Culture
Millions of years ago, in the warm Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California, walrus species without tusks lived abundantly.
But in a new study, Cal State Fullerton paleontologists have identified three new walrus species discovered in Orange County and one of the new species has "semi-tusks" -- or longer teeth.
The other two new species don't have tusks and all predate the evolution of the long iconic ivory tusks of the modern-day walrus, which lives in the frigid Arctic.
A collaborative team of ecologists, led by those from Trinity College Dublin, has been using recordings of animal noises to assess biodiversity in sub-tropical Japan. The team assessed how effective these acoustic surveys were for pinpointing Okinawa's wild and wonderful fauna in different sonic conditions--and discovered that the incessant choruses of the local cicadas disguise the true diversity of the region.
PRINCETON, N.J.-- People around the world, especially in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, consume wild game, or bushmeat, whether out of necessity, as a matter of taste preference, or, in the case of particularly desirable wildlife species, to connote a certain social status. Bushmeat consumption, however, has devasted the populations of hundreds of wildlife species and been linked to the spread of zoological diseases such as the Ebola virus.
University of Texas at Dallas computer scientists have devised a new weapon against video game players who cheat.
The researchers developed their approach for detecting cheaters using the popular first-person shooter game Counter-Strike. But the mechanism can work for any massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that sends data traffic to a central server.
Their research was published online Aug. 3 in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
PRINCETON, N.J. --Countries across the globe have been struggling to deal with the impact of Covid-19 and its accompanying economic slowdown. As economies "build back better," it may be an opportune time to introduce carbon pricing to tackle climate change, according to new Princeton University policy research.
Health care workers -- particularly nurses -- have a higher prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection than non-health care workers, according to researchers at Rutgers, which released baseline results from a large prospective study of participants at Rutgers and affiliated hospitals recruited during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Nov. 16, 2020 - Even before the pandemic and the presidential election, Americans reported some of the highest perceived levels of stress in the world, according to the American Psychological Association. Not only does stress have negative effects on work and personal relationships, it also increases the risk of many chronic conditions, such as heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, and is associated with higher mortality rates.
DALLAS, Nov. 16, 2020 -- Atrial fibrillation (AF), an irregular heartbeat that can increase the likelihood of stroke, was detected up to 10 times more frequently in high risk patients recovering from heart surgery who wore a continuous cardiac monitor for a month, compared to patients who had usual follow-up care following their procedure, according to late breaking research presented today at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2020.
Managing the activity of the BCAP protein could help the body repair intestinal tissue from damage caused by inflammation, according to a new study led by experts at Cincinnati Children's.
The findings, published online Nov. 16, 2020, in PNAS, suggest that targeting BCAP with new medications could benefit people living with conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
LAWRENCE -- Climate change is an emotionally charged topic that can stir political arguments and inspire people to take action. How people talk about it, especially news media and organizations dedicated to combating the issue, can influence how people think about climate change, a University of Kansas researcher shows in a pair of new studies.
Compelling arguments in climate change news
AURORA, Colo. (November 16, 2020) - Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have found that many pregnant Black Americans have low levels of choline, an essential nutrient that aids in prenatal brain development. Stress caused by institutional racism may play a role.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- The old ethics rules are no longer offering adequate protection to field research subjects, according to two leading social scientists from Brown and Pennsylvania State Universities -- and as a result, individual people and even entire societies are being left vulnerable to financial ruin, emotional manipulation and more.
RENO, Nev. - Meadows in the Sierra Nevada mountains are critical components of watersheds. In addition to supplying water to over 25 million people in California and Nevada, meadows contain large quantities of carbon belowground. While it has been known for some time that meadows have large quantities of soil carbon, whether meadow soils are gaining or losing carbon has remained unclear.
EMBARGOED UNTIL 8:34 P.M. ET, Monday, November 16, 2020, Cleveland: Cleveland Clinic researchers leading a global clinical trial have found that rilonacept, an FDA approved drug for other inflammatory diseases, resolved acute pericarditis episodes and reduced risk of pericarditis recurrence. The study was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions.
Experiments led by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have determined that several hepatitis C drugs can inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 main protease, a crucial protein enzyme that enables the novel coronavirus to reproduce.
Inhibiting, or blocking, this protease from functioning is vital to stopping the virus from spreading in patients with COVID-19. The study, published in the journal Structure, is part of efforts to quickly develop pharmaceutical treatments for COVID-19 by repurposing existing drugs known to effectively treat other viral diseases.