditure in flight because individuals simply couple their calls with the beat of their wings. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin have now shown that high intensity echolocation calls are by no means free and substantially contribute to energy expenditure.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study reveals how climate change has enabled a voracious crab species to dramatically alter salt marsh ecosystems across the southeastern U.S.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that soils beneath salt marshes from South Carolina to Florida have been softened by higher sea levels and increased tidal inundation. That softening has allowed the burrowing crab species Sesarma reticulatum to thrive, feeding on the cordgrass that holds the marshes together.
Mothers, newborns, young children and adolescents lose 20% of health and social services to COVID-19
Women, newborns, young children and adolescents are losing 20 percent of their health and social services due to the COVID-19 pandemic says a Panel of senior global health experts.
"Health systems in both rich and poor nations are massively struggling and the services for mothers, newborns, young children and adolescents are crumbling," says Elizabeth Mason, M.D, co-chair of the UN Secretary-General's Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) for Every Woman, Every Child, Every Adolescent reviewing the impact of COVID-19 on these groups.
Osaka, Japan - Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the potential to differentiate into a range of different cell types, including bone, fat, and muscle cells. But it's their ability to stimulate the repair of damaged tissue that has captured the interest of researchers worldwide, with MSCs demonstrating therapeutic effects in the treatment of conditions such as heart disease, liver cirrhosis, and diabetes.
However, despite the success of several clinical trials, researchers have struggled to explain the sometimes variable results of MSC therapy.
Due to border closures in the wake of the corona crisis, the arrival of refugees in Europe has temporarily dipped. However, worldwide numbers of refugees have surged, again, within a year, driven by violence, war, persecution, economic hardship, or climate change. In the foreseeable future, many refugees will not be able to return to their homes. The integration of refugees in receiving countries is the most promising and decent response to this situation. Yet, how such integration can be achieved remains an open issue and ongoing challenge.
Tsukuba, Japan - Researchers at the University of Tsukuba used advanced metrics from information theory to describe the collective behavior of small schools of ayu fish. They found that the overall dynamics were noticeably different for groups of three or more, compared with smaller groups, even over very short timescales. This work may help shed light on fundamental problems in complexity theory and assist in the development of cooperative biomimetic swarming robots.
The science community should withdraw from involvement in international tests such as PISA because they have forced schools to adopt "narrow" curricula and pedagogies, a study says.
Researchers examining the future of science lessons post-covid have also urged teachers and educators to develop a new focus on the environment and health. They have argued children need to learn more about the complexities of research in lessons to improve scientific literacy.
With the advent of super-resolution microscopy, scientists can study close protein associations better than ever before. In the latest edition of eLife, the team of Wim Annaert (VIB-KU Leuven) combines state-of-the-art imaging techniques to investigate the distribution of γ-secretase, a protein complex associated with both Alzheimer's disease and cancer.
KAIST researchers have used an X-ray method to track how proteins fold, which could improve computer simulations of this process, with implications for understanding diseases and improving drug discovery. Their findings were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on June 30.
When proteins are translated from their DNA codes, they quickly transform from a non-functional, unfolded state into their folded, functional state. Problems in folding can lead to diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Populations around the world are living longer lives than was the norm just a few decades ago, presenting governments with significant challenges in terms of caring for their growing elderly populations. According to a new study published in PLOS ONE, understanding how to assess who is elderly is a crucial first step for our understanding of population aging.