Eurekalert

Statins are prescribed to less than half of eligible U.S. patients, and a new study shows time of day may affect doctors' likelihood of writing a script

What The Study Did: This global observational study included patients with COVID-19 representing 13 countries and four continents, and its findings suggest neurological manifestations are prevalent among patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and associated with higher in-hospital death.

A paper published today in JAMA Network Open presents early results of the global effort to gather information about the incidence, severity and outcomes of neurological manifestations of COVID-19 disease.

Improved ventilation can lower the risk of transmission of the COVID-19 virus, but large numbers of decades-old public school classrooms lack adequate ventilation systems. A systematic modeling study of simple air cleaners using a box fan reported in Physics of Fluids shows these inexpensive units can greatly decrease the amount of airborne virus in these spaces, if used appropriately.

New study from Joshua Jacobs (Columbia Engineering) and Itzhak Fried (UCLA) demonstrates the existence of phase precession in the human brain for the first time, and show sthat this neural code not only links sequential positions, as in animals, but also abstract progression towards specific goals. Says lead author Salman Qasim, "We were convinced that phase precession held a lot of promise as a widespread neural code that could be used for learning and cognition."

Network scientists from Beijing Normal University and Bar-Ilan University address the effect of team freshness on the originality and multidisciplinary impact of produced work, by systematically investigating prior collaboration relations between team members. Among other things their study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, reveals that papers of fresher teams are significantly more effective than those of older teams in creating studies of higher originality and greater multidisciplinary impact.

YouTube channels run by zoos focus on entertainment over education, according to a new study.

It was commonly assumed that wildlife products are exported from low-income countries to meet the demand of consumers in wealthy economies, and therefore, a widening wealth gap may drive up the volume of global trade and endanger wildlife. Recently, a research team co-led by the University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University corroborated this premise by analysing global wildlife trade databases. The findings are published in Science Advances.

In recent decades, Spain has undergone rapid social changes in terms of gender equality, despite starting from a more backward position than most European countries. This process is hampered by the economic downturn that began in 2008, underlining the importance of the economic context in the development of gender inequality levels. Little attention has been paid in academia to how this gender revolution is associated with factors related to individual wellbeing.

Young children in deprived areas see nature and outdoor spaces as being associated with "happy places", according to a new study published in the journal Child Indicators Research.

A new study from the University of Portsmouth calls for further government oversight to curb potential illegal activity through these zones.

A new study from the University of Surrey has revealed 'real world' factors that influence people's interest in adopting a dietary pattern called time-restricted feeding.

Many industrial processes emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are hazardous to human health. In a new study, scientists from NITech, Japan, tailor the catalytic activity of hydroxyapatite, a mineral contained in human bones, using mechanical stress. This method was inexpensive and resulted in a 100% VOC conversion, potentially opening doors to effective climate control.

In a paper published in Modern Physics Letters A, researchers at the University of Georgia, USA, use high-resolution optical data to probe the nature of relativistic spacetime in rotating frames. Relativistic transformations describe fundamental attributes of spacetime. The predictions of the four major rotational transformations were compared with high-resolution published optical data. This analysis reveals the transformation that accurately describes relativity in rotating frames, thus defining the basic spacetime structure.

Dr. Lang and colleagues present a new marine sulfur cycle model that incorporates the volatile organosulfur cycle to explain the global deposition of superheavy pyrite, i.e. pyrite isotopically heavier than the coeval seawater sulfate, after the Cryogenian Sturtian Snowball Earth glaciation 717-660 million years ago. These findings improve our understanding of the Snowball Earth glaciation and marine sulfur cycle in Proterozoic oceans.

Quantum mechanics can be used to create more stable and more easily produced organic solar cells. These are the findings of new research from the University of Gothenburg.

Marine plastic waste problems have been more serious year by year. One of the worst issues is that creatures in ocean are going extinct by mistakenly swallowing them. Conventional biodegradable plastics are degradable in digestive enzymes, but their performances are too low to use in society. In this study, researchers from JAIST have used bio-derived resources such as itaconic acid and amino acid for the syntheses of high-performance BioNylons having the pepsin degradation function.

Dr. HAN Fangpu's group from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reports the identification and functional study of the maize Knl1 gene in an article published online in PNAS.

A group of researchers from Osaka University developed a quadruped robot platform that can reproduce the neuromuscular dynamics of animals, discovering that a steady gait and experimental behaviors of walking cats emerged from the reflex circuit in walking experiments on this robot.

Melbourne researchers have identified predictors of both severe disease and recovery in hospitalised influenza patients, finding that the immune system works in concert to fight influenza.