One of the most common combined oral contraceptive pills has a negative impact on women’s quality of life but does not increase depressive symptoms. This is shown by a major randomised, placebo-controlled study conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in collaboration with the Stockholm School of Economics. The results have been published in the scientific journal Fertility and Sterility.“Despite the fact that an estimated 100 million women around the world use contraceptive pills we know surprisingly little today about the pill’s effect on women’s health. The scientific base is very limited as regards the contraceptive pill’s effect on quality of life and depression and there is a great need for randomised studies where it is compared with placebos,” says professor Angelica Lindén Hirschberg at the Department of Women's and Children's Health at Karolinska Institutet.

Pork producers are doing the right things to manage for lean and quality meat.

What happens when meat scientists get their hands on nearly 8,000 commercially raised pigs? They spend a year running dozens of tests and crunching numbers to arrive at research-backed management recommendations for pork producers.  “We had an opportunity to answer a lot of questions for the pork industry,” says Dustin Boler, assistant professor in the animal sciences department at the University of Illinois. Anna Dilger, an associate professor in the department, explains their approach. “The two main questions were, ‘Can I measure quality in one part of the pig and predict quality in the rest of it?’ And then, ‘What is the true variability in pork quality out there and what’s causing it?’”

Una nuova ricerca, basata sulle osservazioni di una tempesta solare del 2014, sosiene che le attività violente della nostra stella possono generare un esubero o un impoverimento di elettroni nella ionosfera terrestre. I rischi per le comunicazioni però restano

Cortocircuito negativo nell’alta atmosfera terrestre? Occhio alle tempeste solari. Che le attività violente in atto sulla nostra stella fossero responsabili di un eccesso di particelle cariche, distribuite in corrispondenza dei poli terrestri - con un conseguente disturbo alle comunicazioni, ai sistemi di navigazione e alle reti elettriche - era cosa nota nell’ambiente. La novità ora sarebbe che al temperamento esplosivo del Sole sarebbe imputabile anche dell’effetto opposto. Secondo un recente studio, condotto da un gruppo internazionale di ricercatori e apparso recentemente sulla rivista Radio Science, le “turbolenze” del nostro astro madre possono anche indurre alla fuga le particelle dotate di carica elettrica negativa. Generando un identico il risultato: danni alle costellazioni satellitari, ai sistemi radio e alle reti energetiche.

"Spaghetti-like" structure from methane mound seepage. Photo credit Krista Williscroft, Stephen Grasby, and colleagues, and the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Cretaceous climate warming led to a significant methane release from the seafloor, indicating potential for similar destabilization of gas hydrates under modern global warming. A field campaign on the remote Ellef Ringnes Island, Canadian High Arctic, discovered an astounding number of methane seep mounds in Cretaceous age sediments. Seep mounds are carbonate deposits, often hosting unique fauna, which form at sites of methane leakage into the seafloor. Over 130 were found covering over 10,000 square kilometers of the Cretaceous sea floor. They occurred over a very short time interval immediately following onset of Cretaceous global warming, suggesting that the warming destabilized gas hydrates and released a large burb of methane. Given that methane has 20 times the impact of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, such a release could have accelerated global warming at that time. This discovery supports concerns of potential destabilization of modern methane hydrates.

Un comune gamberetto usa le sue chele per esplorare il fondale marino, staccarne frammenti, e portarli a contatto con l’apparato boccale. È la sua bocca, quindi, che funziona da ‘naso aquatico’ permettendo al crostaceo di rilevare la presenza di odori insolubili in acqua. Immagine realizzata da G. Villani, P. Amodeo ed E. Mollo

Un recente studio dell’Icb-Cnr sui meccanismi di comunicazione chimica in ambiente acquatico mette in crisi la tradizionale distinzione tra i sensi, olfatto e gusto, basata su criteri spaziali. Il lavoro pubblicato su Pnas. Tradizionalmente, l’olfatto è considerato un senso ‘a distanza’ mentre il gusto è trattato come un senso ‘per contatto’. Si tratta però di una distinzione basata prevalentemente sulle percezioni umane e che è stata sottoposta a forte critica in un articolo pubblicato nel 2014 sulla rivista Frontiers in Chemistry. Secondo questa nuova prospettiva, in ambiente acquatico si può osservare un’inversione nella portata a distanza dell’olfatto quando i segnali olfattivi sono veicolati da molecole insolubili in acqua, ma che essendo volatili, possono diffondersi nell’aria e arrivare al nostro naso. Su tale premessa si fonda il lavoro sperimentale guidato da Ernesto Mollo, ricercatore dell’Istituto di chimica biomolecolare del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche di Pozzuoli (Icb-Cnr), recentemente pubblicato sulla rivista Pnas. Lo studio, svolto nell’ambito di una collaborazione multidisciplinare tra l’Icb-Cnr e varie istituzioni di ricerca italiane e straniere, sfida l'attuale letteratura sulla chemio-recezione in ambiente acquatico, secondo cui il mondo olfattivo di crostacei e pesci è limitato alla sola percezione a distanza di sostanze solubili in acqua.

