Latest news with #TheAustralianNationalUniversity
Time of India
02-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Frogs face life-threatening heat stress from global warming, scientists warn
Source: Wikipedia Scientists are sounding urgent warnings as rising temperatures cause frogs to overheat that is putting many species at serious risk. Frogs are highly sensitive to environmental changes and the increasing heat is making it difficult for them to survive. Their struggle is a clear sign of the broader impact of climate change on ecosystems worldwide. If temperatures continue to rise unchecked then we could see dramatic declines in frog populations which would disrupt food chains and harm biodiversity. Experts stress that reducing global warming is essential for not only to save frogs but to protect the health of our planet and all its inhabitants. Frogs are facing life risk due to increase of atmospheric heat According to Discover Wildlife, a recent study how rising global temperatures have affected amphibians so far and what could happen if temperature keeps increasing. The research revealed that more than 100 of the 5,203 amphibian species studied are already experiencing dangerous overheating events. Furthermore, if global temperatures rise by 4°C, at least 400 species will face extreme stress that will push them to their survival limits. This estimate takes into account access to shade and water by recognizing that habitat loss, drought and disease will make it increasingly difficult for amphibians to manage heat. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Best website creation site | Build your store in minutes Shopify Shop Now Undo As ectotherms, amphibians rely on external sources to regulate their body temperature for warming themselves by basking in the sun or cooling off through water, shade or cool underground spaces. If they cannot lower their body temperature, they may reach their critical thermal maximum which is the point at which their bodies stop functioning properly. Scientists warn heat threatens amphibians Scientists determined this threshold by observing when amphibians begin to have muscle twitching or lose the ability to right themselves when turned over, both of which prevent them from escaping lethal heat. Until now, heat tolerance has been measured in over 600 amphibian species. To expand on this, the scientists in the study developed statistical models to estimate heat tolerance for more than 5,000 species which is about 60% of all known amphibians that currently number just under 8, compared each species' heat tolerance with temperature data from the past decade and projected it against various future climate scenarios. They warn that local extinctions could occur because amphibians generally cannot move to new areas, and habitat loss or rising temperatures can make their current environments uninhabitable. Patrice Pottier, a postdoctoral researcher at The Australian National University and lead author of the study, explains that 'With ongoing deforestation, habitat disruption, and droughts, amphibians are losing their ability to withstand heat.' He adds that 'urgent efforts to protect, restore, and connect forests and wetlands are crucial to improve their survival chances.' Environmental consequences of frog decline due to heat Frogs help control insect populations, including pests and disease carriers. Declining frog numbers can lead to insect overpopulation, disrupting ecosystems. Frogs are a key food source for many predators like birds, snakes, and mammals. A drop in frog populations can cause food shortages and affect predator survival. Frogs are indicators of environmental health; their decline signals broader ecosystem problems. Their loss often reflects issues like water pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change. Disruption in frog populations can negatively affect ecosystem services such as clean water and soil fertility. Overall, harming frogs threatens the balance and health of entire ecosystems. Conservation strategies to help frogs beat the heat Habitat protection and restoration Preserving and restoring wetlands, forests, and shaded areas where frogs live helps provide them with cooler environments and access to water. Creating wildlife corridors Connecting fragmented habitats allows frogs to move to safer, cooler areas when their current homes become too hot. Captive breeding programs Breeding frogs in controlled environments helps maintain populations and can support reintroduction efforts in safer habitats. Monitoring and research Scientists track frog populations, health, and heat tolerance to better understand their needs and threats, guiding conservation efforts. Reducing pollution and disease Efforts to limit water pollution and combat diseases like chytrid fungus improve frogs' resilience against heat stress. Climate action Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aim to slow global warming and limit temperature rises, reducing heat stress on amphibians. Community education and engagement Raising awareness encourages local support for frog conservation and sustainable land use. Also read: Plants that act like animals: Discover the 10 bizarre species on Earth that move, feel and even 'cry'
Daily Mirror
18-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mirror
Simple reason why women get worse hangovers than men - it's not what you think
