This study examines the impact of economic development in forestry on the indigenous people who have traditionally lived in and obtained their livelihood from the forest. It takes villages in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, as a case study.

This paper examines the impact of family size on children's education in the Philippines.

Horses experience hyperflexion, or rollkur, when their necks bend far towards their chests – it could place the animal at a greater risk of physical discomfort and stress

Horses that are bred to race seem to perform better on the course if they had a diverse gut microbiome as foals

Blackworms are ultra-fast swimmers, and they tangle up into worm balls to protect themselves from predators – but leeches have an ingenious method of catching them called “spiral entombment”

From birds and bats to horses and great apes, Bill Schutt's seriously fun history of teeth, Bite, explains their role in both shaping evolution and our understanding of it

These images are taken from a new book, Seeds: Time capsules of life, which explores how plant life has flourished in the past 360 million years

In most vertebrates, a pattern of chemical marks on the genome is a reliable indicator of age, but in axolotls this clock seems to stop after the first four years of life

Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico have tiny bits of plastic in their breath, and this is probably a worldwide problem

The oriental hornet shows no ill effects – or behavioural changes – when it spends a week drinking an 80 per cent alcohol solution

Not all winged dinosaurs were necessarily capable of full flight, but this anatomical feature may have enabled them to travel further by flapping or gliding

Rival tribes of bacteria armed with poison darts are fighting it out in your gut, with armies of traitors often winning the day

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

A contentious meeting of physicists highlighted concerns, failures and possible fixes for a crisis in condensed matter physics

Experiments where vampire bats were made to run on a treadmill have revealed how they extract energy from protein in their latest blood meal

We are living in a vaccine-hesitant moment, with conspiracy theories thriving on social media. We need to push back, says Simon Williams

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

Babies cannot tell us what they are experiencing, so it is hard to know what they are conscious of. But new research suggesting they perceive the world consciously could change how we care for them, says Claudia Passos-Ferreira

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The poly(A) signal, together with auxiliary elements, directs cleavage of a pre-mRNA and thus determines the 3' end of the mature transcript. In many species, including humans, the poly(A) signal is an AAUAAA hexamer, but we recently found that the deeply branching eukaryote Giardia lamblia uses a distinct hexamer (AGURAA) and lacks any known auxiliary elements. Our discovery prompted us to explore the evolutionary dynamics of poly(A) signals and auxiliary elements in the eukaryotic kingdom. We use direct RNA sequencing to determine poly(A) signals for four protists within the Metamonada clade (which also contains G. lamblia) and two outgroup protists. These experiments reveal that the AAUAAA hexamer serves as the poly(A) signal in at least four different eukaryotic clades, indicating that it is likely the ancestral signal, whereas the unusual Giardia version is derived. We find that the use and relative strengths of auxiliary elements are also plastic; in fact, within Metamonada, species like G. lamblia make use of a previously unrecognized auxiliary element where nucleotides flanking the poly(A) signal itself specify genuine cleavage sites. Thus, despite the fundamental nature of pre-mRNA cleavage for the expression of all protein-coding genes, the motifs controlling this process are dynamic on evolutionary timescales, providing motivation for future biochemical and structural studies as well as new therapeutic angles to target eukaryotic pathogens.

Two decades into the era of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), the promise of streamlining clinical care, reducing burden, and improving patient outcomes has yet to be realized. A cross-sectional family physician census conducted by the American Board of Family Medicine in 2022 and 2023 included self-reported physician EHR satisfaction. Of the nearly 10,000 responding family physicians, only one-in-four (26.2%) report being very satisfied and one-in-three (33.8%) were not satisfied. These low levels of satisfaction point to the need for greater transparency in the marketplace and pressure to increase user-centric EHR design.

Background:

Nested within a growing body of evidence of a gender pay gap in medicine are more alarming recent findings from family medicine: a gender pay gap of 16% can be detected at a very early career stage. This article explores qualitative evidence of women’s experiences negotiating for their first job out of residency to ascertain women’s engagement with and approach to the negotiation process.

The SARS-CoV-2 frameshifting element (FSE) has been intensely studied and explored as a therapeutic target for coronavirus diseases, including COVID-19. Besides the intriguing virology, this small RNA is known to adopt many length-dependent conformations, as verified by multiple experimental and computational approaches. However, the role these alternative conformations play in the frameshifting mechanism and how to quantify this structural abundance has been an ongoing challenge. Here, we show by DMS and dual-luciferase functional assays that previously predicted FSE mutants (using the RAG graph theory approach) suppress structural transitions and abolish frameshifting. Furthermore, correlated mutation analysis of DMS data by three programs (DREEM, DRACO, and DANCE-MaP) reveals important differences in their estimation of specific RNA conformations, suggesting caution in the interpretation of such complex conformational landscapes. Overall, the abolished frameshifting in three different mutants confirms that all alternative conformations play a role in the pathways of ribosomal transition.

