Journal Club

Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members

Category Archives: Journal Club

Country-level assessment hides big variations in soy’s carbon footprint

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Jyoti Madhusoodanan

Analysts usually estimate a crop’s carbon footprint based on country-level factors. But that formulation isn’t adequate, according to a new analysis of soy exports from Brazil. Published in Global Environmental Change, the study tracked soy from specific production sites in … Continue reading →

Snake venom evolved in fits and spurts

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Amy McDermott

The cocktail of toxins in snake venom experienced constant change with pulses of rapid evolution over the last 60 million years, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Venom, the researchers report, has changed … Continue reading →

Categories: Evolution | Genetics | Journal Club | Tagged diversification, phylogenetics, RNA expression, snake, speciation, toxin, venom | Leave a comment

Trends in conservation funding track popular narratives about the illegal wildlife trade

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Trends in conservation funding are changing, according to a recent study in World Development. “We see a shift toward funding conservation work that’s increasingly about combatting wildlife trafficking,” says coauthor Jared Margulies, a human-environment geographer at the University of Alabama … Continue reading →

In plea for face masks, researchers visualize how speech sends fluid droplets flying

Posted on April 24, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

As COVID-19 ravaged Wuhan, China, in January, scientists remained unsure how the virus was spreading so rapidly. Biophysicist Adriaan Bax, chatting over dinner with his linguist wife Ingrid Pufahl, started to suspect that the saliva we project as we speak … Continue reading →

Neurons in the hippocampus can make several different maps of the same environment

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Nestled deep in the brain, the hippocampus is the seat of spatial cognition. Specialized hippocampal neurons fire in consistent patterns thought to construct mental maps that help us navigate the world—in general, researchers believed there was one map for every … Continue reading →

Categories: Journal Club | Neuroscience | Tagged hippocampus, map, navigation, neuron, place cell | Leave a comment

Fluid dynamics work hints at whether spoken word can spread COVID-19

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

As of April 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is advising that everyone—sick or healthy—wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Recent research on how fluids travel from our respiratory tracts when we sneeze, speak, or … Continue reading →

Variation in a single gene increases plant yield in groups but not in pairs

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Carolyn Beans

Groups of diverse plant species often produce more seeds than monocultures. But whether plants ramp up yield in response to genetically distinct, direct neighbors, as opposed to a broader neighborhood of diverse plants, remains an open question in ecology. “It’s … Continue reading →

A combination of living and nonliving selective forces drive local adaptation across species

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Both living and nonliving factors can interact to shape local adaptation, according to a recent study in The American Naturalist. The metaanalysis also entailed the use of a method, borrowed from the social and medical sciences, that identified common themes and research gaps … Continue reading →

Categories: Ecology | Evolution | Journal Club | Tagged abiotic, biotic, herbivory, local adaptation, metaanalysis, natural selection | Leave a comment

Judging others based on the rewards they receive correlates with political leanings

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Amber Dance

Which employee deserves the highest salary? Should a professor receive tenure? Did my spouse do their fair share of the household chores? These types of questions all require people to pass judgment on the effort expended by others. According to … Continue reading →

Study uncovers new privacy worries for direct-to-consumer DNA testing

Posted on February 14, 2020 by Amy McDermott

Genetic testing services let consumers analyze their DNA to learn about their heritage, their relatives, and their risk for certain heritable diseases. But access to such personal data hasn’t been without controversy, stoking privacy fears. A recent study in eLife … Continue reading →

Categories: Genetics | Journal Club | Tagged data privacy, genetic testing, heritability | Leave a comment

Genome of “mile-a-minute weed” hints at the secrets to its invasive success

Posted on February 7, 2020 by Amber Dance

The weedy vine Mikania micrantha, originally from Central and South America, has become a worldwide menace. Thus far, it’s spread to tropical climes in China and Southeast Asia, Australia, and islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as … Continue reading →