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Synthetic biology circuits can respond within seconds
MIT researchers have designed the first synthetic biology circuit that relies exclusively on protein-protein interactions. These circuits can be turned on within seconds, much faster than other synthetic biology circuits.
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Worms learn how to optimize foraging by switching their response to social cues
Researchers have shown how worms learn to optimise their foraging activity by switching their response to pheromones in the environment.
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Research brief: New fossil sheds light on the evolution of how dinosaurs breathed
Using an exceptionally preserved fossil from South Africa, a particle accelerator, and high-powered x-rays, an international team including a University of Minnesota researcher has discovered that not all dinosaurs breathed in the same way.
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Communication: A key tool for citizen participation in science
Scientists gain insight into how citizen participation in science is practised in Spain and propose a series of recommendations for its improvement.
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Patently harmful: Fewer female inventors a problem for women's health
Necessity is the father of invention, but where is its mother? According to a new study published in Science, fewer women hold biomedical patents, leading to a reduced number of patented technologies designed to address problems affecting women.
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How racial wage discrimination of football players ended in England
Increased labour mobility seems to have stopped the racial wage discrimination of black English football players. A new study in economics from Stockholm university and Université Paris-Saclay used data from the English Premier League to investigate the impact of the so-called "Bosman ruling", and found that racial discrimination against English football players disappeared - but not for non-EU players. The study was recently published in the journal European Economic Review.
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Perceptions of counterfeits among luxury goods differ across cultures
Researchers found that counterfeit dominance decreases Anglo-American, but not Asian, consumers' quality perception and purchase intention of authentic brands, according to a team of researchers.
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Loss of biodiversity in streams threatens vital biological process
The fast-moving decline and extinction of many species of detritivores -- organisms that break down and remove dead plant and animal matter -- may have dire consequences, an international team of scientists suggests in a new study.
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Fighting COVID with COVID
What if the COVID-19 virus could be used against itself? Researchers at Penn State have designed a proof-of-concept therapeutic that may be able to do just that. The team designed a synthetic defective SARS-CoV-2 virus that is innocuous but interferes with the real virus's growth, potentially causing the extinction of both the disease-causing virus and the synthetic virus.
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Keeping bacteria under lock and key
University of Delaware's Aditya Kunjapur, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and an emerging leader in biosecurity with expertise in teaching cells to create and harness chemical building blocks not found in nature, is the lead author of a new paper published in Science Advances that describes progress on the stability of a biocontainment strategy that uses a microbe's dependence on a synthetic nutrient to keep it contained.
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Software tool breathes life into post-COVID office airflow
As offices nationwide spring back to life, interior space designers and architects will soon have an easy-to-use planning tool to place indoor workplace furniture, staff, partitions and ventilation in a manner that maximizes fresh air flow and reduces the risk of airborne pathogens.
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Interleukin-6 antagonists improve outcomes in hospitalised COVID-19 patients
Findings from a study published today [6 July] in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) have prompted new World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to use interleukin-6 antagonists in patients with severe or critical COVID-19 along with corticosteroids.
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An 'instruction' to the crocodylian skull
Paleontologists from St Petersburg University have been the first in the world to describe all the structures in the braincase of present-day crocodylians and to assign a single individual name to each of its components. Additionally, during the work, the researchers managed to find new evolutionary traits in the animal's braincase and figure out through what developmental mechanisms it acquired its current structure.
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Inherited memories of a chromosomal site
Most biological traits are inherited through genes, but there are exceptions to this rule. Two teams from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have been investigating the location of centromeres - specific sites on chromosomes that are essential for cell division. They found that in the small worm Caenorhabiditis elegans, the transmission of the correct location of these sites to the offspring is not mediated by genes, but by an epigenetic memory mechanism.
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New risk model may improve the prediction of preterm birth
The health outcomes of preterm babies can be significantly improved by timely and appropriate interventions in women presenting with preterm labor. However, the non-specific nature of presenting signs and symptoms of preterm labor make it challenging to diagnose, and unnecessary overtreatment is both common and costly. A study published in PLOS Medicine by Sarah Stock at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom and colleagues suggests that a newly developed risk prediction model may improve the prediction of impending preterm births.
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What underlies inconsistent clinical trials results for COVID-19 drugs?
A new modeling study suggests that significant variation in virus dynamics from person to person may be a contributing factor to inconsistent findings reported in clinical trials for antiviral COVID-19 drugs.
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Setting COVID-19 drug trials up for success
Clinical studies on drug candidates for COVID-19 may generate more robust results by ensuring randomization, early patient recruitment and treatment initiation, a new model shows.
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JNCCN study recommends improvements for cancer care at network sites
New research in the June 2021 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assesses the quality of cancer care delivered through extended sites coordinated by some of the country's largest cancer centers.
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How an unfolding protein can induce programmed cell death
The death of cells is well regulated. If it occurs too much, it can cause degenerative diseases. Too little, and cells can become tumours. Mitochondria, the power plants of cells, play a role in this programmed cell death. Scientists from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) and the University of Pittsburgh (U.S.) have obtained new insights in how mitochondria receive the signal to self-destruct. Their results were published in the Journal of Molecular Biology.
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Studies add to concern about climate tipping
Two climate model studies document the probability of climate tipping in Earth subsystems. The findings support the urgency of restricting CO2 emissions as abrupt climate changes might be less predictable and more widespread in the climate system than anticipated.
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