If you think your tolerance for alcohol is worse than the men in your life, you're right - we ask the experts why ladies can't handle booze was well as lads... Men and women may look like they operate the same on the outside, but research shows we are very different when it comes to some things... from healing to heartbeats and even the amount we blink. Here are just a few ways that men and women differ in surprising ways... Men fall in love faster than women Despite their reputation for being the less romantic gender, a new study has found men fall in love twice as fast as women. A team of researchers quizzed more than 800 young people aged 18 to 25 in 33 countries who described themselves as being in love for a study in the Biology of Sex Differences earlier this month. They found that the men tended to fall in love about a month before women on average – over around four weeks, compared to two months for females. Not only did the men in the age group fall in love more quickly, they also reported falling in love more often: 2.6 times, compared to 2.3 times for women. Researchers have put the reason down to our hunter-gatherer past, when women had to be more careful about committing to a mate who would stick around to help care for their offspring. According to study author, biological anthropologist Adam Bode, from The Australian National University: 'Men will have fallen in love sooner than females because the male fitness landscape favours quantity of potential mates over quality, whereas the opposite is true for females.' Women get drunk more quickly We've all been through it. The throbbing headache. The dry mouth. The feeling you could throw up at any moment. But if after a heavy night your male partner feels back to normal sooner than you do, it's not because you've drunk more. It may be down to your gender. Research has found women feel the effects of alcohol sooner because they have much less of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in their stomachs, which breaks down alcohol before it enters the bloodstream. This means more alcohol, a toxin, enters the bloodstream unprocessed. The result is that women feel its effects more on their brains – and their livers have to work harder to process it. 'Females have only about one-fifth as much of this enzyme… so women literally get more effect, ounce for ounce, than men,' explains Columbia University's Dr Marianne Legato, founder of The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine in New York. Women have hangovers for longer To make matters worse, women also suffer with hangovers longer. In 2003, researchers at the University of Missouri, US, surveyed over 1,230 students. Women complained of tiredness, dehydration, headaches, nausea, and vomiting more severely the next day than men who'd drunk similar amounts, and it took them longer to shake off symptoms. One reason is that as well as having less of the enzyme they need to break down alcohol, they also have smaller livers. This means their bodies have to work harder for longer to remove the alcohol from their systems. Psychologist Wendy Slutske, who led the research, says: 'This finding makes biological sense –women tend to weigh less and have lower percentages of body water. So they achieve higher degrees of intoxication and more hangovers per alcoholic unit.' Men's wounds heal slower than women's Cut your finger? If you're a man, you may find it takes longer to heal than a similar injury would for your female partner. This is because men have slower healing rates than women at all ages, according to a 2009 study in the Journal of Dermatological Science. One possible reason is that men's skin is around 20 to 25% thicker than women's. This means there is more skin thickness for the body to repair before a wound is healed fully. However, while men's wounds may take longer to heal, the downside is that women's skin ages faster, particularly after menopause. This is because men's skin is thicker due to the effect of the male hormone testosterone. This hormone helps give male skin a higher density of the elastin and collagen scaffolding that keeps skin firm – and this gives male complexions more resilience over time. By contrast, women owe much of their skin thickness, moisture and suppleness more to the effect of the female sex hormone oestrogen. When this drops off after menopause, it leads to a drop in collagen at a rate of about 2% per year, while men's collagen levels decline much more slowly. Combined with a thinner skin, this means women's skin is ageing faster by the time both genders hit their 50s. Men get hungry faster If your male partner complains he's already hungry while you're still full after your last meal, he's not just being greedy – he really does digest his food faster. Researchers have found that men's food moves about a fifth more quickly through their bodies than it does in women. Men's stomachs also empty faster because they have bigger volume and make more acid to break food down. According to gastroenterologists, it takes a woman around 28 hours to completely digest and excrete a meal, compared to around 24 hours for men. Women also have fewer bowel movements. Part of the reason is that women have a slightly longer colon than men, with an added 10 centimetres, so their food has to travel further. Research has also found that female sex hormones alter the make-up of the digestive bile – so women have fewer salts to dissolve foods compared with men. The female heart beats faster The heart has its own electrical system that sends signals telling it when to contract and pump blood. These signals originate from a group of cells in the right atrium, called the sinus node, the heart's pacemaker. The female heart is about two-thirds the size of a man's, weighing around 120g compared to 180g. However, because the female organ is smaller, it has to beat slightly faster to make up for it and distribute the blood around the body: 78 and 82 beats for an adult woman, compared to between 70 and 72 beats per minute for a man of the same age, according to a 2014 study in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. According to the researchers: 'This is largely due to the size of the heart, typically smaller in females than males. The smaller female heart, pumping less blood with each beat, needs to beat at a faster rate to match the larger male heart's output.' Women blink more often and faster Every minute we blink repeatedly to spread optical fluids over the surface of our eyes to keep them moist. However, women tend to blink slightly more often and more quickly than men, around 19 times a minute for females versus 11 for males, according to a 2008 study in the journal Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics. Experts believe the reason is down to hormone differences, which contribute to the different make-up of this lubrication, which is made up of mucus, water and oil. According to eye surgeon Glenn Carp of the London Vision Clinic: 'Men have more testosterone which holds these tears together better and keeps their eyes well moistened.' Female hormones may be another reason women blink more. We don't know why but studies have found women blink the most when they are taking contraceptive pills containing oestrogen.
