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JMCx4

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From: The Royal Society > Biological Letters
Modelling the maximal active consumption rate and its plasticity in humans—perspectives from hot dog eating competitions
James M. Smoliga
Published: 15 July 2020
Abstract

Gut capacity and plasticity have been examined across multiple species, but are not typically explored in the context of extreme human performance. Here, I estimate the theoretical maximal active consumption rate (ACR) in humans, using 39 years of historical data from the annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Through nonlinear modelling and generalized extreme value analysis, I show that humans are theoretically capable of achieving an ACR of approximately 832 g min−1 fresh matter over 10 min duration. Modelling individual performances across 5 years reveals that maximal ACR significantly increases over time in ‘elite’ competitive eaters, likely owing to training effects. Extreme digestive plasticity suggests that eating competition records are quite biologically impressive, especially in the context of carnivorous species and other human athletic competitions. ...

Read more at: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0096
 
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From: LiveScience.com > News
Why do some men take so long to poop?
By Benjamin Plackett - Live Science Contributor
12 days ago

If you've ever wondered why men take so long to poop, you may have found yourself asking if there's a medical reason. Why else would some men take so much longer than women to take care of their business?

The answer, however, does not appear to be anatomical. In fact, men might actually be quicker in discharging their defecatory duties than women are. One 2009 study in the journal Gender Medicine sought to investigate the gender differences of various pooping plights. The researchers looked at constipation, stool consistency, the need to use fingers to evacuate, and a host of other less-than-pleasant doody-related conditions. The team concluded that women were more likely to experience "abnormal bowel habits" and constipation than men.

In other words, women tend to have more bowel-related troubles than men do. So, if anything, it's women who should be spending more time in the bathroom. ...

Read more at: Why do some men take so long to poop? | Live Science
 
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JMCx4

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From: Scientific American > Biology
Drones Capture Close Encounters between Great White Sharks and Beachgoers
  • By Erik Olsen on July 8, 2020
Over the past decade, the number of encounters between humans and sharks swimming off the coast of California has risen dramatically. Chris Lowe, director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach, says this summer is shaping up to be a major year for these sharks along the state’s 840-mile coastline.

“We’re already seeing a lot of activity, more than we’ve seen in some of the past years,” he says. “This year is looking to be a big season.”

In 2019 Lowe and his team launched an ambitious two-year shark study using drones, buoys and underwater robots with a $3.75-million grant from California. Prior to the new funding, the Shark Lab’s annual budget was between $20,000 and $40,000.

Now the laboratory has dramatically ramped up its efforts in order to better understand how many of the cartilaginous fish are out there and how they interact with people. The researchers are sharing their information with local lifeguards and the public to enhance safety at the beach. ...

Read & see more at: Drones Capture Close Encounters between Great White Sharks and Beachgoers
 

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From: BBC Science Focus Magazine > Science News
June 2020 was joint-second hottest on record as global temperatures soar
Temperatures in Arctic Siberia were also exceptionally warm, experts said, and the number of fires in the Arctic Circle hit a record high.

By Amy Barrett
07th July, 2020 at 11:29

Arctic Siberia saw exceptionally high temperatures as global warmth matched last year’s record levels for June, experts have said.

Average temperatures in Arctic Siberia were as high as 10°C above normal for June, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF).

A month of intense fires in the Arctic Circle have also been recorded by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, surpassing the record levels of fires seen in the region in June 2019.

Globally, last month was on a par with 2019 for the hottest June on record, with temperatures 0.53°C above the 1981 to 2010 average, and Europe saw its joint second warmest June on record. ...

Read more at: June 2020 was joint-second hottest on record as global temperatures soar
 

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From: Virginia Tech Daily
Researchers convert female mosquitoes to nonbiting males with implications for mosquito control
July 14, 2020

Virginia Tech researchers have proven that a single gene can convert female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into fertile male mosquitoes and identified a gene needed for male mosquito flight.

Male mosquitoes do not bite and are unable to transmit pathogens to humans. Female mosquitoes, on the other hand, are able to bite. ...

