Culture
Wetlands in the Intermountain West, a region nestled between the Rocky Mountains, the Cascade Range, and the Sierra Nevada, are home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. Wetlands may only make up two percent of the region, but 80 percent of wildlife rely on the rich habitat they provide. The majority of these wetlands are located on private ranchlands. While the persistence of these "working wetlands" depends on the management decisions of ranchers, their perspectives are often missing from conservation and policy-making discussions.
DALLAS, Jan. 14, 2019 - Too few people covered by Medicare participated in outpatient cardiac rehabilitation after a heart attack or acute heart event or surgery, particularly women, the elderly and non-white patients, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
Advances in scanning have allowed researchers for the first time to show lower levels of a protein found in the connections between neurons in the living brains of people with schizophrenia.
The researchers, who conducted the scans at the psychiatric imaging facility at the Medical Research Council (MRC) London Institute of Medical Sciences, say these changes could underlie the cognitive difficulties seen in schizophrenia and provide targets for research into new treatments.
In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Karolinska Institutet show that MAIT cells (mucosa-associated invariant T cells), part of the human immune system, respond with dynamic activity and reprogramming of gene expression during the initial phase of HIV infection. The study fills a knowledge gap, as previously there has been a lack of awareness of the function of MAIT cells during this particular phase.
Stem cells are known for their ability to turn into many different types of cell, be they muscle cells, cartilage, or bone cells. Just like the body they are part of, stem cells sense what happens around them and react accordingly. For decades, researchers have been learning how to steer this differentiation process by changing the cells' environment. The knowledge acquired is already being used in tissue engineering, in other words, to generate substitute materials that restore or maintain damaged biological tissues. However, most research has been done on static scaffolds.
JUPITER, Fla.--Jan. 13, 2020--Storing and retrieving memories is among the most important tasks our intricate brains must perform, yet how that happens at a molecular level remains incompletely understood. A new study from the lab of Neuroscience Professor Ronald Davis, PhD, at Scripps Research, Florida, sheds light on one element of that memory storage process, namely the storage and retrieval of a type of hardwired long-term memory.
MIAMI--The results of an 18-year study of Atlantic tarpon by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science revealed that these large silvery fish take extensive seasonal migrations--1,000s of kilometers in distance--beyond U.S. borders. The new findings can help protect the fish, which is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN--International Union for Conservation of Nature, and the main draw of a more than $6 billion catch-and-release sport fishing industry in the United States.
The fight against drug-resistant pathogens remains an intense one. While the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) 2019 "biggest threats" report reveals an overall decrease in drug-resistant microbe-related deaths as compared to its previous report (2013) the agency also cautions that new forms of drug-resistant pathogens are still emerging.
Astrophysicists have come a step closer to understanding the origin of a faint glow of gamma rays covering the night sky. They found that this light is brighter in regions that contain a lot of matter and dimmer where matter is sparser - a correlation that could help them narrow down the properties of exotic astrophysical objects and invisible dark matter.
Humans eat a lot of fish, in some areas of the world making up an essential part of our diet. Fishing can sometimes deplete fish populations to the point where the fish have difficulty reproducing and growing their numbers again. Establishing Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that limit or eliminate fishing within their borders can help fish to replenish their populations. They can then be harvested when they venture outside the MPA, spilling out into surrounding waters where fishers benefit from the recovered abundance.
In the popular book The Demon in the Machine, physicist Paul Davies argues that what's missing in the definition of life is how biological processes create "information," and such information storage is the stuff of life, like a bird's ability to navigate or a human's ability to solve complex problems. The "Demon" Davies refers to is Maxwell's Demon, as proposed by 19th century physicist James Clerk Maxwell as a thought experiment.
Houston Methodist scientists identified a protein found in ovarian cancer that may contribute to declining brain function and Alzheimer's disease, by combining computational methods and lab research.
WASHINGTON-(Jan. 13, 2020)-Knowing that your unborn fetus has congenital heart disease causes such pronounced maternal stress, anxiety and depression that these women's fetuses end up with impaired development in key brain regions before they are born, according to research published online Jan. 13, 2020, in JAMA Pediatrics.
A molecule produced by the brain that activates the same receptors as marijuana is protective against stress by reducing anxiety-causing connections between two brain regions, Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers report.
UPTON, NY--Scientists have developed a platform for assembling nanosized material components, or "nano-objects," of very different types--inorganic or organic--into desired 3-D structures. Though self-assembly (SA) has successfully been used to organize nanomaterials of several kinds, the process has been extremely system-specific, generating different structures based on the intrinsic properties of the materials.