Now, researchers have published a first-of-its-kind data set to look at how lake water storage has changed in nearly 2000 of the world’s largest lakes. They find significant global losses and tease out what might be driving these decreases.
Tag Archives: Research
Research Preview: Science Magazine – June 2, 2023
Understanding our own order
Humans are primates. If we weren’t able to do things like write poetry and drive cars, we would likely be classified as another species of great ape, along with our closest cousins—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Thus, understanding the genomes, evolutionary history, sociality, and, some might argue, even ecology of modern primates greatly informs our understanding of ourselves.
A cool path for making glass
Brent Grocholski
Printing glass with additive manufacturing techniques could provide access to new materials and structures for many applications. However, one key limitation to this is the high temperature usually required to cure glass. Bauer et al. used a hybrid organic-inorganic polymer resin as a feedstock material that requires a much lower temperature for curing (see the Perspective by Colombo and Franchin).
A super Sonic circadian synchronizer
Sonic Hedgehog signaling and primary cilia control the core mammalian circadian clock
Virtually all mammalian physiological functions fall under the control of an internal circadian rhythm, or body clock. This circadian rhythm is governed by master neural networks in the hypothalamus that synchronize the activity of peripheral clocks in cells throughout the body.
Research: The Scientist Magazine – Summer 2023
Cooperation and Cheating
Bacteria cooperate to benefit the collective, but cheaters can rig the system. How is the balance maintained?
People often recognize social behaviors in complex organisms such as insects, nonhuman primates, and humans. But Megan Frederickson, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, is interested in a different, microscopic social community: bacteria. “Cooperation is everywhere,” she said. “Cells cooperate in multicellular organisms; individuals cooperate in societies; and different species cooperate… Why would it not be the case that microbes cooperate with each other?”
New Insight into Brain Inflammation Inspires New Hope for Epilepsy Treatment
Clinicians and researchers teamed up to investigate how inappropriate proinflammatory mechanisms contribute to the pathogenesis of drug-refractory epilepsy.
Doctors treat epilepsy with anticonvulsants to control seizures, but some patients do not respond to these first-line therapies. For patients with drug-refractory epilepsy (DRE) whose seizures persist after treatment with two or more anticonvulsants, clinicians must surgically remove part of the brain tissue to cure the disease.
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – June 1, 2023
How can mosquitoes find you? All you have to do is exhale
Free-flying mosquitoes gravitate toward pads that emit carbon dioxide, which is found in human breath.
Jupiter’s lightning has rhythm — just like Earth’s
Bolts begin as a series of short pulses both on Earth and on its much bigger, gassier neighbour in the Solar System.
Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 26, 2023
The COVID-19 virus mutated to outsmart key antibody treatments. Better ones are coming
As pandemic slows and COVID-19 funding dwindles, researchers worry companies won’t have incentives to bring improved antibodies to market.
TALES OF THE TONGUE
Since first evolving 350 million years ago, the tongue has taken myriad forms, unlocking new niches and boosting the diversity of life
Twice, quarterback Patrick Mahomes has led the Kansas City Chiefs to victory in the Super Bowl, the pinnacle of U.S. football. Although most fans have their eyes on the ball as Mahomes prepares to throw, his tongue does something just as interesting.
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 25, 2023
Oldest known ‘blueprints’ aided human hunters 9,000 years ago
Prehistoric engravings depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision.
The oldest blueprints ever found might have been used to prepare for large-scale hunts1.
Engraved lines on a stone in Jordan might depict landscape features near a large-scale hunting structure.
Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 19, 2023
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arbøll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.
Global loss of lake water storage
Drying trends are prevalent worldwide
The ancient history of kissing
Sources from Mesopotamia contextualize the emergence of kissing and its role in disease transmission
The disappearing boundary between organism and machine
Artificial skin mimics the sensory feedback of biological skin
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 18, 2023
The ocean is hotter than ever: what happens next?
Record temperature combined with an anticipated El Niño could devastate marine life and increase the chances of extreme weather.
The global ocean hit a new record temperature of 21.1 ºC in early April, 0.1 ºC higher than the last record in March 2016. Although striking, the figure (see ‘How the ocean is warming’) is in line with the ocean warming anticipated from climate change. What is remarkable is its occurrence ahead of — rather than during — the El Niño climate event that is expected to bring warmer, wetter weather to the eastern Pacific region later this year.
For chemists, the AI revolution has yet to happen
Machine-learning systems in chemistry need accurate and accessible training data. Until they get it, they won’t achieve their potential.
Many people are expressing fears that artificial intelligence (AI) has gone too far — or risks doing so. Take Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent figure in AI, who recently resigned from his position at Google, citing the desire to speak out about the technology’s potential risks to society and human well-being.
Science Review: Scientific American – June 2023 Issue
What Is the Future of Fusion Energy?
Nuclear fusion won’t arrive in time to fix climate change, but it could be essential for our future energy needs
- By Philip Ball
Last December physicists working on fusion claimed a breakthrough. A team at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California announced it had extracted more energy from a controlled nuclear fusion reaction than had been used to trigger it. It was a global first and a significant step for physics—but very far from enabling practical exploitation of fusion as an energy source.
Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities
Experiments that imitate solid materials with light waves reveal the quantum basis of exotic physical effects
A Traumatized Woman with Multiple Personalities Gets Better as Her ‘Parts’ Work as a Team
Therapy for dissociative identity disorder has aimed to meld many personalities into one. But that’s not the only solution, a caring therapist shows
Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 12, 2023
‘It’s still killing and it’s still changing.’ Ending COVID-19 states of emergency sparks debate
Moves by WHO and U.S. usher pandemic into new phase of disease monitoring, even as coronavirus kills thousands weekly
Boomers Daily 