Eurekalert

Taking more steps per day, either all at once or in shorter spurts, may help you live longer.The benefits of more daily steps occurred with both uninterrupted bouts of steps (10 minutes or longer) and short spurts such as climbing stairs.

Early-onset menopause (before the age of 40) was independently associated with higher long-term risk of developing coronary heart disease among both Black and white women.Black women were three times more likely to experience premature natural menopause.Women who underwent surgical menopause were not included in this study.

Nationwide, death rates from cardiovascular disease have declined over the past few decades.A new county-by-county analysis reveals that despite the overall improvement, the counties with the lowest and highest death rates have, for the most part, maintained those rankings.The researchers found that societal differences in structural, social and health characteristics continue to impact death rates.

A common factor called "decision acuity" underpins diverse decision-making abilities in adolescents and young adults, suggests a study appearing May 20th in the journal Neuron. A large set of behavioral and neuroimaging data revealed that decision acuity is stable over time, distinct from IQ, and reduced in individuals with low general social functioning.

Swifts aren't called "swifts" for nothing. They're known for being among the fastest migrating small birds around. When they aren't breeding, common swifts stay in the air most of the time--up to 10 months of the year. Scientists had thought they travel about 500 kilometers per day on average. Now, new evidence reported in the journal iScience on May 20 shows that's a conservative estimate.

Biologist Sasha Mendjan at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and his team have used human pluripotent stem cells to grow sesame-seed-sized heart models, called cardioids, that spontaneously self-organize to develop a hollow chamber without the need of experimental scaffolds. This advance, which allows for the creation of some of the most realistic heart organoids to date, appears on May 20th in the journal Cell.

The international journal Risk Analysis has published a timely special issue for May 2021, "Global Systemic Risk and Resilience for Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19." Featuring 11 papers written for this issue over the past year, the collection represents a sampling of insights and viewpoints from scholars across risk sciences and resilience analytics to guide decision-making and operations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In research published today in Nature Communications, a team of engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and clinicians from Massachusetts General Hospital developed a deep learning algorithm that can help assess a patient's risk of cardiovascular disease with the same low-dose computerized tomography (CT) scan used to screen for lung cancer. This approach paves the way for more efficient, more cost-effective, and lower radiation diagnoses, without requiring patients to undergo a second CT scan.

Damage to nerve fibers in the central nervous system -- brain, spinal cord, or optic nerve -- often results in lifelong and severe disabilities, such as paraplegia or blindness. Although we are aware of various reasons why nerves fail to regenerate, their treatment has not yet led to any significant clinical successes. A research team from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has made a discovery that could partly explain the problem and open possibilities for developing new therapeutic approaches.

In a study reported in the Japanese Journal of Ophthalmology researchers from Okayama University show that long hours in front of the television in children under 3 years of age lead to increased eyesight concerns during later years.

Researchers from Russia and Germany have created a genome-wide atlas of developmental alternative splicing changes of seven organs in six mammal species and chicken.

Study lead, Research Associate of the Neurobiology Lab Marat Minlebaev explains, "Our brain is a complex mechanism, and it's important to understand how it works. If we understand how our brain functions, we can put forth new treatment methodologies or prevent pathologies, both congenital and acquired."

Researchers have discovered a new coronavirus, found in a child with pneumonia in Malaysia in 2018, that appears to have jumped from dog to human. If confirmed as a pathogen, the novel canine-like coronavirus could represent the eighth unique coronavirus known to cause disease in humans. The discovery also suggests coronaviruses are being transmitted from animals to humans more commonly than was previously thought.

Researchers in China, Japan, and Singapore were able to resume research much quicker than their counterparts in the US and Europe after the first covid lockdowns, results of a new international survey suggest.

Two experimental drug approaches that target vulnerabilities in cancer cell metabolism may extend survival and enhance the effectiveness of standard chemotherapies for a highly aggressive type of pediatric brain cancer. The findings were reported by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers in two published studies.

When the United States issued national stay-at-home guidelines in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility across the country dropped significantly. Research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) demonstrates that people may be inclined to change their behavior in response to national guidelines, more than state and local policies.

Great tits living in cities are genetically different from great tits in the countryside. This is what researchers have found in a unique study, where they examined populations of great tits in nine large European cities.

Scientists have identified the areas that are most at risk for conflicts between humans and elephants and lions in Africa.

An experimental drug that has shown promise in protecting healthy tissue from collateral damage caused by radiation therapy for cancer also appears to enhance radiation's capacity to kill tumors, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists shows. The findings, published online in Science Translational Medicine, could provide a much-needed boost to the radiation treatments used against a variety of tumor types.

People with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are less likely to have cataract surgery than people without Alzheimer's disease. The procedure rate starts to decrease already one year after the diagnosis, according to a new study from the University of Eastern Finland.