“By inserting Nix, a previously discovered male-determining gene in the M locus of Aedes aegypti, into a chromosomal region that can be inherited by females, we showed that Nix alone was sufficient to convert females to fertile males. This may have implications for developing future mosquito control techniques.” ...

Read more at: Researchers convert female mosquitoes to nonbiting males with implications for mosquito control
 

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From: eLifeSciences.org
Magnetic alignment enhances homing efficiency of hunting dogs
Research Article Jun 16, 2020
eLife 2020;9:e55080

Despite anecdotal reports of the astonishing homing abilities in dogs, their homing strategies are not fully understood. We equipped 27 hunting dogs with GPS collars and action cams, let them freely roam in forested areas, and analyzed components of homing in over 600 trials. When returning to the owner (homewards), dogs either followed their outbound track (‘tracking’) or used a novel route (‘scouting’). The inbound track during scouting started mostly with a short (about 20 m) run along the north-south geomagnetic axis, irrespective of the actual direction homewards. Performing such a ‘compass run’ significantly increased homing efficiency. We propose that this run is instrumental for bringing the mental map into register with the magnetic compass and to establish the heading of the animal. ...

Read more at: Magnetic alignment enhances homing efficiency of hunting dogs | eLife
 

JMCx4

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From: Science X's Phys.org
July 20, 2020
Plato was right: Earth is made, on average, of cubes
by University of Pennsylvania

Plato, the Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th century B.C.E., believed that the universe was made of five types of matter: earth, air, fire, water, and cosmos. Each was described with a particular geometry, a platonic shape. For earth, that shape was the cube

Science has steadily moved beyond Plato's conjectures, looking instead to the atom as the building block of the universe. Yet Plato seems to have been onto something, researchers have found.

In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of Pennsylvania, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and University of Debrecen uses math, geology, and physics to demonstrate that the average shape of rocks on Earth is a cube....

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-plato-earth-average-cubes.html
 

JMCx4

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From: The Harvard Gazette > Science & Technology
Getting to the bottom of goosebumps
Harvard scientists find that the same cell types that cause goosebumps are responsible for controlling hair growth


By Jessica Lau
HSCRB Communications
July 20, 2020

If you’ve ever wondered why we get goosebumps, you’re in good company — so did Charles Darwin, who mused about them in his writings on evolution. Goosebumps might protect animals with thick fur from the cold, but we humans don’t seem to benefit from the reaction much — so why has it been preserved during evolution all this time?

In a new study, Harvard University scientists have discovered the reason: the cell types that cause goosebumps are also important for regulating the stem cells that regenerate the hair follicle and hair. Underneath the skin, the muscle that contracts to create goosebumps is necessary to bridge the sympathetic nerve’s connection to hair follicle stem cells. The sympathetic nerve reacts to cold by contracting the muscle and causing goosebumps in the short term, and by driving hair follicle stem cell activation and new hair growth over the long term. ...

Read & See more at: The hair-raising reason for goosebumps is revealed
 

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From: The Royal Society
Crop production in the USA is frequently limited by a lack of pollinators

J. R. Reilly, D. R. Artz, D. Biddinger, K. Bobiwash, N. K. Boyle, C. Brittain, J. Brokaw, J. W. Campbell, J. Daniels, E. Elle, J. D. Ellis, S. J. Fleischer, J. Gibbs, R. L. Gillespie, K. B. Gundersen, L. Gut, G. Hoffman, N. Joshi, O. Lundin, K. Maso

Published: 29 July 2020
Abstract

Most of the world's crops depend on pollinators, so declines in both managed and wild bees raise concerns about food security. However, the degree to which insect pollination is actually limiting current crop production is poorly understood, as is the role of wild species (as opposed to managed honeybees) in pollinating crops, particularly in intensive production areas. We established a nationwide study to assess the extent of pollinator limitation in seven crops at 131 locations situated across major crop-producing areas of the USA. We found that five out of seven crops showed evidence of pollinator limitation. Wild bees and honeybees provided comparable amounts of pollination for most crops, even in agriculturally intensive regions. We estimated the nationwide annual production value of wild pollinators to the seven crops we studied at over $1.5 billion; the value of wild bee pollination of all pollinator-dependent crops would be much greater. Our findings show that pollinator declines could translate directly into decreased yields or production for most of the crops studied, and that wild species contribute substantially to pollination of most study crops in major crop-producing regions. ...

