Earth

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Patients with Type 2 diabetes who were prescribed SGLT2 inhibitors lost more weight than patients who received GLP-1 receptor agonists, according to a University at Buffalo-led study.

The research, which sought to evaluate the difference in weight loss caused by the antidiabetic medications -- both of which work to control blood sugar levels -- found that among 72 patients, people using SGLT2 inhibitors experienced a median weight loss of more than 6 pounds, while those on GLP-1 receptor agonists lost a median of 2.5 pounds.

Conversations between seriously ill people, their families and palliative care specialists lead to better quality-of-life. Understanding what happens during these conversations - and particularly how they vary by cultural, clinical, and situational contexts - is essential to guide healthcare communication improvement efforts. To gain true understanding, new methods to study conversations in large, inclusive, and multi-site epidemiological studies are required. A new computer model offers an automated and valid tool for such large-scale scientific analyses.

Imaging spectroscopy can help predict water stress in wild blueberry barrens, according to a University of Maine-led study.

WASHINGTON--The global cryosphere--all of the areas with frozen water on Earth--shrank by about 87,000 square kilometers (about 33,000 square miles), a area about the size of Lake Superior, per year on average, between 1979 and 2016 as a result of climate change, according to a new study. This research is the first to make a global estimate of the surface area of the Earth covered by sea ice, snow cover and frozen ground.

Over years of studying antibody responses against the flu in the Wilson lab at the University of Chicago, researchers kept coming up with a strange finding: antibodies that seemed to bind not only to the flu virus, but to every virus the lab could throw at them. Since antibodies are usually highly specific to individual pathogens, in order to maximize their targeted protective response, this pattern was extremely unusual.

Cash in on the kids' inheritance and spend up big on the retirement plans - that's the message coming from the University of South Australia as new research reveals that older people are keen to spend their well-earned savings, rather than passing them on to their kids.

And while it may seem like bad news for the younger generation, the research also confirms that the kids are just fine with this scenario, claiming that no one owes anyone anything.

Bottom Line: For women diagnosed with breast cancer in Florida, breast cancer-specific mortality rates have decreased more among Black and Hispanic women than white women since 1990. Despite these advances, Black women still have double the five- and 10-year mortality rates of non-Hispanic white women.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

An invasive species of aphid could put some threatened plant species on Kangaroo Island at risk as researchers from the University of South Australia confirm Australia's first sighting of Aphis lugentis on the Island's Dudley Peninsula.

It is another blow for Kangaroo Island's environment, especially following the Black Summer bushfires that decimated more than half the island and 96 per cent of Flinders Chase National Park.

Researchers at the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku, Finland, study insect biodiversity particularly in Amazonia and Africa. In their studies, they have discovered hundreds of species previously unknown to science. Many of them are exciting in their size, appearance, or living habits.

Contrary to what science once suggested, older people with a declining sense of smell do not have comprehensively dampened olfactory ability for odors in general - it simply depends upon the type of odor. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen reached this conclusion after examining a large group of older Danes' and their intensity perception of common food odours.

Harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) - which are among the world's largest eagle species - struggle to feed offspring in heavily deforested areas of the Amazon, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Everton Miranda and colleagues found that harpy eagles rely on specific prey that lives in canopy forests, including sloths and monkeys. Eaglets starved in areas of high deforestation where canopy-based food was limited.

A new study based on computational analyses of how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with host cell proteins has identified 200 previously approved drugs that could be repurposed to treat COVID-19, 40 of which have already entered clinical trials. Furthermore, Namshik Han and colleagues identified 30 proteins induced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus that are targeted by 8 or more existing drugs, finding that nitric oxide production, which is important for viral synthesis, may be targeted by these drugs to fight infection.

In 1934, physicist Eugene Wigner made a theoretical prediction based on quantum mechanics that for 87 years went unseen.

Decision-makers around the world are increasingly interested in using ecosystem solutions such as mangroves, coral reefs, sand dunes and forests on steep slopes to help buffer the impacts from hazard events and protect populations. But what evidence exists to show the efficacy of nature-based solutions over man-made protective measures to reduce the impacts of the increasing numbers of hazard events humanity faces due to climate change?

Tokyo, Japan - Believe it or not, steel has something in common with bacterial appendages: they can both undergo a special type of physical transformation that remains puzzling. Now, researchers from Japan and China have used direct microscopic observations to provide more clarity to how this transformation occurs.