The work was done by an international team of scientists from Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The researchers point out in the study that the ongoing biological diversity crisis is not a new phenomenon, but represents an acceleration of a process that human ancestors began millions of years ago. The extinctions that we see in the fossils are often explained as the results of climatic changes but the changes in Africa within the last few million years were relative minor and our analyses show that climatic changes were not the main cause of the observed extinctions, explains Søren Faurby, researcher at Gothenburg University and the main author of the study Our analyses show that the best explanation for the extinction of carnivores in East Africa is instead that they are caused by direct competition for food with our extinct ancestors, adds Daniele Silvestro, a computational biologist and co-author of the study....

Glial cells – a family of cells found in the human central nervous system and, until recently, considered mere “housekeepers” – now appear to be essential to the unique complexity of the human brain. Scientists reached this conclusion after demonstrating that when transplanted into mice, these human cells could influence communication within the brain, allowing the animals to learn more rapidly. The study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, suggests that the evolution of a subset of glia called astrocytes – which are larger and more complex in humans than other species – may have been one of the key events that led to the higher cognitive functions that distinguish us from other species....

People living with inflammatory autoimmune disease could benefit from an ‘immune system reboot’, and researchers have isolated specific cells to target. The University of Queensland’s Professor Ranjeny Thomas said the research findings give hope for similar new immunotherapies for people with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis. “People with these diseases currently require daily medications to modify or suppress their immune system,” she said. “Rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis have a huge impact on those living with them because there is no cure, and medication generally cannot be stopped....

In mammals, including humans, the cells that contract the heart muscle and enable it to beat do not regenerate after injury. After a heart attack, there is a dramatic loss of these heart muscle cells and those that survive cannot effectively replicate. With fewer of these contractile cells, known as cardiomyocytes, the heart pumps less blood with each beat, leading to the increased mortality associated with heart disease. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Perelman School of Medicine have used mouse models to demonstrate a new approach to restart replication in existing cardiomyocytes: an injectable gel that slowly releases short gene sequences known as microRNAs into the heart muscle....

UNC School of Medicine researcher Rob Tarran, Ph.D., led a review of all published scientific literature on the effects of e-cigarette use on the respiratory system; the team of four authors strongly recommend tighter regulation of e-cigarette products. Four scientists from four leading universities in the United States conducted a comprehensive review of all e-cigarette/vaping peer-reviewed scientific papers that pertain to the lungs and published their findings today in the British Medical Journal....

Because sunscreen can block UV rays and therefore reduce the risk of sunburns, it ultimately may reduce the risk of developing melanoma. Therefore, the promotion of sunscreen as an effective melanoma prevention strategy is a reasonable public health message. This may be true for light-skinned individuals, such as people of European descent, but this isn’t the case for darker-skinned individuals, such as people of African or Asian descent. The public health messages promoted by many clinicians and public health groups regarding sunscreen recommendations for dark-skinned people are not supported by the available scientific evidence....

A team of scientists from King’s College London investigated the impact of consuming whole and ground almonds on the composition of gut microbes. The study was published recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It was funded by the Almond Board of California. The human gut microbiome consists of thousands of microorganisms living in the intestines. These play a vital role in digesting nutrients and can have a significant positive or negative influence on our health, including our digestive and immune systems....

Enter NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers who offered up an ingenious solution to Hubble’s visual woes. But would it work? Hubble was not the only space misadventure getting JPL’s attention during the 1990s. The Magellan spacecraft, nicknamed “Salvage 1” for its reliance on spare parts, barely survived its arrival at Venus. Galileo, destined for Jupiter and at the time the world’s most sophisticated spacecraft, barely skirted mission failure when its main communications antenna refused to unfurl....

Inspired by these spiders, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a compact and efficient depth sensor that could be used on board microrobots, in small wearable devices, or in lightweight virtual and augmented reality headsets. The device combines multifunctional, flat metalens with an ultra-efficient algorithm to measure depth in a single shot. “Evolution has produced a wide variety of optical configurations and vision systems that are tailored to different purposes,” said Zhujun Shi, a Ph....

