How could sexual conflict cause population collapse?

Here, a new model prepared by researchers from Imperial College London and researchers from the University of Lausanne, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how so-called "good genes" can sometimes cause population collapse.

Males of any species may compete for females, either by fighting off other males to gain access to the females or by convincing the females and gaining their approval. In either case, the males who express the most competitive traits, such as the best ornaments (eg peacock feathers) or the best weapons (eg large body size), reach out to more females.

To have the best traits, males must be in good shape, eg suffer less disease.

Over time, as better-off males mate with more females, the "good genes" spread throughout the animals, leading to an improvement in overall condition.

However, this can backfire. Traits that further improve the competitive prowess of males can also harm females.

For example, some insectivores have evolved males that disembowel females, and in many species, including mammals, males have evolved to harass females to induce them to mate. These behaviors reduce female fertility or may kill them.

The team's model tested theories of sexual competition in which males would harm females, and compared the results with data from different population trials.

Previous experiments have shown conflicting accounts of whether sexual selection is positive or negative for the population as a whole. The new model offers an explanation for why some trials show males improve, but not female fitness or population survival along with improvements.

First author Dr Ewan Flintham, from Imperial College London and the University of Lausanne, said: 'When males develop selfish traits that help them win individually, they can actually end up causing population collapse. It's a form of evolutionary suicide. Even when females evolve To counter male harm and prevent population collapse, the population continues to decrease dramatically, which reduces its viability.

Sexual interactions like these are an important component of understanding and maintaining demographics. For example, where there are more males, sexual competition is fiercer, which means that harm to females is more likely. This also applies to human-run populations, eg farm-raised carp, where males and females must be segregated during the spawning season.

Dr Flintham completed the research as part of the PhD Training Center in Quantitative Skills and Modeling in Ecology and Evolution at Imperial College London.

Project supervisor and co-author of the study Professor Vincent Savolainen, Director of the Georgina Mies Center for the Living Planet at Imperial College London, said: “Male damage has evolved in nature as something that is supposed to be good, but is detrimental to females and the whole population. Questions like how and why this happens cannot be answered. Only through quantitative methods, data and mathematical models can be as important as field studies." Source: phys.org

The marriage rate in Jordan is 30 years, and a third of all divorces occur before the wedding

A spokesman for the Department of Chief Justice, Ashraf Al-Omari, revealed that the current marriage rate in Jordan is 30 years, indicating that poverty is not the only reason for divorce.

Al-Omari said in statements to Al-Mamlaka TV on Monday that there are preliminary indications of a decrease in the number of divorce cases in Jordan in 2022 compared to 2021.

And he considered that preliminary indications indicate a significant decrease in marriage numbers in Jordan in 2022 compared to previous years.

The total number of divorce cases of all kinds in 2019 in Jordan reached 25,323 cases, a decrease of 4.5%, compared to the cases recorded in 2018.

Al-Omari confirmed that a third of divorce cases in Jordan occur before the wedding, pointing out that 20% of marriage cases in Jordan are for divorced men or women.

For the first time in 40 years, scientists in the UK are seeking a new treatment for endometriosis

London: For the first time in 40 years, scientists in the United Kingdom have conducted a clinical trial to assess the efficacy of a potential new treatment for endometriosis.

And the British “BA Media” news agency reported today, Wednesday, that researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Birmingham are seeking to see if dichloroacetate can help control the pain experienced by women with this disease.

And if the new drug succeeds, it could be the first non-hormonal and non-surgical treatment ever for endometriosis, in addition to being the first new treatment in 40 years.

About 100 women with this condition will be invited to join the clinical trial.

Endometriosis UK estimates that there are 1.5 million women in the UK who suffer from endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes, and is indicated as a lifelong condition, and it can cause pain severe and uncomfortable.

The new research, which is funded by Wellbeing of Women and the Scottish Government, is due to begin this autumn.

Use of mobile phones to diagnose anemia in children

SAN FRANCISCO: A joint team of researchers in Britain and Ghana has come up with a new technique that allows the diagnosis of anemia in children using mobile phone images.

According to the study published in the scientific journal "Plus One", the research team from University College London and the University of Ghana were able to diagnose anemia in children by analyzing mobile phone images of some parts of the face and eyes.

This new technology makes it easier to detect anemia in children in poor and middle-income countries such as Ghana, which has high rates of this disease, which is caused by iron deficiency.

Anemia leads to a deficiency of hemoglobin in the blood, which results in an inefficient transfer of oxygen to the cells of the body. This disease affects nearly two billion people in the world, and increases the chances of children contracting infectious diseases and impedes their cognitive development.

The idea of ​​the new technology is based on the fact that hemoglobin has special color characteristics due to the way it absorbs light, and therefore it is possible to determine the degree of its concentration in the blood by analyzing images taken by smart phones.

Within the framework of the experiments that began in 2018, the research team relied on analyzing the images of 43 children under the age of four years, and the images focused on three main areas of the body, which are the white of the eye, the lower lip, and the lower eyelid of the eye.

By analyzing the color features of these parts, the research team was able to diagnose all cases with high degrees of anemia, as well as to identify cases of less severe degrees of anemia at the same rates achieved through laboratory analyzes.

Thomas Weems, a researcher in the field of biomedical engineering at University College London, confirms in statements to the “Medical Express” website, which specializes in medical research, that “developing a cheap and reliable way to diagnose anemia using mobile phones leads to long-term improvements in the quality of life of large numbers of people. of humans.”