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: Paper of Interest
High blood sugar during pregnancy increases risk of mother’s type 2 diabetes, child’s obesity 
JAMA Published September 11, 2018 (News releases from JAMA and National Institutes of Health) Mothers with elevated blood glucose during pregnancy – even if not high enough to meet the traditional definition of gestational diabetes – are significantly more likely to have developed type 2 diabetes a decade after pregnancy than their counterparts without high blood glucose. For […]
Melting glaciers may increase risk of landslide-triggered tsunamis
Nature Scientific Reports Published September 6, 2018 (News release from Nature Research Press) The October 17, 2015, landslide at the toe of Tyndall Glacier, which sent 180 million tonnes of rock into Taan Fiord, Alaska, affected two square kilometres of land onshore, but the resulting tsunami affected more than 20 square kilometres, with the wave runup reaching 193 metres. The […]
Climate change mitigation in Canada’s forest sector
Carbon Balance and Management Published September 5, 2017 Researchers evaluated nine mitigation scenarios in two forests management units in Canada — in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and in Dog River–Matawin Forest, Ontario. They found that very large differences existed between mitigation scenarios and that combining forest management activities with wood-use that generated longer-lived products had the highest potential to mitigate greenhouse […]
Dementia symptoms peak in winter and spring
PLOS Published September 4, 2018 (News release from PLOS) Researchers analyzed data on 3,353 people enrolled in cohort studies in the U.S., Canada, and France. Participants had undergone testing and, for some, levels of proteins and genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease were available. Adults both with and without Alzheimer’s disease have better cognition skills in late summer and […]
New guidelines for treatment of mild concussion in kids
JAMA Pediatrics Published September 4, 2018 (News release from JAMA Pediatrics) New concussion guidelines include 19 sets of recommendations on the diagnosis, prognosis, and management/treatment of pediatric mild concussion assigned a level of treatment based on confidence in evidence. Recommendations address imaging, symptom scales, cognitive testing, and standardized assessment for diagnosis; history and risk factor assessment, monitoring, and counseling […]
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 […]
