A new study conducted in Portland, Oregon has found that the non-profit organization Friends of Trees’ tree planting campaign, which has been ongoing for the past 30 years, has been associated with significant decreases in non-accidental and cardiovascular mortality (20% and 6%, respectively, for trees planted in the preceding 15-30 years). The research, conducted by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the USDA Forest Service and published in the journal Environment International, also estimates that the annual economic benefits of planting trees far outweigh the cost of their maintenance....

Physicists from Lancaster University have established why objects moving through superfluid helium-3 lack a speed limit in a continuation of earlier Lancaster research. Helium-3 is a rare isotope of helium, in which one neutron is missing. It becomes superfluid at extremely low temperatures, enabling unusual properties such as a lack of friction for moving objects. It was thought that the speed of objects moving through superfluid helium-3 was fundamentally limited to the critical Landau velocity, and that exceeding this speed limit would destroy the superfluid....

Madagascar is a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot, renowned for its abundance of unique species, from baobab trees to lemurs. The island is quite extraordinary in that approximately 90% of its species of plants and animals are found nowhere else. After humans arrived on the island 2500 years ago, it has experienced a multitude of extinctions, including the loss of giant lemurs, elephant birds, and dwarf hippos. Unlike many other islands, the fauna of Madagascar has been relatively well-preserved....

Meanwhile, there is wide consensus that during light-dependent reactions CO2 (or bicarbonate) is not reduced as a substrate, but plays a unique stimulatory role in O2 evolution, namely the so-called “bicarbonate effect.” The role of bicarbonate effect as well as the bicarbonate binding sites in PSII have been intensively studied since the 1970s, with some important conclusions reached thus far. However, CO2 (or bicarbonate) in PSII is thought to only play supporting roles during water oxidation, rather than being “assimilated” by PSII....

Pulsars are superdense, rapidly spinning neutron stars left behind when a massive star explodes. This one, dubbed PSR J0002+6216 (J0002 for short), sports a radio-emitting tail pointing directly toward the expanding debris of a recent supernova explosion. “Thanks to its narrow dart-like tail and a fortuitous viewing angle, we can trace this pulsar straight back to its birthplace,” said Frank Schinzel, a scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico....

Humans, followed by ferrets and to a lesser extent cats, civets and dogs are the most susceptible animals to SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to an analysis of ten different species carried out by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), based in Barcelona. The findings, published in PLOS Computational Biology, found that ducks, rats, mice, pigs and chickens had lower or no susceptibility to infection compared to humans. “Knowing which animals are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 helps us prevent building up animal reservoirs from which the coronavirus can re-emerge at a later date,” says Luis Serrano, ICREA Research Professor, Director of the CRG and senior author of the study....

Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the world, including in the United States. In fact, according to the CDC 1.7 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer and 600,000 people die from it each year. Moreover, 1 in 3 people will have cancer in their lifetime. It is a disease caused by an abnormal overgrowth of cells. Now, researchers from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California have zeroed in on specific mechanisms that activate oncogenes, which are altered genes that can cause normal cells to become cancer cells....

Habits are a double-edged sword. Healthy habits can change your body, mind, and general life trajectory for the better. They’re profoundly beneficial and transformative. Unfortunately, unhealthy habits can ruin your health and overall longevity. Worse still, you might be engaging in these habits daily without realizing just how dangerous they are. Here’s a list of four everyday habits that can turn deadly if left unchecked. Poor Sleep Poor sleep quality and chronic sleep deprivation can disastrously affect your physical and neurological well-being....

Even though tropical cyclones are atmospheric phenomena, much of their fearsome power actually comes from the ocean. The seas are plentiful sources of moisture to feed growing storm clouds. Just as critically, they are also massive repositories of thermal energy that can move from the sea to the sky. On September 27, 2022, as Hurricane Ian lashed western Cuba and headed for the west coast of Florida it moved over a vast fuel source in the Gulf of Mexico....

From the headphones we use to listen to our favorite songs or podcasts, to sonic camouflage employed by submarines, how we transmit and experience sound is an essential part of how we engage with our surrounding world. Acoustic metamaterials are materials designed to control, direct and manipulate soundwaves as they pass through different mediums. As such, they can be designed and inserted into a structure to dampen or transmit sound....

