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A study of young immigrant mothers who are survivors of sex trafficking found that the trauma affected how they parented: it made them overprotective parents in a world perceived to be unsafe, it fueled emotional withdrawal when struggling with stress and mental health symptoms, and was a barrier to building confidence as mothers. Yet, they coped with such challenges finding meaning in the birth of their child and through social support and faith.

The active ingredient in medicines commonly used to treat yeast infections has the potential to disrupt steroid hormone levels, according to a study from the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark. This can have consequences for sexual development in unborn babies if women use these medicines during pregnancy.

A new study looking at the way human cells activate the immune system in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection could open the door to even more effective and powerful vaccines against the coronavirus and its rapidly emerging variants.

Why can some people weather the stress of social isolation better than others, and what implications does this have for their health? New research from the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who felt a strong sense of purpose in life were less lonely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A team of SMU biological scientists has confirmed that P-glycoprotein (P-gp) has the ability to remove a toxin from the brain that is associated with Alzheimer's disease.

A new approach to studying conjugated polymers made it possible for an Army-funded research team to measure, for the first time, the individual molecules' mechanical and kinetic properties during polymerization reaction. The insights gained could lead to more flexible and robust soft electronic materials, such as health monitors and soft robotics.

How do supermassive black holes in the early universe originate? A team led by a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has come up with an explanation: a massive seed black hole that the collapse of a dark matter halo could produce.

For a new paper published in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews, a team of researchers led by Concordia engineers sifted through hundreds of papers on COVID-19 detection tools and technologies. They wanted to categorize and understand what exists, what is lacking and what can be improved. The result is a thorough assessment of the field citing almost 600 separate papers that cover an extensive body of literature.

A study led by University of Minnesota physics researchers has discovered that a unique superconducting metal is more resilient when used as a very thin layer.

The long relationships between stars and the planets around them - including the Sun and the Earth - may be even more complex than previously thought. This is one conclusion of a new study involving thousands of stars using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The current Medicare reimbursement policy for nurse practitioners (NPs) allows NPs to directly bill Medicare for services that they perform, but they are reimbursed at only 85% of the physician rate. A growing number of states are granting full practice authority to nurse practitioners. Even more states have loosened practice restrictions due to COVID-19. Both of these reasons illustrate why payment parity is essential.

Should zoos display legally protected species that have been smuggled out of their range countries? A new study in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Nature Conservation suggests that a pause and rethink may be needed, as it reports that accredited zoos have acquired a rare and legally protected reptile, the earless monitor lizard endemic to Borneo, without any evidence that these animals were legally exported.

Scientists today track electrical signals and voltage changes in neurons and muscle cells by labeling individual cells or probing with electrodes. UC Berkeley and Stanford scientists have developed a new type of sensor that employs a sheet of graphene to get a continuous measure of electric field in these tissues. Electric fields change graphene's reflectance. The physicists found a way to amplify and measure the changes caused by action potentials in a beating embryonic chicken heart.

Spectacular images of a molecule that shuttles omega-3 fatty acids into the brain may open a doorway for delivering neurological therapeutics to the brain.

New research from the University of Bath's Centre for Nutrition, Exercise & Metabolism suggests that if you want to lose weight, intermittent fasting such as the 5:2 diet might be less effective than many people believe.

Chemokine receptors, located at the surface of many immune cells, play an important role in their function. However, despite the importance of this family of receptors, their activation mechanism remains poorly understood. A research consortium (UNIGE/UNIBAS/PSI) has succeeded in decoding the activation mechanism of the CCR5 receptor, a member of this family implicated in several diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, and the respiratory complications of COVID-19.

Is parenting life's greatest joy? New research from Michigan State University psychologists examines life satisfaction of adults who don't want children, revealing no differences compared to adults who are parents.

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed immune cell-mimicking nanoparticles that target inflammation in the lungs and deliver drugs directly where they're needed. As a proof of concept, the researchers filled the nanoparticles with the drug dexamethasone and administered them to mice with inflamed lung tissue. Inflammation was completely treated in mice given the nanoparticles, at a drug concentration where standard delivery methods did not have any efficacy.

A new study using cells, transgenic mouse models, and cultured human lung tissue provides evidence that the ability to trigger programmed cell death (apoptosis) may enable highly pathogenic coronaviruses to spread within their hosts so successfully. Targeting this process may reduce the severity of coronavirus diseases, the study goes on to show.

Researchers from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology have found that plants balance growth and genome maintenance by organizing their responses to damage. Plants can't replace dead cells as animals do, and must deal with DNA damage without halting growth. Combined control of the plant hormones cytokinin and auxin allows plants to organize different DNA damage responses while minimizing cell death. This study will have broad applications to research on plants and other organisms.