Shifting Sounds in Spring

Dawn breaks over thediminishing soundof forced retreat.A chorus constrainedby the bare and callow noisethat permeates our bandwidth.Concerned communitiestrace this diminuendoof diversity,captured byacoustic accoutrementsto forecastfuture soundscapesstripped cleanof toneand pitchand voice.The impending silencescored firmlyby ourextinction ofexperience. A Common Firecrest singing in a conifer tree in Galicia, Spain (Image Credit: Noel Feans, via Wikimedia Commons). This poem is […]

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Psychological factors predict COVID vaccine side effects

Nausea. Chills. Fatigue. Headache. Before getting vaccinated against COVID-19, many of us braced for the minor but uncomfortable side effects we’d heard so much about in the news or from our friends and neighbors who had already received the jab. New research led by The University of Toledo suggests how much attention people pay those […]

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How infant microbiome impacts early behavior in boys and girls

A new Dartmouth-led study published in Pediatric Research has found a direct and sex-specific association between the composition of infant microbiome and early childhood behavioral health. Previous studies have established a link between the gut microbiome—the overall communities of microbes that colonize the intestinal tract and play an important role in immune system development and health outcomes—and behaviors like […]

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Why is it wrong to sell your body? Understanding liberals’ vs conservatives’ moral objections to bodily markets

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Cornell University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines why people object to bodily markets and how those objections differ for liberals and conservatives. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Why is it Wrong to Sell Your Body? Understanding Liberals’ vs. Conservatives’ Moral Objections to Bodily Markets” and is authored […]

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Making babies: Amphibians’ known reproductive modes jumps from from 39 to 74

A Brazilian study described in an article published in the journal Salamandra evidences the versatility of amphibians in terms of reproductive modes: their eggs and larvae can develop in at least 74 different ways. Signed by scientists at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil, the article compiles data available in the specialized […]

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Increasingly frequent wildfires linked to human-caused climate change

Research by scientists from UCLA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory strengthens the case that climate change has been the main cause of the growing amount of land in the western U.S. that has been destroyed by large wildfires over the past two decades. Rong Fu, a UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and the study’s corresponding author, […]

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The Vast Little Library Inside of Your Cells

The human genome can be thought of as a massive library, containing over 20,000 different “instruction manuals”: your genes. For example, there are genes which contain information to build a brain cell, a skin cell, a white blood cell, and so on. There are even genes that contain information about regulating the genome itself—like books […]

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Engineers to sustainably mine rare earth elements from fertilizer byproduct

Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually that rare. The 17 metallic elements are ubiquitous in nature and are becoming even more common in technology, as a critical component of microchips and more. The “rare” description pertains to how difficult they are to extract into a useable form. The normal technique to pull them from […]

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Low-gravity simulator design offers new avenues for space research

As humanity continues its exploration of the universe, the low-gravity environment of space presents unusual challenges for scientists and engineers. Researchers at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory have developed a new tool to help meet that challenge — a novel design for a low-gravity simulator […]

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