Earth
Hotter and drier El Niño events are having an alarming effect on biodiversity in the Amazon Rainforest and further add to a disturbing global insect collapse, scientists show.
A new study focusing on the humble, but ecologically key, dung beetle has revealed for the first time that intense droughts and wildfires during the last El Niño climate phenomenon, combined with human disturbance, led to beetle numbers falling by more than half - with effects lasting for at least two years.
Alaska's Tongass and Chugach National Forests, which contain some of the world's largest remaining tracts of intact temperate rainforest, contribute an average of 48 million salmon a year to the state's commercial fishing industry, a new USDA Forest Service-led study has found. The average value of these "forest fish" when they are brought back to the dock is estimated at $88 million per year.
Death by suicide in children has reached a 30-year high in the United States. During middle and high school, 10 to 15% of kids have thoughts of suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
How early in a child's life do these thoughts begin? New research from Washington University in St. Louis is narrowing the gap in psychology's understanding of suicidal thoughts in young people, the findings show that such thoughts begin as early as 9 and 10 years old.
Lisa is two years old. She often gets uneasy--shaking and sweating--especially in the morning. She vomits and refuses to eat. Her mother, Karoline, knows she has to act before Lisa starts to deteriorate.
To avoid convulsions and loss of consciousness, Karoline desperately tries to give Lisa sugar-rich drinks but has to proceed with energy gel applications on Lisa's chin and today, also an intramuscular glucagon injection. Lisa improves, but it takes hours before she wants to eat and drink normally again.
Migration, both domestic and abroad, is playing a major role in transforming the world's largest cities, and Moscow is no exception. Researchers at HSE University, the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IGRAN) and Strelka KB identified which cities' residents are buying newly built apartments in the capital and how economic inequality between Russia's regions is changing the face of the city.
Back in 1972, NASA sent their last team of astronauts to the Moon in the Apollo 17 mission. These astronauts brought some of the Moon back to Earth so scientists could continue to study lunar soil in their labs. Since we haven't returned to the Moon in almost 50 years, every lunar sample is precious. We need to make them count for researchers now and in the future. In a new study in Meteoritics & Planetary Science, scientists found a new way to analyze the chemistry of the Moon's soil using a single grain of dust.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A cancer tumor's ability to mutate allows it to escape from chemotherapy and other attempts to kill it. So, encouraging mutations would not be a logical path for cancer researchers. Yet a Mayo Clinic team and their collaborators took that counterintuitive approach and discovered that while it created resistance to chemotherapy, it also made tumors sensitive to immunotherapy. They also found that this approach worked successfully across tumor types and individual patient genomes.
A new study on how and when the precursors to eggs and sperm are formed during development could help pave the way for generating egg and sperm cells in the lab to treat infertility.
The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, describes the way in which human stem cells evolve into germ cells, the precursors for egg and sperm cells.
A study of East African coral reefs has uncovered an unfolding calamity for the region: plummeting fish populations due to overfishing, which in turn could produce widespread food insecurity.
In a newly published paper in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series titled "Coral reef fish communities, diversity, and their fisheries and biodiversity status in East Africa," WCS Senior Conservation Zoologist Dr. Tim McClanahan reports that overfishing is widespread across the region.
When you were young, were you the type of child who would scour open fields looking for bumble bees? Today, it is much harder for kids to spot them, since bumble bees are drastically declining in North America and in Europe.
A new study from the University of Ottawa found that in the course of a single human generation, the likelihood of a bumble bee population surviving in a given place has declined by an average of over 30%.
Following the first U.S. test of CRISPR gene editing in patients with advanced cancer, researchers report these patients experienced no negative side effects and that the engineered T cells persisted in their bodies - for months. The results from this Phase 1 clinical trial suggest the gene editing approach was safe and feasible, which until now has been uncertain, and the findings represent an important step toward the ultimate goal of using gene editing to help a patient's immune system attack cancer.
In a mosquito responsible for transmission of malaria, heat-seeking behavior - critical to this insect's ability to locate and feed on warm-blooded hosts - relies on a thermoreceptor that was once focused on heat avoidance (to help the mosquito keep cool). Today, the receptor is wired for heat targeting (to help the insect find its next meal). A new study reporting this finding, by suggesting a means to block mosquito heat-seeking, may help guide the development of novel methods for controlling mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria.
New research has deciphered how rogue communications in blood stem cells can cause Leukaemia.
The discovery could pave the way for new, targeted medical treatments that block this process.
Blood cancers like leukaemia occur when mutations in stem cells cause them to produce too many blood cells.
An international team of scientists, including researchers at the University of York, have discovered how these mutations allow cells to deviate from their normal method of communicating with each other, prompting the development of blood cells to spiral out of control.
CHAPEL HILL, NC - February 6, 2020 - Scientists from the UNC School of Medicine, Columbia University, and Rockefeller University have revealed the inner workings of one of the most fundamental and important molecular machines in cells.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- If you resort to deleting apps when your phone's storage space is full, researchers have a solution.
New software "streams" data and code resources to an app from a cloud server when necessary, allowing the app to use only the space it needs on a phone at any given time.