Author: Ranveer Kumar

FAU Harbor branch study shows 95 percent success rate with amoxicillin FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY CREDIT: JOSHUA VOSS, PH.D., FAU HARBOR BRANCH, CORAL REEF AND HEALTH ECOLOGY LAB Diseases continue to be a major threat to coral reef health. For example, a relatively recent outbreak termed stony coral tissue loss disease is an apparently infectious waterborne disease known to affect at least 20 stony coral species. First discovered in 2014 in Miami-Dade County, the disease has since spread throughout the majority of the Florida’s Coral Reef and into multiple countries and territories in the Caribbean. Some reefs of the northern section…

MicroPlastics : The concern of plastic waste has been so severe that now microplastics circulate across the world like oxygen and water in the daily cycles of the atmosphere, according to a recent analysis. According to a mixture of experts sample and modelling, plastic particles transmitted into the air through ocean and road surfaces migrate across continents to the farthest places on earth. Most of this waste seems to have been floating in our ecosystems for a long time – showing how much we have to stop the plastic tide by doing a huge clean-up. “Everywhere we were looking at,…

As the climate crisis causes havoc in temperature and rainfall patterns around the world, one of the many crops under threat is humanity’s precious coffee. Now scientists have identified a coffee-making plant that could be more robust against the rigors of the shifting seasons. The plant is stenophylla coffee or Coffea stenophylla, a wild and relatively rare species found in Upper West Africa. Compared with the more commonly used coffee plants, it’s better equipped to handle climate shifts. What’s more, it has a similar flavor to high-quality Arabica coffee made from the arabica (C. arabica) plant, so it should keep connoisseurs of the hot…

Epidemiologist Shanna Swan studied chemical exposure’s impact on health for two decades. Her book “Count Down” uses research to explain how plastics and other substances mess with fertility. If we don’t do something about chemical exposure, it could endanger human life, Swan writes. Shanna Swan is obsessed with studying the length between babies’ genitals and their anuses. That’s because Swan is an epidemiologist who’s spent two decades researching how our lifestyles and the environments in which we live mess with our hormones and reproductive abilities. The distance between a person’s genitals and their butthole, also called anogenital distance or AGD,…

A new study finds that overconsumption, overpopulation and uncertainty about the future are among the top concerns of those who say climate change is affecting their reproductive decision-making. When deciding whether to have children, there are many factors to consider: finances, support systems, personal values. For a growing number of people, climate change is also being added to the list of considerations, says a University of Arizona researcher. Sabrina Helm, an associate professor in the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is lead author of a new peer-reviewed study that looks at how climate…

Since the start of the pandemic, alcohol sales steadily grew in America reaching an all-time high just after the ‘stay at home’ orders were issued. A study by Rose Marie Ward et al. has found that Americans wrote more blackout tweets during the pandemic compared to the previous year. Various states in the USA issued either ‘stay at home’ or ‘shelter in place’ orders starting between 15 March and 7 April 2020. The study found that more alcohol-related blackout tweets were written between 13 March and 24 April in 2020 than 2019. Researchers used infoveillance methods to monitor changes in…

Fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s is showing up in U.S. honey, according to a new study. Although the levels of radioactivity aren’t dangerous, they may have been much higher in the 1970s and ’80s, researchers say. “It’s really quite incredible,” says Daniel Richter, a soil scientist at Duke University not involved with the work. The study, he says, shows that the fallout “is still out there and disguising itself as a major nutrient.” In the wake of World War II, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and other countries detonated hundreds of nuclear warheads in…

Striking a blow against climate change, San Francisco scientists are working to return the iconic Xerces blue from extinction. Their colors are brilliant. Set against a black background that conveys the frozen motion of an M.C. Escher print, 63 plants and creatures populate an improbable jungle of species that have become extinct since the height of colonization of the New World in the 1700s. There are birds like the laughing owl, the akialoa, and the Carolina parakeet and such animals as Darwin’s Galapagos mouse tucked into this fantastical portrait that includes Maui lovegrass, Hawaiian ferns, and single-flowered Mariposa lily, all…

TOKYO _  team of Japanese and Austrian researchers has named a new mite species “twitter” after its discovery through photos posted on the social media platform by an amateur photographer visiting a fishing spot near Tokyo. The new species — formally called “Ameronothrus twitter” — was recognized after Satoshi Shimano, a professor who specializes in the study of mites at Japan’s Hosei University, came across the tweeted photos by chance and then contacted the poster to find out where they were taken. Shimano said the find shows social media can “help speed up the time-consuming discovery of new species” and…

At a time when sustainability is the mother of all necessities for a better environment, an all new floating hotel in Qatar is going a step ahead by being able to generate its own electricity. The Eco-Floating Hotel in Qatar is going to be a luxury hotel that generates its own electricity, and even collects, and reuses rainwater and food waste. The hotel will have a total of 152 rooms, and is a concept designed by Turkish company Hayri Atak Architectural Design Studio (HAADS). The hotel’s motto is, minimum energy loss, and zero waste, and it does exactly that. HAADS…