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Featured news

27 Jan 2025

Drones could be the ‘magic tools’ we need to chase bears away from people

Starting in 2017, Wesley Sarmento was the first prairie-based bear manager at Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, a job that regularly put him right in between massive grizzly bears and people. He is also the author of a new Frontiers in Conservation Science article in which he describes the effectiveness of different methods that aimed to deter bears from human settlements, avoid conflicts between wildlife and locals, and help the successful conservation of the species. In the following guest editorial, he describes his seven-year-long search for the most effective hazing method.

Featured news

16 Dec 2024

Completing the timetree of primates: a new way to map the evolutionary history of life on Earth

In a new article published in Frontiers in Bioinformatics, biologists Dr Jack M Craig, Dr Blair Hedges, and Dr Sudhir Kumar, all at Temple University, have built an evolutionary tree that encompasses 455 primates, every species for which genetic data are available. The tree, the most complete of its kind, shows the evolutionary timescale of the whole order of primates, including monkeys, apes, lemurs, lorises, and galagos. In the following guest editorial, Dr Craig describes the steps of obtaining an almost complete timetree for primates and explains the value of such data.

Featured news

12 Dec 2024

Sleepers made from recycled plastic could make railways even more eco-friendly

Part of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from railways lie in the energy used to produce and maintain the necessary infrastructure. Researchers from Finland here showed the feasibility of using more eco-friendly railway sleepers from two types of recycled plastic, liquid packaging board and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Carbon emissions saved each year by phasing out concrete sleepers and replacing them with such recycled plastic could amount to the equivalent of heating for 1,200 Finnish households.

Featured news

04 Dec 2024

Broken sleep a hallmark sign of living with this common liver disease, scientists find

Researchers from Switzerland have shown that patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) suffer poor sleep due to sleep fragmentation and wakefulness. Patients with the more severe form metabolic dysfunction–associated steatohepatitis (MASH) or with cirrhosis, but not healthy volunteers, experienced similar sleep disturbances. Whether poor sleep causes MASLD or vice versa isn’t yet clear. A single sleep hygiene education session proved insufficient to sustainably improve sleep quality and quantity.