Read more at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0922
 

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From: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention > Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost From Excessive Alcohol Use — United States, 2011–2015

Weekly
/ July 31, 2020 / 69(30);981–987

Marissa B. Esser, PhD1; Adam Sherk, PhD2; Yong Liu, MD1; Timothy S. Naimi, MD3,4; Timothy Stockwell, PhD2; Mandy Stahre, PhD5; Dafna Kanny, PhD1; Michael Landen, MD6; Richard Saitz, MD3,4; Robert D. Brewer, MD1 ...

Excessive alcohol use is a leading cause of preventable death in the United States (1) and costs associated with it, such as those from losses in workplace productivity, health care expenditures, and criminal justice, were $249 billion in 2010 (2). CDC used the Alcohol-Related Disease Impact (ARDI) application* to estimate national and state average annual alcohol-attributable deaths and years of potential life lost (YPLL) during 2011–2015, including deaths from one’s own excessive drinking (e.g., liver disease) and from others’ drinking (e.g., passengers killed in alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes). This study found an average of 93,296 alcohol-attributable deaths (255 deaths per day) and 2.7 million YPLL (29 years of life lost per death, on average) in the United States each year. Of all alcohol-attributable deaths, 51,078 (54.7%) were caused by chronic conditions, and 52,361 (56.0%) involved adults aged 35–64 years. Age-adjusted alcohol-attributable deaths per 100,000 population ranged from 20.3 in New Jersey and New York to 52.3 in New Mexico. YPLL per 100,000 population ranged from 613.8 in New York to 1,651.7 in New Mexico. ...

Read more at: Deaths and Years of Potential Life Lost From Excessive Alcohol Use...
 

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From: Nature.com > Nature Physics
Undulation enables gliding in flying snakes
Published 29 June 2020
Isaac J. Yeaton, Shane D. Ross, Grant A. Baumgardner and John J. Socha

When flying snakes glide, they use aerial undulation. To determine if aerial undulation is a flight control strategy or a non-functional behavioural vestige of lateral undulation, we measured snake glides using high-speed motion capture and devel- oped a new dynamical model of gliding. Reconstructions of the snake’s wing-body reveal that aerial undulation is composed of horizontal and vertical waves, whose phases differ by 90° and whose frequencies differ by a factor of two. Using these results, we developed a three-dimensional mathematical model of snake flight that incorporates aerodynamic and inertial effects. Although simulated glides without undulation attained some horizontal distance, they are biologically unrealistic because they failed due to roll and pitch instabilities. In contrast, the inclusion of undulation stabilized the rotational motion and markedly increased glide performance. This work demonstrates that aerial undulation in snakes serves a different function than known uses of undulation in other animals, and suggests a new template of control for dynamic flying robots. ...

Read & See more at: Undulation enables gliding in flying snakes | Nature Physics
 

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From: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) > ScienceAdvances > Environmental Studies
When floods hit the road: Resilience to flood-related traffic disruption in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond
Indraneel G. Kasmalkar; Katherine A. Serafin; Yufei Miao; I. Avery Bick; Leonard Ortolano; Derek Ouyang and Jenny Suckale
Science Advances 05 Aug 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 32, eaba2423
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba2423
Abstract

As sea level rises, urban traffic networks in low-lying coastal areas face increasing risks of flood disruptions. Closure of flooded roads causes employee absences and delays, creating cascading impacts to communities. We integrate a traffic model with flood maps that represent potential combinations of storm surges, tides, seasonal cycles, interannual anomalies driven by large-scale climate variability such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, and sea level rise. When identifying inundated roads, we propose corrections for potential biases arising from model integration. Our results for the San Francisco Bay Area show that employee absences are limited to the homes and workplaces within the areas of inundation, while delays propagate far inland. Communities with limited availability of alternate roads experience long delays irrespective of their proximity to the areas of inundation. We show that metric reach, a measure of road network density, is a better proxy for delays than flood exposure. ...