A huge unmet need exists for therapeutic targets to prevent or delay metastasis of breast cancer to the brain, the leading cause of death from the malignancy. An olfactory receptor typically associated with the sense of smell may also trigger breast cancer cells to metastasize through a signaling pathway to the brain, bones, and lung.Future research could potentially lead to an inhibitor of OR5B21 to prevent cellular invasion and metastasis, thus prolonging the lives of breast cancer patients....

According to a recent study led by University College London researchers, two children who were born completely colorblind have had their retinal cone receptor function partially restored through the use of gene therapy. The findings, published in Brain, provide hope that the treatment is effectively activating previously dormant communication channels between the retina and the brain, taking advantage of the plastic nature of the developing teenage brain. The academically-led study, which uses a new method to determine if the treatment is changing the neural pathways specific to the cones, has been running alongside phase 1/2 clinical trial in children with achromatopsia....

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have discovered that some cases of glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of primary brain cancer, are caused by the fusion of two adjacent genes. The study also found that drugs that target the protein produced by this genetic aberration can dramatically slow the growth of glioblastomas in mice. The findings were published today in the online edition of the journal Science....

The study, published February 12 in Nature Geoscience, focused on the Costa Rica subduction zone where the Cocos plate slowly dives beneath the overriding Caribbean plate. Variations in texture seen in different portions of the fault surface may explain why Costa Rica has complex, patchy earthquakes that do not seem to slip to shallow depths, unlike some other megathrust faults, said first author Joel Edwards, a Ph.D. candidate in Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz....

Deciphering the ecological and economic consequences of this change is complex and unprecedented. Experts are closely observing Lake Urmia in Iran — another stressed saline lake — for clues on what to expect next. According to new research from Wurtsbaugh and Somayeh Sima from Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, this “sister lake” offers obvious, and troubling, parallels to the fate of the Great Salt Lake. The history of both lakes has moved along similar trajectories, though at different paces....

The study, published today in the journal Cell, shows the variation is more infectious in cell cultures under laboratory conditions. The variant, named ‘D614G’, makes a small but effective change in the ‘spike’ glycoprotein that protrudes from the surface of the virus, which it uses to enter and infect human cells. The D614G variant of COVID-19 quickly took over as the dominant strain soon after it first appeared, with geographic samples showing a significant shift in viral population from the original, to the new strain of the virus....

Groundwater is the world’s largest source of freshwater and it is of vital importance for food production. Increasing extraction of groundwater in recent decades has resulted in sinking water tables worldwide. A study by hydrologist Dr. Inge de Graaf from the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg shows that almost 20 percent of the catchments areas where groundwater is pumped suffer from a flow of streams and rivers that is too low to sustain their freshwater ecosystems....

Novel, affordable ways to acquire medical oxygen, ventilators, masks and other critically-needed COVID-19 supplies and services are among 20 Grand Challenges Canada innovations mobilizing to assist developing countries through the global pandemic. In the past decade, the innovations received GCC support in several forms, including over $19 million provided by the Government of Canada, based on the criteria of “bold ideas with big impact” in global health. These project now offer critical resources, ideas and solutions for low-resource countries struggling to meet an acute need for affordable, locally-sourced products and services, most urgently:...

“We looked at every square kilometer of the continent,” says lead author Jake Wall of the Mara Elephant Project in Kenya. “We found that 62% of those 29.2 million square kilometers is suitable habitat.” The findings suggest that, if released from human pressures, including the threat of being killed for their ivory, elephants still have great potential for recovery into areas where the human footprint is light. They note that those 18 million square kilometers include many areas where there is still room for peaceful coexistence between humans and elephants as well as others where that prospect is clearly not realistic....

Graphene, with its excellent electrical, thermal and optical properties, is promising for many applications in the next decade. It is also a potential candidate instead of silicon to build the next generation of electrical circuits. However, without a bandgap, it is not straightforward to use graphene as field-effect transistors (FETs). Researchers tried to cut the graphene sheet into a small piece of graphene nanoribbon and observed the bandgap opening successfully....