Photo taken by Tsutom Hiura

Researchers have developed a new method for assessing the cultural value of landscapes using geotagged photos shared on a social-networking service. Data obtained with this method could help determine which locations should be used for tourism or targeted for environmental protection. We all know that nature provides recreational and psychological benefits to us but it is often difficult to assign monetary worth to. This research could help us determine how to strike a balance between the utilization and preservation of nature. “This type of research has received little attention despite its importance,” says Tsutom Hiura of the research team at Hokkaido University. “We wanted to develop a robust and reliable method to evaluate the aesthetic value of landscapes.” This is in line with the international agreement, the Aichi Biodiversity Target, which refers to the importance of ecosystem service mapping methodologies.

Uno studio del Rna dei Sardi guidato dall’Irgb-Cnr consente una migliore comprensione sul funzionamento del genoma umano. Il lavoro è stato pubblicato su Nature Genetics

Un team di ricercatori guidati da Francesco Cucca, Direttore dell’Istituto di ricerca genetica e biomedica del Cnr (Irgb-Cnr) e professore di Genetica Medica all'Università degli Studi di Sassari, riporta sulla rivista Nature Genetics i risultati del sequenziamento del Rna. Lo studio, intitolato ‘Population and individual-specific regulatory variation in Sardinia’ prende in analisi oltre 600 individui sardi di cui sono stati caratterizzati sia l’RNA che il DNA. DNA, RNA e proteine sono le molecole fondamentali di tutte le forme di vita conosciute. Il DNA contiene le informazioni che servono guidare tutti i processi cellulari. Dal DNA viene copiato (’trascritto’) l’RNA, che può fungere da guida per la produzione di proteine, oltre ad essere esso stesso in grado di regolare diversi processi biologici.

A new review investigates the effects of avocados on different components of metabolic syndrome, which is a clustering of risk factors including high blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, and body mass index. These risk factors lead to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. According to studies reported in the literature, avocados have the most beneficial effects on lipid profiles, with changes to LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, total cholesterol, and phospholipids. The peel, seed, flesh, and leaves of avocados have differing effects on components of metabolic syndrome.

Movement detection in a Bielefeld University laboratory: one of the five new medical research projects is studying how physical activity and behavioural therapy influence depression. Photo: Bielefeld University

Five medical research projects to be launched at Bielefeld University . Bielefeld University is strengthening its cooperations in medical research. In five new projects, scientists at the university are cooperating with the University hospitals of the Ruhr University of Bochum in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region. The projects are being funded by Bielefeld University’s Forschungsfonds Medizin, and the first will start this April. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia set up the fund in July 2016. Topics covered by the new cooperations range from heart and cancer research to regenerative medicine. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is using this research fund to accompany the expansion of the University hospitals of the Ruhr University of Bochum to the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region. The goal is to build up and promote research cooperations between Bielefeld University and the University hospitals in Minden, Lübbecke-Rahden, Herford, and Bad Oeynhausen as well as the Department of General Medicine of the Ruhr University of Bochum.

New research reveals that in women, obesity may influence blood tests used to diagnose and monitor rheumatoid arthritis. The findings, which appear in Arthritis Care & Research, indicate that physicians need to take obesity into account when using these tests. Blood tests for C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) can help physicians assess levels of inflammation in the body. The tests may be used for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis and for determining how well treatment is working in affected patients. Because some studies have found links between higher levels of CRP and ESR with greater body mass index (BMI), Michael George, MD MSCE, of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and his colleagues sought to determine the extent to which obesity biases these markers. The researchers analyzed information on 2,103 individuals with rheumatoid arthritis and compared it with data from the general population.