The CYP3A7 enzyme accounts for ~50% of the total cytochrome P450 (P450) content in fetal and neonatal livers and is the predominant P450 involved in neonatal xenobiotic metabolism. Additionally, it is a key player in healthy birth outcomes through the oxidation of dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and DHEA-sulfate. The amount of the other hepatic CYP3A isoforms, CYP3A4 and CYP3A5, expressed in neonates is low but highly variable, and therefore the activity of individual CYP3A isoforms is difficult to differentiate due to their functional similarities. Consequently, a better understanding of the contribution of CYP3A7 to drug metabolism is essential to identify the risk that drugs may pose to neonates and developing infants. To distinguish CYP3A7 activity from CYP3A4/5, we sought to further characterize the selectivity of the specific CYP3A inhibitors CYP3cide, clobetasol, and azamulin. We used three substrate probes, dibenzylfluorescein, luciferin-PPXE, and midazolam, to determine the IC₅₀ and metabolism-dependent inhibition (MDI) properties of the CYP3A inhibitors. Probe selection had a significant effect on the IC₅₀ values and P450 inactivation across all inhibitory compounds and enzymes. CYP3cide and azamulin were both identified as MDIs and were most specific for CYP3A4. Contrary to previous reports, we found that clobetasol propionate (CP) was not an MDI of CYP3A5 but was more selective for CYP3A5 over CYP3A4/7. We further investigated CYP3cide and CP’s ability to differentiate CYP3A7 activity in an equal mixture of recombinant CYP3A4, CYP3A5, and CYP3A7, and our results provide confidence of CYP3cide’s and CP’s ability to distinguish CYP3A7 activity in the presence of the other CYP3A isoforms.

α-Synuclein (α-Syn) aggregation in Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites has emerged as a key pathogenetic feature in Parkinson's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, and multiple system atrophy. Various factors, including posttranslational modifications (PTMs), can influence the propensity of α-Syn to misfold and aggregate. PTMs are biochemical modifications of a protein that occur during or after translation and are typically mediated by enzymes. PTMs modulate several characteristics of proteins including their structure, activity, localization, and stability. α-Syn undergoes various posttranslational modifications, including phosphorylation, ubiquitination, SUMOylation, acetylation, glycation, O-GlcNAcylation, nitration, oxidation, polyamination, arginylation, and truncation. Different PTMs of a protein can physically interact with one another or work together to influence a particular physiological or pathological feature in a process known as PTMs crosstalk. The development of detection techniques for the cooccurrence of PTMs in recent years has uncovered previously unappreciated mechanisms of their crosstalk. This has led to the emergence of evidence supporting an association between α-Syn PTMs crosstalk and synucleinopathies. In this review, we provide a comprehensive evaluation of α-Syn PTMs, their impact on misfolding and pathogenicity, the pharmacological means of targeting them, and their potential as biomarkers of disease. We also highlight the importance of the crosstalk between these PTMs in α-Syn function and aggregation. Insight into these PTMS and the complexities of their crosstalk can improve our understanding of the pathogenesis of synucleinopathies and identify novel targets of therapeutic potential.

Palliative care pertains to the holistic multidimensional concept of "patient-centred" care. It is an interprofessional specialty, primarily aiming to improve quality of care for cancer patients and their families, from the time of diagnosis of malignant disease, over the continuum of cancer care, and extending after the patient's death to the period of bereavement to support the patient's family. There are various complex and frequently unmet needs of lung cancer patients and their families/caregivers, not only physical but also psychological, social, spiritual and cultural. Systematic monitoring of patients’ symptoms using validated questionnaires and patient-reported outcomes (PROs), on a regular basis, is highly encouraged and recommended in recent guidelines on the role of PRO measures in the continuum of cancer clinical care. It improves patient–physician communication, physician awareness of symptoms, symptom control, patient satisfaction, health-related quality of life and cost-effectiveness. This implies that all treating physicians should improve their skills in communication with lung cancer patients/relatives and become more familiar with this multidimensional assessment, repeatedly screening patients for palliative care needs. Therefore, they should receive education and training to develop palliative care knowledge, skills and attitudes. This review is dedicated to lung cancer palliative care essentials that should be within the competences of treating physicians, i.e. pneumologists/thoracic oncologists.

Pressure from 10 clubs could change the AFL’s competitive balance mechanism.

Warframe developers Digital Extremes have announced a new round of early access for their 2025-bound fantasy action-RPG Soulframe, which I saw a bit of last year and think is pretty promising. They're now adding 2000 players to a Preludes build of the game every week, with each invite email including an additional four invite codes, so you can get your friends involved.

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Mars rocks that were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet millions of years ago have been traced back to craters where they originated, which could transform our understanding of Mars’s volcanism and evolution

Between 2005 and 2021, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were more likely to make policy changes in the weeks after negative stories in the media

A US standards agency has issued new guidance saying organisations shouldn’t require users to change their passwords periodically – advice that is backed up by decades of research

Smartphones have indeed created an "anxious generation", but it isn't young people, it is their parents, argues neuroscientist Dean Burnett

A team of scientists from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, TU Delft, and Caltech has developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons in the Solar System.

The post Planetary Researchers Examine Tidal Effects on Interiors of Planets and Their Moons appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Rubbing a common yellow food dye onto a mouse's skin turns it temporarily transparent, so we can monitor its insides without harming the animal

We are living in a vaccine-hesitant moment, with conspiracy theories thriving on social media. We need to push back, says Simon Williams

Researchers suspect the marine mammals may have been communicating across the vast distance