Eurekalert
The premier online source for science news since 1996. A service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Updated: 3 years 3 months ago
Expressing variety of emotions earns entrepreneurs funding
Despite perceptions that entrepreneurs should always be positive about their ventures, a study found that entrepreneurs whose facial expressions moved through a mix of happiness, anger and fear during funding pitches were more successful. Researchers analyzed nearly 500 pitch videos from the online crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Those who varied their emotional expressions had more success on meeting their goal, total amount raised and number of contributors.
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Social media and science show how ship's plastic cargo dispersed from Florida to Norway
Researchers from the University of Plymouth and the Lost at Sea Project combined sightings data reported by members of the public and oceanographic modelling tools to show how the cartridges reached their resting place.
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KICT's solution for monitoring massive infrastructures
The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) has announced the development of an effective structural monitoring technique to monitor massive infrastructures, such as long-span bridge. The method provides accurate and precise responses over whole structural system densely by fusing advantages of multi-fidelity data.
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Treating dental pain with opioids linked to higher risk of overdose in patients & families
Patients whose dental procedure pain was treated with opioids were more likely to have an overdose within 90 days, as were their family members, a new study of records from millions of people with private and Medicaid dental coverage shows.
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Team builds better tool for assessing infant brain health
Researchers have created a new, open-access tool that allows doctors and scientists to evaluate infant brain health by assessing the concentration of various chemical markers, called metabolites, in the brain. The tool compiled data from 140 infants to determine normal ranges for these metabolites.
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Kratom use rare, but more common among people with opioid use disorder
Less than one percent of people in the United States use kratom, a plant-based substance commonly used to manage pain and opioid withdrawal, according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. However, the use of kratom--which is legal but carries the risk of addiction and harmful side effects--is more prevalent among people who use other drugs, particularly those with opioid use disorder.
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Smart cell therapies for solid cancers 'ready to move towards clinical trials'
Immunotherapies that fight cancer have been a life-saving advancement for many patients, but the approach only works on a few types of malignancies, leaving few treatment options for most cancer patients with solid tumors. Now, in two related papers published April 28, 2021 in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at UCSF have demonstrated how to engineer smart immune cells that are effective against solid tumors, opening the door to treating a variety of cancers that have long been untouchable with immunotherapies.
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Groundbreaking kumara research marries scientific evidence with matauraka Māori
The discovery of ancient kumara pits just north of Dunedin dating back to the 15th century have shone a light on how scientific evidence can complement mātauranga Maori around how and where the taonga were stored hundreds of years ago.
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Doctors overestimate risk leading to over-diagnosis, overtreatment, study finds
Primary care practitioners often over-estimate the likelihood of a patient having a medical condition based on reported symptoms and laboratory test results. Such overestimations can lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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Republicans became more vaccine hesitant as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded
Individuals who self-identify as Republicans became more skeptical of a potential COVID-19 vaccine and other inoculations, such as the flu shot, over the course of the pandemic, reveals a new study by the University of California San Diego.
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Touched by light: Photoexcited stannyl anions are great for producing organotin compounds
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology developed a new strategy for producing a wide range of organotin compounds, which are the building blocks of many organic synthesis methods. Their approach is based on the photoexcitation of stannyl anions, which alters their electronic state and increases their selectivity and reactivity to form useful compounds. This protocol will be helpful for the efficient synthesis of many bioactive products, novel drugs, and functional materials.
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Skipping the second shot could prolong pandemic, study finds
Though more than 131 million Americans have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine to date, public confusion and uncertainty about the importance of second doses and continued public health precautions threaten to delay a U.S. return to normalcy, according to Cornell-led research published April 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Algorithm scours electronic health records to reveal hidden kidney disease
A new algorithm that taps data from a patient's electronic medical record can diagnose and stage chronic kidney disease, which is often undetected until it has caused irreversible damage.
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CCNY team makes single photon switch advance
The ability to turn on and off a physical process with just one photon is a fundamental building block for quantum photonic technologies. Realizing this in a chip-scale architecture is important for scalability, which amplifies a breakthrough by CCNY researchers led by physicist Vinod Menon. They've demonstrated for the first time the use of "Rydberg states" in solid state materials (previously shown in cold atom gases) to enhance nonlinear optical interactions to unprecedented levels in solid state systems.
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Eye movements of those with dyslexia reveal laborious and inefficient reading strategies
A new paper written by Concordia researchers published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports used eye-tracking technology to record eye movements of readers and concluded that people with dyslexia have a profoundly different and much more difficult way of sampling visual information than normal readers.
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Researchers investigate structural changes in snap-frozen proteins
Researchers at the University of Bonn and the research center caesar have succeeded in ultra-fast freezing proteins after a precisely defined period of time. They were able to follow structural changes on the microsecond time scale and with sub-nanometer precision. Owing to its high spatial and temporal resolution, the method allows tracking rapid structural changes in enzymes and nucleic acids. The results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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FSU researchers develop tool to track marine litter polluting the ocean
In an effort to fight the millions of tons of marine litter floating in the ocean, Florida State University researchers have developed a new virtual tool to track this debris. Their work, which was published in Frontiers in Marine Science, will help provide answers to help monitor and deal with the problem of marine litter.
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UC San Diego engineering professor solves deep earthquake mystery
A University of California San Diego engineering professor has solved one of the biggest mysteries in geophysics: What causes deep-focus earthquakes? These mysterious earthquakes originate between 400 and 700 kilometers below the surface of the Earth and have been recorded with magnitudes up to 8.3 on the Richter scale.
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Improving the way vets care for animals and people
UArizona veterinary medicine associate professor Ryane Englar says that improving human interactions can also improve animal care.
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Male bladder cancer vulnerability could lead to a new treatment approach
UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers found that targeting androgen receptors - a type of protein that is crucial for the function of testosterone - may destroy cancer cells. Focusing on this protein variant common in malignant bladder tumor cells may serve as a new avenue for treating bladder cancer in men.
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