More men than women develop Parkinson’s disease and new work presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies says that it is do to sex differences in how brain cells change. Parkinson’s disease affects about 9 million people and becomes increasingly prevalent with age.
Some indigenous peoples wear body paint, and most most of the indigenous communities who paint their bodies live in areas where there is an abundance of bloodsucking horseflies, mosquitoes or tsetse flies. Where insects bite people there is a risk of bacteria, parasites and other pathogens being transferred. More insects, more risk. Did paint come into popularity for protection it might offer? A new study set out to find if the two were linked, and not just cultural decoration.
A recent study using deep learning algorithms and statistical methods discovered the footprint of a new hominid who cross bred with the ancestors of Asiatic individuals tens of thousands of years ago.Modern human DNA computational analysis suggests that the extinct species was a hybrid of Neanderthals and Denisovans and cross bred with "Out of Africa" modern humans in Asia. This finding would explain that the hybrid found this summer in the caves of Denisova - the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father - was not an isolated case, but rather was part of a more general introgression process.
Anopheles stephensi, a malaria disease vector, is normally found in the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and China. But now it has been found in Ethiopia, where over 68 percent of the population is already at risk for malaria and an average of 2.5 million cases are reported annually.
Our brains can track the sounds in its environment while we sleep, and favor the most relevant ones, according to a recent study.No great new information there. Everyone has woken up from sleep because of noise. But the mechanism that allows us (and some better than others) to sleep in complete safety and wake up at the right moment has remained a mystery. Why do some people who fall asleep on a bus or train miss their stop while others may only wake up at the sound of their own name but not that of others?Studies that concentrated on the sleeping brain’s capacity to process isolated sounds don't help much with the real world, where we often sleep in environments where various sounds are superimposed and mixed with one another.
Tomato plants emit a volatile compound named hexenyl butyrate which can be used for closing the stomata, key in protecting plants from bacterial attacks.But Center for Science in the Public Interest and Environmental Working Group don't need to mobilize the trial lawyers, this volatile compound is all natural. That means is could be a new strategy for protecting crops from biotic and abiotic stress and improving yields, all without sound like scary science to their attorneys.It's also easy to yes because it is a volatile compound. It can be applied by spraying onto plants and also by using diffuser devices, it has zero toxicity and its use is already approved in food.
Space weather and its changes to earth's magnetic fields has an outsized impact in Arctic regions through effects on electricity networks, mining operations and shipping. A new technique called Fractional Derivative Rate (FDR) published in Space Weather has been used for analyzing fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field and found dramatic differences at different latitudes and different times of day. The northernmost stations were more geomagnetically active at midday, while the activeness at the southernmost stations was highest at midnight. The largest differences between different times of day was observed in the northernmost measurement zone, in the Arctic Circle.
Death rates from cancer have been falling for 25 years, but the next generation may cause a tick back up.Cancer is the second leading cause of death, behind heart disease. Both have age as risk factors but also behavioral components. For cancer, smoking has been the second greatest risk factor overall (and number one for lung cancer) but heart disease is also greatly impacted by fitness. And many cancers can be directly linked to metabolic problems. The current levels of obesity among young people mean that cancer deaths could be at a plateau and set to rise again in 20 years.
Fecal pollution can explain a lot of the increase in resistant bacteria where humans live, but not all of it. In some cases resistance genes were common without the presence of “crAssphage”, a bacteriophage common in human feces - environments polluted with high levels of antibiotics from manufacturing, according to a new paper.
As European science-related institutions, such as the European Research Council, have shown their growing preference for Open Access, e.g., via the Plan S, the primary rationale for this is the positive effect on the discovery of new knowledge that various models of Open Access can be expected to have.
An ancient genetic mechanism needed for plant fertility is helping to solve a science mystery 700 million years in the making.The researchers discovered how a gene called DUO1 known to control sperm production inside pollen grains of flowering plants, is also used by primitive land plants to produce free-swimming sperm. They found that the gene originated in the stoneworts, an ancient group of aquatic algae that diverged from land plants over 700 million years ago.The paper suggests that it was a simple change in the DUO1 gene sequence that allowed the algal ancestors of land plants to produce small swimming sperm to increase the chances of fertilization in an aquatic environment.
Medicine is not going to be enough. That was the first lesson that the world learned when Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) raged across cultures in the 1980s. Though its cause was learned to be Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) its transmission was social. In some undeveloped countries, unprotected sex, infidelity, and sometimes even rape were points of pride. In wealthier nations, risky behavior in sub-cultures was touted as freedom.
The United States, and other countries with modern science and technology regulations, have enjoyed terrific boosts in yields, so great that food has become a cheap commodity, which has allowed for alternative processes (organic, shade tree, natural, etc.) to flourish by charging a premium.
