EurekAlert! Marine Science

News Releases

Eavesdropping on whales in the high Arctic

Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Earth’s oceans are crisscrossed with roughly 1.2 million km of fiber optic telecommunication cables — enough to girdle the planet 30 times. Researchers have now succeeded in using a fiber in a submarine cable as a passive listening system, enabling them to listen to and monitor whales.

Journal: Frontiers in Marine Science

USC researcher leads effort to improve research on diet and dementia

Keck School of Medicine of USC
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Observational studies have suggested a link between the lower or greater intake of certain foods and the risk of dementia, but clinical research attempting to connect specific nutrients or diets to cognitive function have not found convincing evidence. To understand this discrepancy between epidemiological research and clinical trials, Hussein Yassine, MD, from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, led the Nutrition for Dementia Prevention Working Group, a team of scientists who spent two years surveying the existing literature on nutrition and dementia risk. Their analysis, just published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, identifies major limitations to existing trials that impact how nutrition affects the brain and offers a set of recommendations to guide and improve future research.

Journal: The Lancet Healthy Longevity
Funder: NIH/National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer's Association

Substantial discrepancies found between estimated and measured GFR

American College of Physicians
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A cross sectional study found that substantial discrepancies exist between individual estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and directly measured GFR (mGFR). Laboratory reports that provide eGFR calculations should consider including the distribution of this uncertainty. According to the authors, renaming the eGFR as a population average GFR (or paGFR) merits further discussion. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Journal: Annals of Internal Medicine

Connectivity of language areas unique in the human brain

Radboud University Nijmegen
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Neuroscientists have gained new insight into how our brain evolved into a language-ready brain. Compared to chimpanzee brains, the pattern of connections of language areas in our brain has expanded more than previously thought

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Neighborhood ‘redlining’ associated with increased risk of heart disease

American College of Cardiology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

The historical discriminatory housing policies known as “redlining” are associated with heart disease and related risk factors today in impacted neighborhoods, more than 60 years after they were banned, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Journal: Journal of the American College of Cardiology

Alcohol changes brain activity differently in male and female mice

Society for Neuroscience
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Alcohol alters synchronized brain activity in the amygdala of mice, but differently for male and female mice, according to new research published in eNeuro.

Journal: eNeuro
Funder: NIH/National Institutes of Health

Largest genetic atlas for zebrafish ‘breakthrough’ for biomedical research

University of Birmingham
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Medical and life science researchers will benefit from the most comprehensive atlas yet of genetic data on zebrafish, newly published research suggests.

Journal: Nature Genetics

Study explores coevolution of mammals and their lice

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Peer-Reviewed Publication

According to a new study, the first louse to take up residence on a mammalian host likely started out as a parasite of birds. That host-jumping event tens of millions of years ago began the long association between mammals and lice, setting the stage for their coevolution and offering more opportunities for the lice to spread to other mammals.

Journal: Nature Ecology & Evolution
Funder: National Science Foundation

Probiotics don’t improve poor vaginal health

European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology
Reports and Proceedings

4 July 2022: Pregnancy chances in IVF can be affected by many factors including the type of bacteria which naturally colonise the reproductive tract. ‘Good’ bacteria in the form of probiotics are of increasing interest in treating women with an imbalance in vaginal microbiota.

Meeting: ESHRE 38th Annual Meeting

Frozen sperm just as effective as fresh for insemination treatments

European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology
Reports and Proceedings

4 July 2022: Patients having intrauterine insemination for fertility treatment can be reassured that the use of cryopreserved sperm instead of fresh is not associated with inferior outcomes. The largest study of its kind, whose results are presented today at the 38th annual meeting of ESHRE, found no difference in pregnancy rates between cycles using cryopreserved or fresh sperm samples. The results of the study, presented today by Dr Panagiotis Cherouveim from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA, were based on an analysis of 5335 intrauterine insemination cycles performed at his centre between 2004 and 2021. ‘Patients undergoing IUI should be counselled about the non-inferiority of frozen sperm,’ said Dr Cherouveim.

Meeting: ESHRE 38th Annual Meeting

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