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Scientists published their findings in a report in the journal Zoological Society of London. The IUCN’s Red List is biased towards larger species. The project that Ben Collen, a biodiversity scientist at the ZSL Institute of Zoology in London has been running for the last five years tries to put invertebrates onto the Red List systematically. The greatest threat is to freshwater invertebrates, which include crabs and snails. Mobiles invertebrates, such as butterflies and dragonflies, tend to have the least risk of extinction....

Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have recently demonstrated that in order to precisely control a particle using ultrasonic waves, it is necessary to take into account both the shape of the particle and how this affects the acoustic field. Their findings were recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Sound levitation happens when sound waves interact and form a standing wave with nodes that can ‘trap’ a particle....

There are currently 851 confirmed extra-solar planets. Of these, 289 were detected because their orbits (as seen from Earth) take them across the face of their host star, dimming the star’s light in what is known as a transit event. The Kepler satellite has provided the largest set of transiting extra-solar planets and, if the list is expanded to include candidate planets (that is, planets spotted but not yet confirmed), it contains several thousand objects....

The researchers say doctors should provide information about acupuncture as an option when discussing preventive treatment strategies with patients. More than one billion people worldwide are affected by migraine. It has a considerable impact on the quality of life and imposes a substantial burden on society. For people with frequent migraines, preventive treatments to reduce headache frequency are available, but not all patients respond well to drug therapy and many prefer to avoid it....

Ever since the 1930s debate has raged inside chemistry circles concerning the fundamental electronic structure of benzene. It is a debate that in recent years has taken on added urgency because benzene – which comprises six carbon atoms matched with six hydrogen atoms – is the fundamental building block of many opto-electronic materials, which are revolutionizing renewable energy and telecommunications tech. The flat hexagonal ring is also a component of DNA, proteins, wood, and petroleum....

Agriculture is considered a major disturbance for ecological systems – the recovery of degraded or formally used agricultural land might take a long time. However, without any active restoration interventions, this recovery can take an exceedingly long time and is often incomplete, as shown by a team of researchers led by the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig University (UL), Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ)....

Cleveland Clinic-led research team used artificial intelligence to uncover association between COVID-19 and brain changes. A new Cleveland Clinic-led study has identified mechanisms by which COVID-19 can lead to Alzheimer’s disease-like dementia. The findings, published in Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, indicate an overlap between COVID-19 and brain changes common in Alzheimer’s, and may help inform risk management and therapeutic strategies for COVID-19-associated cognitive impairment. Reports of neurological complications in COVID-19 patients and “long-hauler” patients whose symptoms persist after the infection clears are becoming more common, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) may have lasting effects on brain function....

Published in Global Change Biology, the study also predicts the arrival of around 2,500 new alien species in Europe, which translates to an increase of 64% for the continent over the 45-year period. The research team led by the German Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre hope it should be possible to reduce this number with stricter biosecurity regulations. Alien species are those that humans have moved around the world to places where they do not naturally occur....

The Mediterranean is a marine biodiversity hotspot, having the highest number of species for its size on the planet as well as the highest number of alien species. Invertebrate spawning occurs in the summer months, coinciding with the annual peak in recreational boating, making boats ideal carriers. “Boats which have visited Eastern Mediterranean marinas had an especially high risk of spreading alien species due to the closer proximity to the Suez Canal, where most alien species enter the Mediterranean,” said Aylin Ulman, lead author of the study....

A new study from Yale University provides state-level estimates of obesity-attributable costs of absenteeism among working adults in the United States, finding that the total national loss in productivity because of obesity-related absenteeism is roughly $8.65 billion per year. Obesity is associated with significant increases in absenteeism among American workers and costs the nation over $8 billion per year in lost productivity, according to a study recently published by Yale’s Rudd Center researchers....

Adding 65cm to global sea levels would be coastline-changing amounts. For context, there’s been around 20cm of sea-level rise since 1900, an amount that is already forcing coastal communities out of their homes and exacerbating environmental problems such as flooding, saltwater contamination, and habitat loss. But the worry is that Thwaites, sometimes called the “doomsday glacier” because of its keystone role in the region, might not be the only glacier to go....

In a survey-based study of 523 teens in Iceland, girls reported a greater negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on well-being and behavior than boys, and they reported a high level of depressive symptoms. In the JCPP Advances study, higher depressive symptoms were linked with increased passive social media use and decreased connecting with family members by telephone or social media among girls, and decreased sleeping and increased online gaming among boys....

Most asteroids that survive an encounter with Earth’s atmosphere ultimately plummet into water, simply because oceans cover 70 percent of the planet. But massive space rocks occasionally hit land. That was the case 50,000 years ago when an iron asteroid smashed into North America and left a gaping hole in what is today northern Arizona. Meteor Crater (also called Barringer Meteor Crater) is located between Flagstaff and Winslow on the Colorado Plateau....

The study, conducted by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Nature, advances the development of synthetic cells, or protocells, to more precisely replicate the complex composition, structure, and function of living cells. Establishing true-to-life functionality in protocells is a global great challenge involving several fields, from the origin of life research to bottom-up synthetic biology and bioengineering. Due to previous failures in modeling protocells using microcapsules, the research team turned to bacteria to construct sophisticated synthetic cells utilizing a living material assembly process....

The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis. “The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study....

Scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney have discovered a critical new gene that it is hoped could help human hearts repair damaged heart muscle after a heart attack. Researchers have identified a genetic switch in zebrafish that turns on cells allowing them to divide and multiply after a heart attack, resulting in the complete regeneration and healing of damaged heart muscle in these fish. It’s already known that zebrafish can heal their own hearts, but how they performed this incredible feat remained unknown, until now....

But Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut and a chemist at Imperial College London, recently said that alien lifeforms that are impossible to spot may be living among us. How could that be possible? While life may be easy to recognize, it’s actually notoriously difficult to define and has had scientists and philosophers in debate for centuries – if not millennia. For example, a 3D printer can reproduce itself, but we wouldn’t call it alive....

Ames, Iowa – Using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star. Such tilted orbits had been found in planetary systems featuring a “hot Jupiter,” a giant planet in a close orbit to its host star. But, until now, they hadn’t been observed in multiplanetary systems without such a big interloping planet....

Modern telescopes and satellites have helped us measure the blazing hot temperatures of the sun from afar. Mostly the temperatures follow a clear pattern: The sun produces energy by fusing hydrogen in its core, so the layers surrounding the core generally get cooler as you move outwards—with one exception. Two NASA missions have just made a significant step towards understanding why the corona—the outermost, wispy layer of the sun’s atmosphere —is hundreds of times hotter than the lower photosphere, which is the sun’s visible surface....

Over three days, the Cow produced a sudden explosion of light at least 10 times brighter than a typical supernova, and then it faded over the next few months. This unusual event occurred inside or near a star-forming galaxy known as CGCG 137-068, located about 200 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules. The Cow was first observed by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System telescope in Hawaii. So exactly what is the Cow?...