According to a new study of rivers and lakes in Wisconsin, natural foams from these bodies of water contain much higher concentrations of per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) than the water below them.

Thirty-six different kinds of PFAS compounds were analyzed in samples of both the foams and water surface microlayers of 43 Wisconsin rivers and lakes. The study, which is published in Environmental Science & Technology, also revealed that foams, generally off-white and found along shorelines, are not necessarily an indicator of elevated contamination levels in the entire water body.

“We studied many different lakes and found PFAS in all of them. The PFAS concentrations were high in the foams even if the concentrations in the water were relatively low,” said Christy Remucal, a professor with the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and interim director of the University of Wisconsin Aquatic Sciences Center.

Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of Morocco and are being referred to by scientists as “Pompeii” trilobites due to their remarkable preservation in ash.

The paper, “Rapid volcanic ash entombment reveals the 3D anatomy of Cambrian trilobites,” was published in the journal, Science.

The trilobites, from the Cambrian period, have been the subject of research by an international team of scientists, led by Prof Abderrazak El Albani, a geologist based at University of Poitiers and originally from Morocco. The team included Dr. Greg Edgecombe, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum.

Research in nonhuman primates is opening the possibility of testing treatments for the early stages of Alzheimer’s and similar diseases, before extensive brain cell death and dementia set in. A study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia shows up to a six-month window in which disease progress could be tracked and treatments tested in rhesus macaques.

While seeking research internships last year, University of Washington graduate student Kate Glazko noticed recruiters posting online that they’d used OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools to summarize resumes and rank candidates. Automated screening has been commonplace in hiring for decades. Yet Glazko, a doctoral student in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, studies how generative AI can replicate and amplify real-world biases—such as those against disabled people. How might such a system, she wondered, rank resumes that implied someone had a disability?

Boston, MA—We’ve known for more than a century that women outlive men. But new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco shows that, at least in the United States, the gap has been widening for more than a decade. The trend is being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, among other factors.

In a research paper, to be published online on November 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors found the difference between how long American men and women live increased to 5.8 years in 2021, the largest it’s been since 1996. This is an increase from 4.8 years in 2010, when the gap was at its smallest in recent history.

The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019–2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.

The joint research team of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor JeongHo Kwak at the DGIST and Aerospace Engineering Professor Jihwan Choi at the KAIST have proposed a novel network slicing planning and handover technique applicable to next-generation low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network systems. Findings of the study have been published in the journal IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine.

LEO satellite networks refer to communications networks with satellites launched within 300–1,500km, established for a stable supply of Internet services. Unlike base stations on land in which radio signals are often interfered with by mountains or buildings, LEO satellites can be launched to build communications networks to places with low population density where base stations could not be set up, thereby allowing them to receive the spotlight as a next-generation satellite communications system.

Accordingly, as more and more satellites are placed in lower orbits, satellite networks are expected to be formed as an alternative to terrestrial networks using links between LEO satellites. However, LEO satellites move in predictable orbits, and their connection within the network is wireless, which is why LEO satellite networks must be considered from a different view than terrestrial networks.

In a collaboration with Groningen University, Professor Jørgen Kjems and his research group at Aarhus University have achieved a remarkable breakthrough in developing tiny nano-sized pores that can contribute to better possibilities for, among other things, detecting diseases at an earlier stage.

Their work, recently published in the journal ACS Nano, shows a new innovative method for finding specific proteins in complex biological fluids, such as blood, without having to label the proteins chemically. The research is an important milestone in nanopore technology, and could revolutionize medical diagnostics.

Nanopores are tiny channels formed in materials, that can be used as sensors. The researchers, led by Jørgen Kjems and Giovanni Maglia (Groningen Univ.), have taken this a step further by developing a special type of nanopore called ClyA with scanner molecules, called nanobodies, attached to it.

An international team of researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, and the INRAE of Nouzilly, France, explored the ability of sledging reindeer to follow directional indications from humans. Their results highlight that reindeer, which are well habituated to humans, can make use of gestural cues very well with minimal training.

Working animals, such as equines, shepherd dogs, and logging elephants, spend a significant amount of time interacting closely with humans to fulfill specific tasks. Effective communication plays a crucial role in their working relationship. Animals’ understanding of human cues, particularly manual pointing gestures, is an important aspect of this communication.

The use of pointing gestures to communicate with others and to show them where to look or to go is very natural for humans. For other animals that do not use this way of communication, the gesture may not always be easy to understand. For this reason, the pointing gesture is often used in experiments to see if animals can understand cues that are specific to humans.

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in the US at over 600,000 deaths per year. Cancers that form solid tumors such as in the breast, brain, or skin are particularly hard to treat. Surgery is typically the first line of defense for patients fighting solid tumors. But surgery may not remove all cancerous cells, and leftover cells can mutate and spread throughout the body. A more targeted and wholistic treatment could replace the blunt approach of surgery with one that eliminates cancer from the inside using our own cells.

Dennis Discher, Robert D. Bent Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and postdoctoral fellow Larry Dooling provide a new approach in targeted therapies for solid tumor cancers in their study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Their therapy not only eliminates cancerous cells, but teaches the immune system to recognize and kill them in the future.

Global oceans were warmer last month than any other May in records stretching back to the 19th century, the European Union’s climate monitoring unit reported Wednesday.

Sea temperatures at a depth of about 10 meters were a quarter of a degree Celsius higher than ice-free oceans in May averaged across 1991 to 2020, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

Year-round, long-term trends have added 0.6C to the ocean’s surface waters in 40 years, said C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess, noting that April had also seen a new record for heat.