Tag: effects

The effects of repeated droughts on different kinds of forests — ScienceDaily

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Drought is endemic to the American West along with heatwaves and intense wildfires. But scientists are only beginning to understand how the effects of multiple droughts can compound to affect forests differently than a single drought alone.

UC Santa Barbara forest ecologist Anna Trugman — along with her colleagues at the University of Utah, Stanford University and the U.S. Forest Service — investigated the effects of repeated, extreme droughts on various types of forests across the globe. They found that a variety of factors can increase and decrease a forest’s resilience to subsequent droughts. However, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, concluded that successive droughts are generally increasingly detrimental to forests, even when each drought was no more extreme than the initial one.

Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to subsequent droughts. “Compounding extreme events can be really stressful on forests and trees,” said Trugman, an assistant

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Effects of poverty on childhood development seen in children as young as 5 — ScienceDaily

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In a nationwide study, UCLA researchers have found that health inequities can be measured in children as young as 5 years old. The research, published in Health Affairs, contributes to a growing body of literature finding that children of color who are also poor face greater health inequities than their white counterparts.

Researchers trained kindergarten teachers in 98 school districts across the United States to administer the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a measure of children’s physical, social, emotional and language development.

The assessment was administered to more than 185,000 kindergarteners from 2010 to 2017. After analyzing and correlating the results according to where the children lived, the investigators found that 30 percent of children in the lowest-income neighborhoods were vulnerable in one or more domains of health development, compared to 17 percent of children in higher-income settings.

The researchers also found that income-related differences in developmental vulnerability varied substantially

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Has COVID-19 knocked us onto our backsides? Researchers study pandemic’s effects on physical activity and sedentary behavior — ScienceDaily

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Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, most universities across the United States transitioned from face-to-face classes to remote learning, closed campuses and sent students home this past spring. Such changes, coupled with social distancing guidelines, have altered social interactions and limited our access to fitness facilities, parks and gymnasiums. This is concerning as positive social interaction and access to exercise facilities both promote physical activity. Recently, a group of Kent State University researchers sought to examine the impact of these pandemic-related changes upon physical activity and sedentary behavior, specifically sitting, across the university population.

Kent State’s College of Education, Health and Human Services professors Jacob Barkley, Ph.D., Andrew Lepp, Ph.D., and Ellen Glickman, Ph.D., along with current and former Kent State doctoral students Greg Farnell, Ph.D., Jake Beiting, Ryan Wiet and Bryan Dowdell, Ph.D., assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on physical activity and sedentary behavior. More than 400 college

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Mosquitos lost an essential gene with no ill effects

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Mosquitos lost an essential gene with no ill effects
The exoskeletons of a normal mosquito larva on the left and a mosquito larva with the gooseberry gene edited out on the right. Credit: Alys Jarvela/University of Maryland.

University of Maryland entomologists discovered that a gene critical for survival in other insects is missing in mosquitos—the gene responsible for properly arranging the insects’ segmented bodies. The researchers also found that a related gene evolved to take over the missing gene’s job. Although laboratory studies have shown that similar genes can be engineered to substitute for one another, this is the first time that scientists identified a gene that naturally evolved to perform the same critical function as a related gene long after the two genes diverged down different evolutionary paths.


The work emphasizes the importance of caution in genetic studies that use model animals to make conclusions across different species. It also points to a new potential avenue for research

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Technology group BCM with revenue growth in the first half of 2020 despite effects of the COVID-19 pandemic

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DGAP-News: Brockhaus Capital Management AG / Key word(s): Half Year Results
29.09.2020 / 07:00
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

PRESS RELEASE

Technology group BCM with revenue growth in the first half of 2020 despite effects of the COVID-19 pandemic

– BCM Group achieves revenue of € 23.2 million; +1% growth compared to H1 2019

– Previous expectation of a “revenue decline in the high single-digit percentage range” for H1 2020 was clearly exceeded

– Environmental Technologies segment (Palas) with strong operating development

– Security Technologies segment (IHSE) due to project postponements on the customer side broadly at prior-year level

Frankfurt/Main, September 29, 2020. Brockhaus Capital Management AG (BKHT, ISIN: DE000A2GSU42, “BCM”), a long-term oriented technology group focused on acquiring high-margin and high-growth technology champions within the German Mittelstand, published its results for the first half of 2020 on September 29, 2020.

In the first

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long-term effects on tundra vegetation — ScienceDaily

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Landslides have long-term effects on tundra vegetation, a new study shows. Conducting the study in North West Siberia, the researchers found that tundra vegetation regenerated rapidly after a major landslide event in 1989. Two decades later, differences in the vegetation of the landslide area and the areas surrounding it have evened out, but even after 30 years, the vegetation of the landslide area is nowhere close to the vegetation of the surrounding areas.

Several studies have reported changes in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in Arctic regions. So far, remote sensing data that is used to calculate the NDVI hasn’t been able to discern, in detail, landscape level factors that have an effect on, e.g., greening.

“Landslides caused by the thawing of permafrost will become increasingly common in North West Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic, too. These are caused by climate change and they also have an effect

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Death counts fail to capture full mortality effects of COVID-19, study finds — ScienceDaily

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More than 200,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. Some argue that statistic is inaccurate due to inconsistencies in how deaths are being reported. But researchers from the University of South Florida claim that even if those deaths have been correctly measured, the number doesn’t fully convey the true mortality effects of COVID-19.

A study published in the Journal of Public Health finds that for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost. Researchers claim “years of life lost” is a more insightful measure than death count since it accounts for the ages of the deceased. The tool is often used to determine the effects of non-communicable disease, drug misuse and suicide. They believe “years of life lost” is especially appropriate given the range of ages at which individuals have died of COVID-19.

“While death

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