Read more at: When floods hit the road: Resilience to flood-related traffic disruption in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond
 

JMCx4

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From: Scientific American > Climate
Will 2020 Be the Hottest Year on Record?

It will certainly place in the top five—a marker of how much the world has warmed

  • By Andrea Thompson on August 14, 2020
With 2020 more than halfway over, it is clear that this year will rank among the hottest in recorded history and possibly break the all-time record set in 2016. If 2020 does top the list, it will do so without the major El Niño event that boosted global temperatures four years ago—and thus will provide an important marker of the power of the long-term warming trend driven by human activities that emit greenhouse gases. “Until we stop doing that, we’re going to see this over and over again,” says Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the agency’s temperature records.

In its first seven months, 2020 has been the second-warmest year on the books, a mere 0.07 degree Fahrenheit behind 2016 at the same point, according to new data released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (whose records go back 141 years). This ranking now means “there’s no question that 2020 will be a top-five year,” Schmidt says. By his calculations, it has a 70 percent chance of becoming the hottest year, while NOAA gives it a 37 percent chance. The variation is partly because of the different ways each agency processes temperature data: NOAA does not extrapolate temperatures over the Arctic to make up for missing data there. And Schmidt says leaving that information out misses one of the fastest-warming spots on the globe. ...

Read & See more at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-2020-be-the-hottest-year-on-record/
 

JMCx4

Censorship is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
Sep 3, 2017
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From: Science Daily
When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you

Date: August 13, 2020

Source: University of South Australia

Summary: From Sinatra to Katy Perry, celebrities have long sung about the power of a smile -- how it picks you up, changes your outlook, and generally makes you feel better. But is it all smoke and mirrors, or is there a scientific backing to the claim? Groundbreaking research confirms that the act of smiling can trick your mind into being more positive, simply by moving your facial muscles. ...


Read more at: When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you
 

JMCx4

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From: ScienceMag.org > News
Hidden webs of fungi protect some forests from drought—but leave others vulnerable

By Elizabeth Pennisi, Warren Cornwall
Aug. 26, 2020 , 2:45 PM

The future of the world’s flora may depend as much, if not more, on what’s below the ground as what’s above. Beneath 90% of all plants lies an invisible support system—subterranean fungal partners that form a network of filaments connecting plants and bringing nutrients and water to their roots. In return, the plants provide a steady supply of carbon to the fungi. Now, researchers are learning that these hidden partners can shape how ecosystems respond to climate change.

The right fungal partners can help plants survive warmer and drier conditions, according to a study reported earlier this month at the online annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. But other studies at the meeting showed climate change can also disrupt these so-called mycorrhizal fungi, possibly speeding the demise of their host plants. “The picture is becoming clearer that we really cannot ignore the responses of mycorrhizal fungi to climate change,” says Matthias Rillig, an ecologist at the Free University of Berlin. ...

Read more at: Hidden webs of fungi protect some forests from drought—but leave others vulnerable | Science | AAAS
 

JMCx4

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From: ScienceAlert.com > NATURE
Giant Gaping Void Emerges in Siberia, The Latest in a Dramatic Ongoing Phenomenon
CARLY CASSELLA
2 SEPTEMBER 2020

A bubble of methane gas, swelling beneath Siberia's melting permafrost for who knows how long, has burst open to form an impressive 50-metre-deep (164-foot-deep) crater.

The giant hole was first spotted by a TV crew flying overhead, and, according to The Siberian Times, when scientists went to investigate, they found chunks of ice and rock thrown hundreds of metres away from the epicentre.

The once secure pocket of methane was long gone, and only a giant void remained where it used to be. ...



Read & See more at: Giant Gaping Void Emerges in Siberia, The Latest in a Dramatic Ongoing Phenomenon
 

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