The Independent
05-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Lovestruck! Men are smitten before women are, study finds
Love may be a smoke made with the fume of sighs, according to William Shakespeare. But, it is men that inhale that smoke first, researchers say. While women obsess about their partner more than men, a first-of-its-kind study found that men fall in love slightly more often, and earlier, than women do. 'This is the first study to investigate differences between women and men experiencing romantic love, using a relatively large cross-cultural sample. It is the first convincing evidence that women and men differ in some aspects of romantic love,' Adam Bode, a Ph.D. student at The Australian National University, said in a statement. Bode was the lead author of the study which was published earlier this month in the journal Biology of Sex Differences. The authors said it was the first study to research the difference in romantic love between the sexes with people who described themselves as currently in love. To reach these conclusions, they analyzed more than 800 young adults who professed to be in love across 33 countries in Europe, North America, and South Africa. They used data from the Romantic Love Survey 2022: the world's largest dataset of 1,556 young adults experiencing romantic love. 'We're most interested in whether biological sex influences the occurrence, progression, and expression of romantic love,' Bode explained. They examined how many times they had fallen for another person, when they fell in love, the intensity of that love, how obsessed they felt with that person, and their commitment levels. Based on responses to these questions, they found that men fell in love an average of approximately a month earlier than women, but that women experience romantic love slightly more intensely and think about their loved ones more than men. Bode theorized that the month gap could be because men are 'more commonly required to show their commitment to win over a partner.' Nearly 40 percent of both sexes fell in love after forming a relationship, with 30 percent of men and 20 percent of women, respectively, falling in love before a relationship was 'official.' External factors also have a sizeable impact on falling in love. People living in countries with higher gender inequality, for example, fall in love less often, show less commitment and are less obsessed with their partners, generally speaking. "Romantic love is under-researched given its importance in family and romantic relationship formation, its influence on culture, and its proposed universality," says Bode. "We want to help people understand it."
South China Morning Post
28-03-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Is North Korea's nuclear submarine a game changer or ‘vanity project'?
North Korea 's development of what the country claims is its first nuclear-powered submarine – with the potential to fire Pukguksong-6 missiles 12,000km to hit targets as far away as the continental United States – is seen as a 'vanity project' rather than a sign of its enhanced naval capabilities. Advertisement Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was seen standing beside a submarine under construction at an undisclosed shipyard in North Korea, with state-run media reporting that he was admiring the country's first 'nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine'. Analysts told This Week in Asia that the unnamed North Korean submarine was likely several generations behind its rival counterparts in the US, Japan and South Korea and would fall short in the event of a conflict breaking out. They noted that the North Korean military was still fielding weapons systems considered obsolete elsewhere, including the Romeo-class submarines that were originally operated by the Soviet Union in 1957, and MiG-15 fighters that first flew in 1947. 'The current developments indicate that North Korea does not yet have sufficient capabilities to develop SSBNs [submarines designed to launch ballistic missiles],' said Dongkeun Lee, a South Korean academic at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University in Canberra. Advertisement The latest submarine was likely a case of Pyongyang's hubris given that the regime 'struggled to build' its last major submarine, the Hero Kim Kun Ok, Lee said.
