Culture
The South African dung beetle Scarabaeus lamarcki has - to put it mildly - an interesting technique to ensure its offspring a good start in life. When the animal, which is only a few centimetres tall, encounters elephant dung, for example, it forms small balls out of it which it then rolls away in a randomly chosen direction. After a while, the beetle stuffs the dung into underground passages, which serve as its breeding chamber; where it then lays its eggs.
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - The Woodstock Music Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer, and new archaeological research from Binghamton University, State University of New York shows that the iconic event took on a life of its own.
A new technology discovered by a team including UConn School of Dental Medicine researchers records cellular communication in real time – providing a closer look into the dynamics of cell secretion and a greater understanding of how cells repair tissue.
Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, are developing a user-friendly (worn at home) vest with technology that collects data to tailor personalized therapy for patients with metastatic, somatostatin-receptor-2 positive neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). The study was presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
If you made any plans for next week, congratulations! You've demonstrated a key feature of being human: being able to think beyond the here and now - or, think abstractly. But when babies learn different kinds of abstract thought, and how, is still hotly debated by psychologists. Now new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that cultural environment may play a role.
Smoking increases both men's and women's risk of a major heart attack at all ages, but women smokers have a significantly higher increased risk compared to men, especially women under 50 years old, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Despite the increased risk, smokers can reduce their risk to that of a never smoker in as little as a month after quitting.
Selecting the best possible embryo to implant in a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a complicated task. As success rates for IVF have improved, many clinics now implant a single embryo during an IVF cycle -- with the goal of avoiding a multiple pregnancy -- and the responsibility of selecting the embryo falls to the embryologist. To determine the quality and viability of an embryo, embryologists typically examine specific features of the embryos using a light microscope.
Microdata from Swedish population registers provide new insights into cities' economic growth paths. The data reveal a surge in regional inequality, with more and more resources flowing to cities atop the urban hierarchy, which thus acquire an increasing share of national wealth.
(Boston)--A new study raises the possibility that close-range blast exposure among veterans with a genetically higher risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), may make them more susceptible to degradation of their white matter, the part of the brain made of fiber connections called axons that connect nerve cells.
Although there is evidence that genetic risk for AD may elevate the risk of neurodegeneration following traumatic brain injury, it has been unknown if blast exposure also interacts with AD disease risk to promote neurodegeneration.
PHILADELPHIA (June 24, 2019) - New research from the Monell Center analyzed nearly 400,000 food reviews posted by Amazon customers to gain real-world insight into the food choices that people make. The findings reveal that many people find the foods in today's marketplace to be too sweet.
Told to optimize for speed while racing down a track in a computer game, a car pushes the pedal to the metal ... and proceeds to spin in a tight little circle. Nothing in the instructions told the car to drive straight, and so it improvised.
This example - funny in a computer game but not so much in life - is among those that motivated Stanford University researchers to build a better way to set goals for autonomous systems.
Each year during the holiday season, soup kitchens and charities alike are flooded with offers to volunteer. But is a donation of your time most beneficial to the charity, or would a financial contribution provide more value?
Researchers from Portland State University and Texas A&M University wondered what drives volunteering -- especially when a monetary donation would have more impact. Their study, "Why Do People Volunteer? An Experimental Analysis of Preferences for Time Donations," was published in this spring in the journal Management Science.
Research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2019 Annual Meeting draws a strong link between severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and impaired coronary flow reserve, which is an early sign of the heart disease atherosclerosis. Using 13N-ammonia positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), researchers were able to noninvasively evaluate coronary microvascular function in OSA patients and use their findings to predict cardiovascular disease risk.
Recent research suggests that increased visceral fat - that is body fat surrounding a number of important internal organs such as the liver, pancreas and intestines - carries the risk of cognitive impairment in later life. "Our goal was to investigate whether excess organ fat is associated with a reduction in the structural networks and storage capacity of our brain throughout its lifetime. We also wanted to find out whether this interaction can be influenced by oestradiol," said Rachel Zsido.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Villigen, Switzerland, have for the first time elucidated the structure of important enzymes in human cells that alter essential building blocks of the cellular cytoskeleton. This reveals the missing part of a cycle that regulates the build-up or breakdown of supporting elements of the cell. The enzymes investigated work as molecular scissors and can be involved in the development of various diseases, for example, cancer and diseases of the nervous system.