Eurekalert

Corn is America's top agricultural crop, and also one of its most wasteful. About half the harvest--stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs-- remains as waste after the kernels have been stripped from the cobs. These leftovers, known as corn stover, have few commercial or industrial uses aside from burning. A new paper by engineers at UC Riverside describes an energy-efficient way to put corn stover back into the economy by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.

Researchers have created to novel biobanks of diverse tissues from animals to further explore the biological bases and consequences of addiction to cocaine and oxycodone.

"Birds are a group of dinosaurs of which we have discovered 150-million-year-old fossils with fully developed wings. Among their closest non-avialan relatives, we have also found fossils with sufficiently developed wings that could provide them with some aerodynamic benefit, whether to glide between trees or get thrust to climb and jump over obstacles. But this does not mean that they could take off by flapping their wings or maintain a powered flight", explains Francisco Serrano.

Gossip is often considered socially taboo and dismissed for its negative tone, but a Dartmouth study illustrates some of its merits. Gossip facilitates social connection and enables learning about the world indirectly through other people's experiences.

Researchers examined 14,000 genetic differences between modern humans and our most recent ancestors at a new level of detail. They found that differences in gene activation - not just genetic code - could underlie evolution of the brain and vocal tract.

Skid marks left by cars are often analyzed for their impression patterns, but they often don't provide enough information to identify a specific vehicle. UCF Chemistry Associate Professor Matthieu Baudelet and his forensics team at the National Center for Forensic Science, which was established at UCF in 1997, may have just unlocked a new way to collect evidence from those skid marks.

Doctors are encouraged to watch for symptoms in early hospitalization

A vital intermediate in normal cell metabolism is also, in the right context, a trigger for cell death, according to a new study from Wanli Liu and Yonghui Zhang of Tsinghua University, and Yong Zhang of Peking University in Beijing, publishing 26th April 2021 in the open access journal PLOS biology. The discovery may contribute to a better understanding of the damage caused by stroke, and may offer a new drug target to reduce that damage.

Children's Hospital Los Angeles study reveals a surge of patients presenting with diabetic ketoacidosis, a severe complication of type 2 diabetes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A new guideline for reporting research results has been developed to improve reproducibility, replication, and transparency in life sciences. The new Research Materials, Design, Analysis and Reporting (MDAR) Framework will harmonise the recording of outcomes across several major journals, its developers say.

The brain encodes information about our relationships and the relationships between our friends using areas involved in spatial processing, according to new research published in JNeurosci.

New research suggests a simple step could help millions of people reduce their risk of heart disease: make sure to get enough vitamin D. Elucidating linkages between skin pigmentation, vitamin D and indicators of cardiovascular health, the new study, combined with evidence from previous research, suggests vitamin D deficiency could contribute to the high rate of heart disease among African Americans.

Thousands of livers donated for transplantation are discarded or turned down every year due to concerns about organ quality and function. New insights into why these organs are considered unusable and how they function during external perfusion could help save lives by greatly increasing the number of livers that are transplantable.

Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaurs chomped through bone by keeping a joint in their lower jaw steady like an alligator, rather than flexible like a snake, according to a study being presented at the American Association for Anatomy annual meeting during the Experimental Biology (EB) 2021 meeting, held virtually April 27-30.

During infection, SARS-CoV-2 binds to a cellular receptor known as angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) before entering a cell and replicating. Because it is not well established whether common blood pressure medications can increase the levels of ACE2, there has been some concern that patients taking these medications might be more susceptible to COVID-19.

A new study performed in human lung airway cells is one of the first to show a potential link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection. The findings could have implications for veterans, many of whom were exposed to organophosphate pesticides during wartime.

Wild blueberry fields in Down East Maine are warming faster than the state as a whole, according to a new University of Maine study on the effects of climate change on the barrens over the past 40 years. The difference in rising temperature rates suggests the need to develop specific wild blueberry management strategies, such as irrigation and fertilizer use, to mitigate the effects of climate change on Down East fields, rather than using tactics devised from statewide climate patterns.

A new study from University of Kentucky Markey Cancer researchers shows that Artemisia annua, a plant that has been traditionally used for its anti-malaria components, shows promise in treating ovarian cancer.

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for up to 15% of lung cancer cases. SCLC initially responds well to chemotherapy, but it often recurs in a poorly understood treatment-resistant form that is usually fatal. This study identified molecular changes in four subtypes of advanced SCLC. The findings could lead to the development of new targeted therapies for advanced SCLC.

A new study from Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers finds that new mothers who receive opioids after uncomplicated vaginal births face an increased risk of serious opioid-related events regardless of the opioid dosage, a finding that could significantly impact care delivery.