Earth
Children who think poorly of themselves often underachieve in school. A new Dutch study tested whether a simple mental activity--having children with low self-confidence say favorable, encouraging words to themselves--could boost their achievement. The study found that children who engaged in this kind of self-talk improved their math performance when the talk focused on effort, not ability.
Gold nanoparticles, which are supposed to be stable in biological environments, can be degraded inside cells. This research conducted by teams from the CNRS, l'Université de Paris, Sorbonne Université, and l'Université de Strasbourg will be published in PNAS on December 16 2019, and reveals the ability of cells to metabolize gold, which is nevertheless not essential for their functioning. This study opens the way for a better understanding of the life cycle of gold nanoparticles in organisms.
A new survey of the activity of nearly 60,000 neurons in the mouse visual system reveals how far we have to go to understand how the brain computes. Published today in the international journal Nature Neuroscience, the analysis led by researchers at the Allen Institute reveals that more than 90% of neurons in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes our visual world, don’t work the way scientists thought — and it’s not yet clear how they do work.
AMHERST, Mass. - In what the authors believe is one of the first studies to examine climate change impact on the timing of bird migration on a continental scale, researchers report that spring migrants were likely to pass certain stops earlier now than they would have 20 years ago. Also, temperature and migration timing were closely aligned, with the greatest changes in migration timing occurring in the regions warming most rapidly. Timing shifts were less apparent in fall, they add.
WASHINGTON -- A team of neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have found, in animal models, that they can "switch off" epileptic seizures. The findings, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provide the first evidence that while different types of seizures start in varied areas of the brain, they all can be controlled by targeting a very small set of neurons in the brain or their tendril-like neuronal axons.
Life cycles for birds, insects and trees are shifting in this current era of a rapidly changing climate. How migration patterns, in particular, are changing and whether birds can track climate change is an open question.
Kyle Horton, assistant professor at Colorado State University, led a new study analyzing nocturnal bird migration that he hopes will lead to more answers about shifting migration patterns. He and the research team used 24 years of radar data from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for the study.
Research on global biodiversity has long assumed that present-day biodiversity patterns reflect present-day factors, namely contemporary climate and human activities. A new study shows that climate changes and human impacts over the last 100,000 years continue to shape patterns of tropical and subtropical mammal biodiversity today -- a surprising finding.
In an article published in Physical Review Letters, Bristol scientists have answered the fundamental question: "Is it possible to move without exerting force on the environment?", by describing the tractionless self-propulsion of active matter.
Understanding how cells move autonomously is a fundamental question for both biologists and physicists.
Experiments on cell motility are commonly done by looking at the motion of a cell on a glass slide under a microscope.
(Boston)--African-Americans are at higher risk for cancer-associated venous thromboembolism (VTE) as compared with patients from other races.
Exposure to underwater pile driving noise, which can be associated with the construction of docks, piers, and offshore wind farms, causes squid to exhibit strong alarm behaviors, according to a study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published Dec. 16, 2019, in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin.
Polymers are used to develop various materials, such as plastics, nylons, and rubbers. In their most basic form, they are made up of many of identical molecules joined together over and over, like a chain. If you engineer molecules to join together in specific ways, you can control the characteristics of the resulting polymer.
Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive tumor that commonly affects bones in adolescents and young adults, is diagnosed in about 225 American children and teens every year, accounting for about 1 percent of pediatric cancers. Although Ewing sarcoma has been studied for decades, it has no effective cure and a survival rate of just 20-30% for patients who relapse; furthermore, most treatment require surgical resections or amputation and this impacts quality of life of the patients. But a research team at Houston Methodist aims to change those odds.
ITHACA, N.Y. - In the not-so-distant future, city streets could be flooded with autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars can move faster and travel closer together, allowing more of them to fit on the road - potentially leading to congestion and gridlock on city streets.
A new study by Cornell researchers developed a first-of-its-kind model to control traffic and intersections in order to increase car capacity on urban streets, reduce congestion and minimize accidents.
Cancer development is associated with the gradual accumulation of DNA defects over time. Thus, cancer is considered an age-related disease. But why do children develop cancer? An international team of researchers, led by Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, now reveal that mysterious rings of DNA known as extrachromosomal circular DNA can contribute to cancer development in children.
Washington, DC-- Every school child learns about the water cycle--evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. But what if there were a deep Earth component of this process happening on geologic timescales that makes our planet ideal for sustaining life as we know it?