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Disrupting links between poverty, chronic stress, and educational inequality
Abstract The income-achievement gap is a significant and stubborn problem in the United States, which has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we link two emerging literatures that have historically been disparate: the neurobiology of poverty as a form of early life stress, and research on educational policies with the potential to…
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Planting the milestones of human genetics in Senegal
Implementing human genetics research: an itinerary of a researcher from low-income settings. I remember, after my PharmD graduation, how happy my mother was. She said, “Now that you are done with school, you have to set up your own drugstore, find a good husband and settle down.” However, my destiny was far from supporting this…
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Electroencephalogram (EEG) assessment of brain activity before and after electrical stunning in the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus)
Abstract Electrical stunning is used to capture crocodiles to perform routine management procedures. It is essential from a welfare point that electrical stunning must cause unconsciousness in animals. However, there is no information of whether or not electrical stunning causes unconsciousness in the Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus). The purpose of the study was to assess…
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Jeanette Erdmann (1965–2023)
Jeanette Erdmann, professor of human genetics at the University of Lübeck and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), sadly passed away on 9 July 2023 at the age of 57. We grieve the loss of an extraordinary woman who embraced her scientific profession with unwavering dedication, contributing to groundbreaking work in the field of…
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New Chemical Process Makes It Easier To Craft Amino Acids That Don’t Exist In Nature
The Amino Acid Glycine – Wikipedia Every protein in your body is made up of the same 20 building blocks called amino acids. But just because nature is stuck with a limited toolkit doesn’t mean humans can’t expand it. A study published in Science on July 27 by a team including Pitt chemists describes a…
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New Research Suggests Plants Might Be Able To Absorb More CO2 From Human Activities Than Previously Expected
Tropical rainforest on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, near the site of the study. Credit: Marcos Guerra, STRI via NSF New research published today in leading international journal Science Advances paints an uncharacteristically upbeat picture for the planet. This is because more realistic ecological modelling suggests the world’s plants may be able to take up more…
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Hypnotized by the ecosystem of Area X
Annihilation takes the reader on a journey into the unknown horrors of nature. Margad Sukhbaatar/THE VARSITY A review of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2014 novel Annihilation The word “annihilation” rang fresh as pricked blood to me as I picked the book off my bookshelf. In approximately a quarter of a breath, Jeff VanderMeer had conjured in my…
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A Viral Post on Social Media Will Clear the Medical Debt of Strangers
“To celebrate my life, I’ve arranged to buy up others’ medical debt and then destroy the debt,” reads a posthumous tweet posted Tuesday after the death of 38-year-old Casey McIntyre. The Washington Post explains… McIntyre, who served as publisher at Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, was diagnosed in 2019 and proceeded through treatment…
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Fairy-wrens babysit if they’ve got a good chance of mating with the parents
Why do animals help each other? Altruism in nature is a puzzle with many solutions, and fairy-wrens have found a few. A team of researchers based at Monash University has found more detail on why purple-crowned fairy-wrens will help raise offspring that don’t belong to them. It seems that being related to the offspring, or…
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The chimaeras of nature and their promise to grow human organs
At present, more than 3 lakh people are waiting for an organ transplant in India alone; the global number is far higher, with no respite in sight. There is an alarming disparity in the number of organ donors and the number of recipients – and animals have played an important part in filling this gap.…