Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Researchers found a new way to identify ancient diet from proteins preserved in ancient people’s teeth. After extracting proteins from 100 plaque samples from teeth ranging in age from the Iron Age to the Post-Medieval period in Britain, the researchers found the plaque contained proteins from cereals, […]
SMCC Heads Up – July 17, 2018 
Ancient tooth plaque | Plants evolve differently in cities | SMCC Heads Up | Embargoed and recently published research with a Canadian focus, curated by SMCC for science journalists. Read more>
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, […]
SMCC Heads Up – July 03, 2018
Einstein’s theory stands | Reproduction & parasites | HPV testing | SMCC Heads Up | Embargoed and recently published research with a Canadian focus, curated by SMCC for science journalists. Read more>
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 […]
SMCC Heads Up – June 26, 2018
Antidepressants and COPD don’t mix | Testing social learning in bats | SMCC Heads Up | Embargoed and recently published research with a Canadian focus, curated by SMCC for science journalists. Read more>
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 […]
A new terrestrial palaeo-environmental record from the Bering Land Bridge
The timing of the earliest unequivocal human dispersals into Alaska over the Bering Land Bridge corresponds with a shift to warmer and wetter conditions in the region between ~14,700 and ~13,500 years ago. Researchers reconstructed the terrestrial climate from the last glacial maximum, about 21,500 years ago, to the present from the Bering Land Bridge’s […]
Iconic Burgess Shale creature reconstructed
Waptia fieldensis Walcott, 1912 is an iconic animal from the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale biota in British Columbia that had lacked a formal description since its discovery at the beginning of the 20th century. Drawing on some 1,800 specimens, researchers three-dimensionally reconstructed the ~508-million-year-old animal’s functional anatomy. The shrimp-like animal’s compound eyes, antennae, mandibles, and […]
SMCC Heads Up – June 19, 2018
Burgess Shale icon | Bering Land Bridge climate | Risky business | SMCC Heads Up | Embargoed and recently published research with a Canadian focus, curated by SMCC for science journalists. Read more>
Painted Lady butterflies survive round-trip across the Sahara
Researchers demonstrate that the Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) crosses the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean twice, travelling south to the sub-Sahara in the fall, then reversing the journey the following spring. The Palearctic–African migratory circuit is similar to that of migratory birds. However, the Painted Lady butterfly, which needs both temperate and tropical habitats to […]
Coral coastal defence compromised by climate change
Nature Published June 13, 2018 (News release from Nature Research Press) The current growth rate of coral reefs in the tropical western Atlantic and Indian Ocean is almost keeping pace with projected sea-level rise, but as coral reefs protect tropical and subtropical shorelines around the globe, small island nations may lose a key contributor to coastal protection against flooding […]
Three trillion tonnes of ice lost from Antarctica since 1992
The Antarctic Ice Sheet lost about 3 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017. This figure corresponds to a mean sea-level rise of about 8 millimetres. Antarctica’s ice sheets, which contain enough water to raise global sea level by 58 metres, are a key indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise. Nature […]
SMCC Heads Up – June 12, 2018
Melting Antarctic | Coral reefs vs climate change | Globe-trotting butterflies | SMCC Heads Up | Embargoed and recently published research with a Canadian focus, curated by SMCC for science journalists. Read more>
