Close to five million smuggled seahorses worth an estimated CAD$29 million were seized by authorities over a 10-year span, according to a new study that warns the scale of the trade is far larger than current data suggest. Published today in Conservation Biology, the study analyzed online seizure records from 2010 to 2021 and found smuggling incidents in 62 countries, with dried seahorses, widely used in traditional medicine, most commonly intercepted at airports in passenger baggage or shipped in sea cargo. “The nearly 300 seizures we analyzed were based only on online records and voluntary disclosures including government notices and…

A UC Riverside-led study has found that a smartphone app that tracks household water use and alerts users to leaks or excessive consumption offers a promising tool for helping California water agencies meet state-mandated conservation goals. Led by Mehdi Nemati, an assistant professor of public policy at UCR, the study found that use of the app — called Dropcountr — reduced average household water use by 6%, with even greater savings among the highest water users. Dropcountr works by interpreting water-use data from smart water meters, which many utilities originally installed for remote reading to streamline billing. The app turns…

Researchers have found that central body fat, especially around the abdomen, is more strongly linked to psoriasis risk than total body fat, particularly in women. This link between central fat and psoriasis remained consistent regardless of genetic predisposition, indicating that abdominal fat is an independent risk factor.The study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, published by Elsevier, provides insights that could help improve early risk prediction and guide personalized prevention strategies. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that can have a significant impact on quality of life. Many individuals with psoriasis also have elevated levels of body fat. While…

A research team led by Prof. Si-Young Choi from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Semiconductor Engineering at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) has discovered ferroelectric phenomena occurring at a subatomic scale in the natural mineral Brownmillerite, in collaboration with Prof. Jae-Kwang Lee’s team from Pusan National University as well as Prof. Woo-Seok Choi’s team from Sungkyunkwan University. The research was published on May 20 in Nature Materials. Electronic devices store data in memory units called ‘domains,’ whose minimum size limits the density of stored information. However, ferroelectric-based memory has been facing challenges…