How students helped unlock a new tool for the pear industry

How students helped unlock a new tool for the pear industry

Chloroplast assemblies and phylogeny. Chloroplast genomes of assorted pear cultivars—assemblies and annotations. Plastid assemblies were carried out using NOVOPlasty v4.4.1 and annotated using GeSeq v2.0.3. Phylogenetic relationships were estimated using maximum likelihood under the generalized time reversible model. Credit: G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics (2024). DOI: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae003 Pears are big business in the Pacific Northwest US. … Read more

Media scientist studies benefits and risks of smartphone use among children and adolescents

Media scientist studies benefits and risks of smartphone use among children and adolescents

Anne-Linda Camerini. Credit: SNSF Always on their mobile phones? That can’t be good for them. Media Scientist Anne-Linda Camerini is looking into how true this is. The feared effects on young people cannot be clearly proven. “My son is in his last year of primary school. And yes, he wants to have a smartphone! But … Read more

Even inactive deep-sea ‘smokers’ are densely colonized by microbial communities, study shows

Even inactive deep-sea ‘smokers’ are densely colonized by microbial communities, study shows

Sea-floor samples for the study were taken with this deep-sea submersible vehicle (Alvin) from inactive as well as active hydrothermal systems in several thousands of meters of water. Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, National Deep Submergence Facility, National Science Foundation. Under certain conditions microbial communities can grow and thrive, even in places that are seemingly … Read more

Seabird colony bursts with sound at night

Seabird colony bursts with sound at night

Little auks flying over the colony (Siorapaluk, Greenland, 2022). Credit: Monica Ogawa Acoustic recordings of a colony of little auks reveal their nocturnal activities and offer valuable monitoring means for avian biology in the Arctic. A collaborative study conducted by researchers from the Arctic Research Center at Hokkaido University and the Department of Ecoscience at … Read more

Scientists track unique humpback ‘fingerprint’

Scientists track unique humpback ‘fingerprint’

Using photographs, scientist Andrea Bonilla draws reproductions of the details of the tails of the enormous marine mammals, which can reach up to 18 meters (59 feet) long and weigh about 40 tons. In Antarctica, a scientist waits patiently for two frolicking humpback whales to poke their tails out of the icy waters so she … Read more

Terminator-style robots more likely to be blamed for civilian deaths

Terminator-style robots more likely to be blamed for civilian deaths

Credit: AI-generated image Advanced killer robots are more likely to be blamed for civilian deaths than military machines, new research has revealed. The University of Essex study shows that high-tech bots will be held more responsible for fatalities in identical incidents. Led by the Department of Psychology’s Dr. Rael Dawtry, it highlights the impact of … Read more

Training dairy cows with positive reinforcement can turn otherwise stressful events into play

Training dairy cows with positive reinforcement can turn otherwise stressful events into play

The drawing on the left shows the area where heifers were trained. Anticipatory and play behaviors were recorded in the “start box” (area B in the diagram) while cattle were waiting to enter the training area (C and D above). Heifers in the training treatment learned that they would receive a food reward to initially … Read more

Information overload is a personal and societal danger, researchers say

Information overload is a personal and societal danger, researchers say

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain We are all aware of the dangers of pollution to our air, water, and Earth. In a letter recently published in Nature Human Behavior, scientists are advocating for the recognition and mitigation of another type of environmental pollution that poses equivalent personal and societal dangers: information overload. With the internet at … Read more

When should a startup hire managers?

When should a startup hire managers?

Credit: CC0 Public Domain In a new study out of Vanderbilt Business, Professor Megan Lawrence explores a common challenge growing organizations face: how to continue to organize and coordinate the work of its growing body of employees. Published in Strategic Management Journal, this study discusses why some organizations may need to expand their hierarchical structures … Read more

Study of long-term student engagement challenges ‘one great teacher’ narrative of education

Study of long-term student engagement challenges ‘one great teacher’ narrative of education

Credit: Max Fischer from Pexels A positive relationship with a teacher at an early age may help children to feel more engaged with school, but not necessarily in the long term, new research shows. The finding comes from a University of Cambridge study of more than 3,600 young people in Australia, using data gathered at … Read more