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took the color-enhanced time-lapse sequence of images during its eleventh close flyby of the gas giant planet on February 7 between 7:21 a.m. and 8:01 a.m. PST (10:21 a.m. and 11:01 a.m. EST). At the time, the spacecraft was between 85,292 to 124,856 miles (137,264 to 200,937 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet with the images centered on latitudes from 84.1 to 75....

“In terms of the history of the planet, how life originated is probably the greatest scientific question we can ask,” said Paul Bracher, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry at Saint Louis University and principal investigator of the study. “A key piece of this grand challenge is figuring out how big polymer molecules we know to be important for life could have formed before all of our biological machinery evolved to make them....

A new study from Stanford researchers examined whether organic foods are safer or healthier than conventional alternatives, finding little significant difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods and scant evidence that conventional foods posed greater health risks than organic products. You’re in the supermarket eyeing a basket of sweet, juicy plums. You reach for the conventionally grown stone fruit, then decide to spring the extra $1/pound for its organic cousin....

Disease of the small airways in the lungs is a potential long-lasting effect of COVID-19, according to a new study published in the journal Radiology. The study found that small airways disease occurred independently of initial infection severity. The long-term consequences are unknown. “There is some disease happening in the small airways independent of the severity of COVID-19,” said study senior author Alejandro P. Comellas, M.D., professor of internal medicine and faculty in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa in Iowa City....

Included in the study were 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020 in the United States and the United Kingdom. Fewer than 10% recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital despite immediate treatment. Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body and observing events without pain or distress. They also reported a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others....

In 2021, the feat of navigation that is the Lucy mission will launch. To steer Lucy towards its targets doesn’t simply involve programming a map into a spacecraft and giving it gas money – it will fly by six asteroid targets, each in different orbits, over the course of 12 years. Lucy’s destination is among Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, clusters of rocky bodies almost as old as the Sun itself, and visiting these asteroids may help unlock the secrets of the early solar system....

Twitter is one of the fastest and most comprehensive ways of staying abreast of breaking news. However, it’s not always easy to tell whether these microblogging status updates are being truthful. There are plenty of hoaxes and rumors that are marred with tragedy, however, users manage to debunk most of the widely circulated falsehoods. Verification is one of the biggest challenges that first responders or humanitarian workers face when using social media, states Patrick Meier of the Qatar Foundation’s Computing Research Institute....

Cigarette smoking is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory illnesses and is responsible for nearly half a million deaths annually in the United States. Although smoking habits can be developed and changed, genetics also play a part in a person’s likelihood of engaging in such behaviors. In a previous study, the researchers discovered that individuals with specific genetic traits are more susceptible to becoming addicted to tobacco....

Now, results from the world’s largest trial of a four-day working week reveal significantly reduced rates of stress and illness in the workforce – with 71% of employees self-reporting lower levels of “burnout,” and 39% saying they were less stressed, compared to the start of the trial. There was a 65% reduction in sick days, and a 57% fall in the number of staff leaving participating companies, compared to the same period the previous year....

For years, scientists, fishers and government regulators could only speculate that marine reserves, pockets of ocean that are off limits to fishing, could help entire ecosystems bounce back after an environmental disaster. But scientific evidence has emerged that supports what was once just an educated guess. The new study was published on July 18 in the journal PLoS ONE. The study revealed that after a mass mortality of marine life in the waters off Baja California, Mexico, egg production of pink abalones in the marine reserves increased 40 percent while being cut in half in fished areas....

MAVEN data have enabled researchers to determine the rate at which the Martian atmosphere currently is losing gas to space via stripping by the solar wind. The findings reveal that the erosion of Mars’ atmosphere increases significantly during solar storms. The scientific results from the mission appear in the November 5 issues of the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters. “Mars appears to have had a thick atmosphere warm enough to support liquid water which is a key ingredient and medium for life as we currently know it,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington....