Science of Aging Knowledge Environment 
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This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.Just-departed head of DOE science wing discusses successes and barriers
Last week, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe stepped down as the director of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) basic research wing, the Office of Science. An unexpected choice in many quarters, Berhe is a soil scientist and was the first person of color to lead the office, which has an annual budget of $8.2 billion and is the nation’s largest funder of the physical sciences. It is also the United States’s premier builder of large scientific facilities such as atom smashers and x-ray synchrotrons.
Berhe championed efforts to make DOE’s basic research more relevant to climate and more diverse. During her 22-month tenure,...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - April 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
How a ‘rogue’ chunk of DNA scrambled the bird family tree
Doves and flamingos no longer need to invite each other to family reunions now that the bird family tree has sprouted new branches. In recent years, many scientists believed the most modern avian species could be grouped into one of two major categories. But a pair of papers published today suggests this view of avian evolution is wrong—and that the bird family tree likely has twice as many branches. The error arose, the researchers report, because a small segment of genetic material spent millions of years essentially frozen in time.
The discovery “provides a cautionary tale” for other scientists, says Scott E...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - April 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Rare wooden artifacts showcase the smarts of early Neanderthals
This study gives us a really nuanced observation of Neanderthal skill and planning.”
They weren’t using any old sticks, either. The spears and other tools were carved from spruce, larch, and pine, species that grew many kilometers away from the lake and combined hardness with elasticity. “They had a very detailed idea what they were looking for,” says co-author Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage.
Signs of breakage and subsequent carving indicate some broken tools were recycled—whittled and polished into smaller implements. “They’re splitting s...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - April 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Utah flouts FDA with law greenlighting placental stem cell therapies
The state of Utah is challenging the authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with a new, unusually bold law that allows patients to receive unapproved placental stem cell “therapies.” Observers predict that the law, which takes effect on 1 May, could significantly undermine FDA’s authority to regulate drugs and other treatments.
The
new statute
, passed almost unanimously by both houses of the Utah legislature in February and signed by Governor Spencer Cox (R) last month, declares that Utah health care providers “may perform a [placental] stem cell therapy that is not approved by [F...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - April 1, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Laser mapping spots ant colonies in dense forest
There are more than 10 quintillion insects on Earth, 200 million for every human. But studying them is tough: The animals are often tiny, and many live in places like soil and trees that make them hard to spot.
Now, researchers have found a new way to spy on them. In a study published this month in
Methods in Ecology and Evolution
, scientists have used lidar—a laser mapping technique that has helped uncover
hidden Amazonian cities
—to
identify a species of ant in its native acacia trees with more than 80% accuracy
. The approach is cheaper than traditional fieldwork, the team argues...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Grinning robots, hyena hierarchies, and more stories you might have missed this week
Could a spicy cocktail be good for your gut? How did scientists manage to peer inside a mouse’s womb? And why did a researcher in Spain cover acorns with human pee? Check out the answers below in some of our favorite selections from
Science
’s daily newsletter,
Science
Adviser
.
One julep, please—and make it spicy
If you’re a cocktail connoisseur, you may have noticed that spicy drinks have boomed in popularity in recent years. Pepper-infused liquors have become hot ingredients in everything from martinis to mules. Even beer brewers have gotten in...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Anthropologists take up arms against ‘race science’
LOS ANGELES—
Calling someone a Neanderthal was once an insult, meaning you thought of them as a knuckle-dragging brute. “[Neanderthals] have always been used as a mirror for thinking about ourselves … projecting things we don’t like about ourselves onto another group of humans,” said Fernando Villanea, a population geneticist at the University of Colorado Boulder, last week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA) here.
As scientists have learned more about Neanderthals’ cultural sophistication and abilities, though,
their public image has gotten a g...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 29, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Have scientists finally made sense of Hawking ’s famous formula for disorder in a black hole?
Fifty years ago, famed physicist Stephen Hawking wrote down an equation that predicts that a black hole has entropy, an attribute typically associated with the disordered jumbling of atoms and molecules in material. The arguments for black hole entropy were indirect, however, and no one had derived the famous equation from the fundamental definition of entropy—at least not for realistic black holes. Now, one team of theorists claims to have done so, although some experts are skeptical.
Reported in a paper in press at
Physical Review Letters
,
the work would solve a homework problem that some theorist...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 28, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Bone marrow transplants spread Alzheimer ’s-like disease in mice, controversial study reports
Bone marrow transplants between mice can transmit symptoms and pathology associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to a controversial study published today in
Stem Cell Reports
. Its authors found that healthy mice injected with marrow from a mouse strain carrying an extremely rare, Alzheimer’s-linked genetic mutation later developed cognitive problems and abnormal clumping of proteins in the brain.
In claims that other scientists in the field have criticized as overstated, the team says its findings demonstrate “Alzheimer’s disease transmission” and support screening of human bone mar...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 28, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Black hole at center of Milky Way may be blasting out a jet
The supermassive black holes at the centers of many galaxies generate powerful jets, blasting particles thousands of light-years into space. This new image of the Milky Way’s black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), suggests it may have one, too, but perhaps of a more modest nature.
The image—taken with polarized light—was
released today by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)
, a worldwide array of radio telescopes that in 2019 produced the
first ever image of a black hole
. The new image shows light that is oriented in a particular direction, revealing magnetic field lines around the bla...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 27, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Scientists with East Asian and African names get short shrift in news coverage
Jenny On The Moon/istock.com adapted by C. Smith/
Science
Media attention can boost a scientist’s career, bringing them prestige and making it easier to attract collaborators and students. But there are disparities in who gets named in news stories about scientific research, according to a new study: Scientists with East Asian and African names are less likely to be mentioned or quoted in stories that reference their work.
For individual scientists, having their name mentioned “is very meaningful,” says study lead author Hao Peng, a postdoc at Northwestern University who himself has b...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 26, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Genetically engineered marmosets promise insight into early stages of Parkinson ’s
By the time a person shows symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, neurons in a part of their brain key to movement have already quietly died. To learn how this process unfolds, identify warning signs, and test treatments, researchers have long wanted an animal model of the disease’s early stages. Now, they may have one: a cohort of transgenic marmosets, described at
a conference on nonhuman primate models
in Hong Kong last month.
The animals, which neuroscientist Hideyuki Okano of Keio University and colleagues created using a mutated protein that seems to drive Parkinson’s in some people, closely mimic the...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 26, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Long-lasting, injectable HIV prevention drug set for “aggressive” roll-out in Africa
Tools to fight HIV tend to come late to sub-Saharan Africa, the region hardest hit by the epidemic. After powerful, lifesaving cocktails of HIV drugs came to market in 1996, it took 7 years before they began to reach large numbers of people living with the virus there. When pills to prevent, rather than treat, HIV infection were introduced in 2012—a strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—Africa was again slow to benefit.
But with the next revolution in HIV prevention—an injectable, long-lasting version of PrEP—Africans may actually soon lead the pack. Not many people in rich countries have started ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 25, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
South Korea to join the European Union ’s research funding program
The European Commission announced today that South Korea will join Horizon Europe, as the 7-year, €95.5 billion ($104 billion) research funding program continues to expand far beyond the continent.
South Korea will be the first East Asian country to “associate to” Horizon Europe, paying into the program so that the nation’s researchers can apply for and lead Horizon grants on an equal footing with scientists from EU member states. Associating “presents an opportunity for Korean researchers to tackle globally important research topics and expand their international contacts and collaborators,” says Park Se...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 25, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show
Gorodenkoff/Getty Images
New data released by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) reveal a sharp drop in the number of U.S. citizens working as postdocs, especially in the biological and biomedical sciences. The trend underscores
concerns that the academic community is facing a postdoc shortage
and that early-career scientists are increasingly favoring higher paid positions outside academia.
“It’s an unfortunate situation if domestic researchers are turning down postdoctoral positions because they’re inferior to positions in government or in industry,” says Tom Kimbis, executi...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - March 25, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research
