Monolingual children and bilingual children are equally good at learning new words, as long as they hear them from people who comes from their own language environment, a new study shows. Researchers tested thirty 17-month-old French-English bilinguals’ infants and thirty-one English monolinguals’ infants learning two simple pair of syllables (‘kem’ and ‘gem’) produced by an […]
Category: Paper of Interest
Transplanted neurons thrive in Parkinson’s-affected brains
Neurons transplanted into the brains of adult patients with Parkinson’s disease 14 years ago are still healthy, a new study shows. Researchers checked on five patients that received transplant of dopamine-secreting neurons from fetal tissue and report that the neurons had not degenerated over time. Parkinson’s disease is caused by loss of dopamine-secreting neurons and […]
Milkweed needed to save monarchs
A new study bolsters the notion that a lack of milkweed in summer breeding grounds is contributing to the decline of the monarch butterfly. Previous research indicated that the decline of monarchs may be due to catastrophic die-offs in overwintering grounds in Mexico, caused by loss of forest habitat or extreme weather events linked to […]
Singing in the drain
Researcher from Taiwan have shown that the mientien tree frog uses concrete drains to amplify its mating calls. They used field studies to show that far more males call from inside the drains than outside them, and acoustic analysis to show that the structures do indeed increase call volume and duration. Original research paper published in […]
New Arctic permafrost won’t last
As Arctic lakes shrink, new permafrost develops around them, but according to a new study it’s not expected to last the century. Researchers looked at a retreating lake in Alaska and saw new permafrost had formed along the old lakebed in areas where willow trees had altered the soil’s moisture and heat content. The new […]
Is there a place for climate engineering?
While there is no substitute for lowering our emissions, some climate engineering approaches are more promising than others, according to a new analysis. Climate engineering refers to strategies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and/or reduce solar input, as opposed to preventing new emissions. Researchers from a variety of disciplines developed criteria to rank such […]
Team sports could help smokers quit
A new study reveals that adolescents who practice team sports have a better ability to quit smoking, while those who are watching their weight have a harder time. Researchers followed the smoking and lifestyle habits of 620 high school students in the Montreal region between 1999 and 2005. They found that the male students, older […]
One in four major cities is water-stressed
The first global database of urban water sources and stress finds that one in four major cities use more than 40 per cent of the water available to them. This proportion is lower than previous estimates, in part because the new study accounts for the fact that many cities draw on distant watersheds, rather than […]
It takes a community to raise a healthy bird
A new study shows that birds that cooperate to raise their young have better year-on-year survival than those that don’t. In certain bird species – found mostly in Australasia or Africa – children from the previous year and from other parents help raise the newborns. A careful review of the research on this rare phenomenon […]
Most precise measurement of antimatter’s charge
New results from the ALPHA experiment at CERN have provided the most precise measurements yet of the electric charge of antihydrogen. Researchers from the international collaboration – which includes many Canadians – examined whether or not antihydrogen atoms would react to electric fields. They did not and the data indicates that as predicted, antihydrogen is […]
New Arctic permafrost won’t last
As Arctic lakes shrink, new permafrost develops around them, but according to a new study, it’s not expected to last the century. Researchers looked at a retreating lake in Alaska and saw new permafrost had formed along the old lakebed in areas where willow trees had altered the soil’s moisture and heat content. The new […]
A hurricane by any other name…
Severe hurricanes with feminine-sounding names killed more Americans than similarly severe hurricanes with male names, a new study shows. The authors reached this conclusion after asking independent volunteers to rate the masculinity (e.g. Ivan) or femininity (e.g. Cindy) of 94 hurricanes that made landfall in the US between 1950 and 2012 and matching this with […]
How memories become knowledge
An experiment with mice sheds light on how the brain turns individual memories into knowledge over the course of time. Mice were trained to swim in a pool of water and look for a hidden platform that could be in one of several locations, with some locations more likely than others.Mice that were tested one […]
A new tool to track multiple sclerosis
A new tool provides a means to track multiple sclerosis (MS) progression and could lead to early diagnosis, a new study shows. The method – called Quantitative Susceptibility Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) – allows researchers to track small changes in the magnetic field of the brain caused by iron distribution and white matter lesions that […]
For smokers, a picture is worth 1000 words
Computerized tomography (CT) scans of smoker’s lungs could be a powerful tool to help them quit, according to a new study. Epidemiology results from 14,621 smokers who received CT scans as part of the U.S. National Lung Screening trial and were followed up years later showed that the more serious the screening result, the greater […]
Small compound could help fight coronaviruses
Researchers have found that a small chemical compound called K22 can interfere with the ability of coronaviruses to use the internal membranes of host cells for their own replication. Although it’s still a very long way from being a drug, the fact that the molecule shows activity against a wide range of coronaviruses – including […]