Earth
Earth is warming rapidly, but there is too little observational data in some regions such as the Arctic or high-altitude areas like the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau to adequately and consistently assess temperature variations across the globe. To better understand how temperatures have increased, an international team led by researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China has released a newly merged global surface temperature dataset, including reconstructed land and marine measurements from the 1850s to 2018.
Diabetics living in the UK worry about disruption to insulin supplies as a result of Brexit, new research shows.
Insulin is the hormone that helps control the body's blood sugar level and is critical to the survival of many people living with Type 1 diabetes. Currently most insulin used in the UK is imported.
Pioneering work led by a joint China-UK consortium has revealed the origin of one of the world's most important ecosystems, the East Asian biodiversity "hotspot," thus solving a longstanding riddle as to what prompted its formation and evolution.
Even after accounting for differences in income, education, caregiver support, special education services and parental reports of misbehavior and family conflict, elementary school-age Black children are 3.5 times more likely to be suspended or placed in detention than their white peers, a new study finds.
Climate change mitigation is about more than just CO2. So-called "short-lived climate-forcing pollutants" such as soot, methane, and tropospheric ozone all have harmful effects. Climate policy should be guided by a clearer understanding of their differentiated impacts.
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, the UCL Cancer Institute, and the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence have identified genetic changes in tumours which could be used to predict if immunotherapy drugs would be effective in individual patients.
Immunotherapies have led to huge progress treating certain types of cancer, but only a subset of patients respond, and hence a challenge for doctors and researchers is understanding why they work in some people and not others, and predicting who will respond well to treatment.
LAWRENCE -- For at least a century, ecologists have wondered at the tendency for populations of different species to cycle up and down in steady, rhythmic patterns.
"These cycles can be really exaggerated -- really huge booms and huge busts -- and quite regular," said Daniel Reuman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey. "It attracted people's attention because it was kind of mysterious. Why would such a big thing be happening?"
Being constantly flooded by a mass of stimuli, it is impossible for us to react to all of them. The same holds true for a little fish. Which stimuli should it pay attention to and which not? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now deciphered the neuronal circuit that zebrafish use to prioritize visual stimuli. Surrounded by predators, a fish can thus choose its escape route from this predicament.
Many genetic mutations have been found to be associated with a person's risk of developing Parkinson's disease. Yet for most of these variants, the mechanism through which they act remains unclear.
Now a new study in Nature led by a team from the University of Pennsylvania has revealed how two different variations--one that increases disease risk and leads to more severe disease in people who develop Parkinson's and another that reduces risk--manifest in the body.
URBANA, Ill. - With cities around the globe locking down yet again amid soaring COVID-19 numbers, could seasonality be partially to blame? New research from the University of Illinois says yes.
In a paper published in Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Illinois researchers show COVID-19 cases and mortality rates, among other epidemiological metrics, are significantly correlated with temperature and latitude across 221 countries.
Members of Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences are shining new light on an enduring mystery--one that is millions of years in the making.
A team of paleontologists led by Professor Cathryn Newton has increased scientists' understanding of whether Devonian marine faunas, whose fossils are lodged in a unit of bedrock in Central New York known as the Hamilton Group, were stable for millions of years before succumbing to waves of extinctions.
Rapid, sensitive diagnosis of COVID-19 is essential for early treatment, contact tracing and reducing viral spread. However, some people infected with SARS-CoV-2 receive false-negative test results, which might put their and others' health at risk. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have developed ultra-absorptive nanofiber swabs that could reduce the number of false-negative tests by improving sample collection and test sensitivity.
Tracking milk drinking in the ancient past is not straightforward. For decades, archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the practice by various indirect methods. They have looked at ancient rock art to identify scenes of animals being milked and at animal bones to reconstruct kill-off patterns that might reflect the use of animals for dairying. More recently, they even used scientific methods to detect traces of dairy fats on ancient pots. But none of these methods can say if a specific individual consumed milk.
A characteristic feature of all stem cells is their ability to self-renew. But how is this potential maintained throughout life? Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Experimental Medicine* (HI-STEM) have now discovered in mice that cells in the so-called "stem cell niche" are responsible for this: Blood vessel cells of the niche produce a factor that stimulates blood stem cells and thus maintains their self-renewal capacity. During aging, production of this factor ceases and blood stem cells begin to age.
A research group from Kumamoto University (Japan) has developed an automated measurement system to assess healthy lifespans using nematodes (C. elegans). Based on qualitative differences in lifespans, this system can classify populations of nematodes that are, on average, healthy and long-lived, healthy and die prematurely, and living with long periods of poor health. Since there are many similarities between the mechanisms that determine the lifespan of C.