The Auk: Ornithological Advances Published September 12, 2018 (News release from the American Ornithological Society) Video data of more than 200 grassland bird nests in Alberta, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin show that when and why baby birds decide to leave the nest is more complex than anyone guessed. The more siblings in a nest, the […]
Category: Article scientifique
Uncommon mutations affect prognosis in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer
Nature Communications Published September 4, 2018 (News release at Nature Research Press) Uncommon mutations in three genes in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer negatively affect disease prognosis. Researchers studied archival breast cancer DNA from three cohorts of post-menopausal and pre-menopausal patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer and found associations with poor clinical outcomes in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer […]
Crops make vulnerable insect-eating birds work harder for food
The Condor: Ornithological Applications Embargoed until August 29, 2018 13:00 EDT (News release from the American Ornithological Society) Tree swallows that live in cropland can still find their preferred prey, but they’re working harder to get it. Researchers examined how agriculture affects swallows’ diets, and found that birds living in croplands weighed less on average […]
A better way to count boreal birds
The Condor: Ornithological Applications Embargoed until August 29, 2018 13:00 EDT (News release from the American Ornithological Society) Researchers tested a mathematical model called a “removal model” using bird count data for 152 species from the Boreal Avian Modelling Project, which covers a vast area of Canada, Alaska, and the northeastern U.S. They found that […]
Deaths from gunshot wounds rising, mostly due to murder
JAMA Embargoed until August 28, 2018 11:00 am EDT (News release from JAMA Network) This study estimates that 195,000 to 276,000 people died from gunshot injuries globally in 2016, with the majority being murders. Despite an overall decrease in rates of gun death since 1990, rates vary country and across demographic subgroups. The most deaths in […]
Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities have double the rate of repeat pregnancy
Canadian Medical Association Journal Published August 13, 2018 (Media release from CMAJ) Women with intellectual and developmental disabilities have nearly double the rate of having another baby within a year of delivering compared to women without such disabilities. Such rapid repeat pregnancy within one year of a previous live birth is associated with smaller babies, preterm […]
Insight into how the human foot evolved
PNAS Published August 13, 2018 To determine how human foot function evolved from a grasping to a propulsive structure, researchers analyzed the feet of human-like primates, including fossil apes, and early hominin-foot fossils, including the oldest hominin for which good foot fossils exist. Structures such as dorsal metatarsal-head expansion corroboratethe evolution of terrestrial bipedalism in hominins. […]
Asteroid strikes birthed ancient Canadian rock
Nature Geoscience Published August 13, 2018 (Media release from Nature Research Press) Earth’s oldest-known evolved rocks, which are four billion years old, may be the result of asteroids slamming into the Earth’s crust and causing it to melt. The study found that Earth’s oldest evolved, or granitic, rocks, which form part of the Acasta Gneiss […]
New method determines the snakiness of plesiosaur necks
Royal Society Open Science Using computed tomography and three-dimensional modelling, researchers assessed the range of motion of the plesiosaur Nichollssaura borealis neck. They measured intervertebral mobility by manipulating the models in the lateral and dorsoventral directions, with results suggesting that N. borealis may have preferred moving its neck sideways. Three-dimensional modelling is an effective tool […]
Methadone linked to lower death rates among opioid-addicted convicted offenders
PLOS Researchers analyzed data from 1998 to 2015 on 14,530 people with criminal convictions who had been prescribed methadone in British Columbia. They found offenders were five times less likely to die from infectious diseases and nearly three times less likely to die from overdoses during periods when they were dispensed methadone, even after controlling […]
Island living makes for brainy birds
Nature Communications Using a dataset of brain sizes for 11,554 specimens from 1,931 bird species, researchers found that birds living on mid-ocean islands tend to have larger brains than their mainland relatives. Island environments are less predictable, with limited opportunities for species to disperse when conditions deteriorate. This may force individual birds to explore and rely […]
Reproductive strategies linked to disease resistance in white-throated sparrows
Disease resistance often comes at a cost to other functions, meaning that even within the same species, immune activity can differ between the sexes or even between different life-history strategies within a sex. White-throated sparrows are unusual in having two colour morphs, white and tan. Within each sex, white birds are more aggressive and tan […]
Universal free fall leaves Einstein’s theory standing
The principle that all objects accelerate identically, regardless of their own gravity, when falling in an external gravitational field has passed the most stringent test to date. Scientists observed the motions of a binary star system containing a neutron star closely orbited by a white dwarf, which are, in turn, both orbited by another, distant […]
HPV testing detects cervical pre-cancer earlier, more accurately than Pap smear
Nearly all cervical cancers are associated with persistent cervical infection from cancer-related human papillomavirus (HPV) strains. Results from a randomized clinical trial of about 19,000 women that compared primary HPV testing alone versus Pap test for cervical screening show that primary HPV testing detects precancerous lesions earlier and more accurately than the Pap test. Moreover, […]
Antidepressants may increase risk of death for those with progressive lung disease
Antidepressant use in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with a 20 per cent increase in likelihood of death and a 15 per cent increase in likelihood of hospitalization due to related symptoms. This study suggests a strong association exists between, new users of serotonergic antidepressants among adults with COPD and higher […]
Who takes the most risks, and when?
A new mathematical model shows organisms in good condition take the most risks when their condition gives them higher probabilities of success, higher gains from success, or higher buffering against failure. Conversely, organisms in poor condition take the most risks when poor condition causes desperation. Under specific conditions, the riskiest individuals are those in intermediate […]
