A research team led by Stony Brook University investigating human and chimpanzee locomotion have uncovered unexpected similarities in the way the two species use their upper body during two-legged walking. The results, reported in Nature Communications , indicate that our early human ancestors, including the famous fossil ‘Lucy’ (a species known as Australopithecus afarensis), may have been able to use their torsos to…
An endangered monkey species in Tanzania is living in geographical pockets that are becoming isolated from one another. The situation, researchers say, is mostly driven by the monkeys’ proximity to villages and the deliberate burning of forests to make way for crops and pastures. An international team, led by Maria Jose Ruiz-Lopez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon,…
Dramatic increases in exposure to toxic chemicals in the last four decades are threatening human reproduction and health, according to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), the first global reproductive health organization to take a stand on human exposure to toxic chemicals. The opinion was written by obstetrician-gynecologists and scientists from the major global, US, UK and Canadian…
Dr. Patrick Allard, ISG Assistant Professor, is featured in a UCLA Newsroom piece titled “A chemistry test for public safety.” An estimated 80,000 chemical substances currently find their way into our environment through industrial and agricultural waste, as well as through food additives, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products. But even as companies continue to produce new chemical compounds at a…
Dr. Eric Vilain, ISG Co-Director, and Dr. Christina Palmer, ISG Vice Chair of Academic Personnel, are featured in a UCLA Newsroom piece titled “UCLA opens new program to solve mystery genetic diseases.” A new UCLA program offers hope and potential answers for people who have undergone extensive medical testing that has failed to identify their illness. “Undiagnosed diseases take a…
In ongoing research to record the interaction of environment and evolution, a team led by University of California, Riverside biologist David Reznick has found new information illustrating the evolution of a population of guppies. Working in a river in Trinidad, the researchers, including Reznick’s former graduate student Swanne P. Gordon and two undergraduates working in his lab, determined which male guppies would…