Culture
Findings released today from the most recent Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of substance use behaviors and related attitudes among teens in the United States indicate that levels of nicotine and marijuana vaping did not increase from 2019 to early 2020, although they remain high. The annual MTF survey is conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, Ann Arbor, and is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health.
People in Scotland's poorest areas are more likely to be affected by severe Covid-19 - and to die from the disease - than those in more affluent districts, according to a study of critical care units.
The first nationwide study of its kind found patients from the most economically disadvantaged areas had a higher chance of critical care admission, and that intensive care units there were more likely to be over capacity.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Is it possible to read a person's mind by analyzing the electric signals from the brain? The answer may be much more complex than most people think.
Purdue University researchers - working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and neuroscience - say a prominent dataset used to try to answer this question is confounded, and therefore many eye-popping findings that were based on this dataset and received high-profile recognition are false after all.
PULLMAN, Wash. -- WSU researchers have used the ancient Japanese art of paper folding to possibly solve a key challenge for outer space travel - how to store and move fuel to rocket engines.
The researchers have developed an origami-inspired, folded plastic fuel bladder that doesn't crack at super cold temperatures and could someday be used to store and pump fuel. Led by graduate student Kjell Westra and Jake Leachman, associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the researchers have published their work in the journal, Cryogenics.
Dec. 15, 2020-- In a new research letter published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, researchers examine whether preprint data on the use of the corticosteroid dexamethasone influenced clinical practice in treating COVID-19 critical care patients throughout Australia.
New research shows the same proteins that enable human senses such as smell also allow certain fungi to sense something they can eat.
The UC Riverside study offers new avenues for protecting people from starvation due to pathogenic fungus-induced food shortages. Understanding how fungi sense and digest plants can also help scientists engineer fungal strains that are more efficient at producing biofuels.
An international team of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Irish scientists has used whole genome sequencing to characterise 53 herring populations from the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea. They have developed genetic markers that make it possible to better monitor herring populations and avoid overfishing. The study is published in the journal eLife.
A community or sub-culture encouraging young men's exposure and obsession with guns - as well as ready access to firearms and drugs - can make gun violence 'all too easy', with Flinders University experts promoting a new direction on managing the global problem.
Flinders criminologists conclude that the need to 'dematerialise' the attraction to gun has "never been greater" than "in a post-COVID-19 world in which guns have gained greater salience in many countries".
Limiting gatherings to fewer than 10 people and closing educational institutions were among the most effective nonpharmaceutical interventions at reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2, a new modeling study finds. The results, informed by data from 34 European and several non-European countries, may guide policy decisions on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to implement in current and future waves of infections. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, governments are attempting to control it with NPIs.
The Covid-19 pandemic has turned flexible working arrangements a new reality, but differences in employees' preferences and the financial implications for companies still require unravelling.
Cancer immunotherapy using "designer" immune cells has revolutionized cancer treatment in recent years. In this type of therapy, T cells, a type of white blood cell, are collected from a patient's blood and subjected to genetic engineering to produce T cells carrying a synthetic molecule termed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that is designed to enable T cells to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Then these genetically modified CAR T cells are expanded to large quantity and infused back to the patient.
Imagine you are sitting on the couch in your living room reading. You do it almost every night. But then, suddenly, when you look up you notice this time something is different. Your favorite picture hanging on the wall is tilted ever so slightly. In a study involving epilepsy patients, National Institutes of Health scientists discovered how a set of high frequency brain waves may help us spot these kinds of differences between the past and the present.
A pioneering reconstruction of the brain belonging to one of the earliest dinosaurs to roam the Earth has shed new light on its possible diet and ability to move fast.
Research, led by the University of Bristol, used advanced imaging and 3-D modelling techniques to digitally rebuild the brain of Thecodontosaurus, better known as the Bristol dinosaur due to its origins in the UK city. The palaeontologists found Thecodontosaurus may have eaten meat, unlike its giant long-necked later relatives including Diplodocus and Brontosaurus, which only fed on plants.
Neuroscientists at UCL have found no significant association between COVID-19 and the potentially paralysing and sometimes fatal neurological condition Guillain-Barré syndrome.
Researchers say the findings, published in the journal Brain*, along with a linked scientific commentary** by UCL and other international experts, should provide the public with reassurance, as the UK's national coronavirus vaccination programme is rolled out.
Following the first recorded death of an anaesthetist from COVID-19 in the UK in November 2020, a review of available data published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows that unexpectedly, despite their perceived increased exposure to COVID-19 patients and high-risk procedures, anaesthetists and intensive care doctors appear to be at lower risk of being infected with SARS-CoV-2 and developing COVID-19.