Culture
In 1872 the United States created Yellowstone, the first National Park in the world. Since then many more parks, monuments, preserves, wildernesses and other protected areas have been created in the USA. Protected areas, like Yellowstone, are invaluable, but are they actually effective at preserving endangered species? And if not, how can future protected areas do better?
DURHAM, N.H.-- Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have identified a quicker and less expensive way to count sperm in lobsters that could help scientists looking at any animal better understand mating, a key aspect of species survival.
"Scientists used to have to do this using a very tedious or expensive method so it was rarely attempted," said Win Watson, professor emeritus of marine biology. "Now that DNA technology has become so accessible and affordable, we decided to try it and it worked great."
Climate in different parts of the world is undergoing a warming trend, but also significant interdecadal variations that compensate, or exacerbate the former. These variations are associated not only with changes in the radiative forcing, but also to natural variability in the atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Can multi-annual variations in the frequency of North Atlantic atmospheric blocking and mid-latitude circulation regimes be skillfully predicted?
For years, a scientific puzzle has bedeviled researchers aiming to fight Alzheimer's disease, a common and incurable form of dementia.
The results of numerous lab investigations and population studies support the preventive potential of omega-3 fatty acids, "good fats" found abundantly in fish. However, to date the majority of studies evaluating omega-3s for averting or curtailing cognitive decline in human participants have failed to show benefits.
Aspergillus latus, a species of fungus previously found only in soil or plants, has been found for the first time in a hospital environment by an international group of researchers. The group sequenced its genome and discovered that it is actually a hybrid and is up to three times more drug-resistant than the two species from which it derives.
Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.
SARS-CoV-2 RNA found in a healthy blood donor 40 days after resolution of symptoms
A key mystery about the gas comprising most of our atmosphere is closer to being solved following a discovery by University of California, Irvine biologists. Their findings are the first step in understanding the biological mechanism for breaking down nitrogen gas. Besides yielding groundbreaking knowledge, the information holds promise for developing environmentally friendly and cheaper ways to make products such as fertilizer and fuel. The team's research has just been published in the journal Science.
World-first research by Monash University in Australia has been able to detect positive COVID-19 cases using blood samples in about 20 minutes, and identify whether someone has contracted the virus.
In a discovery that could advance the worldwide effort to limit the community spread of COVID-19 through robust contact tracing, researchers were able to identify recent COVID-19 cases using 25 microlitres of plasma from blood samples.
Dr. Jeffrey L. Cummings, UNLV research professor and a leading expert on Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, led a five-year review of all Alzheimer’s drugs in the development pipeline. He says today there is more hope than ever that we'll one day solve Alzheimer’s.
Coordinated international action on energy-efficient, climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 460 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions - roughly equal to eight years of global emissions at 2018 levels - over the next four decades, according to the Cooling Emissions and Policy Synthesis Report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Researchers of the MTA-ELTE 'Lendület' Neuroethology of Communication Research Group at the Department of Ethology at the Faculty of Science, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (ELTE) compared human-oriented communicative behaviours of young miniature pigs and dogs kept as companion animals. They found that in a neutral situation pigs turn to humans, initiating interactions as much as dogs do.
Biodiversity is severely threatened both in Switzerland and worldwide, and numerous organisms are facing massive declines - particularly in freshwater ecosystems. All the species living in rivers - including fish, bacteria and many different aquatic invertebrates, such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies - are crucial for the functioning of these ecosystems. But many species are under threat due to habitat homogenization, pollution by pesticides and nutrients, and the spread of non-native species.
N-doped carbon encapsulated transition metal catalysts to optimize performance of zinc-air batteries
In a report published in NANO, a team of researchers from Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, China have developed N-doped carbon encapsulated transition metal catalysts for oxygen reduction reactions (ORR) and oxygen evolution reactions (OER) to optimize performance of zinc-air batteries.
They say it's better to have had something special and lost it than to have never had it at all. Who would have thought that sentiment holds true for metal oxide catalysts? According to scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Caltech, copper that was once bound with oxygen is better at converting carbon dioxide into renewable fuels than copper that was never bound to oxygen.
'Water plants are a nuisance in streams, blocking the flow. You should remove them'. This notion has for many years determined how streams were managed to prevent flooding during high rainfall events. Research by NIOZ scientist Loreta Cornacchia, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, in cooperation with Utrecht University and British and Belgian partners, shows how vegetation in streams can actually buffer water levels, by adjusting vegetation cover.