Culture
In direct contradiction to the official forecast, a team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is predicting that the Sunspot Cycle that started this fall could be one of the strongest since record-keeping began.
In a new article published in Solar Physics, the research team predicts that Sunspot Cycle 25 will peak with a maximum sunspot number somewhere between approximately 210 and 260, which would put the new cycle in the company of the top few ever observed.
As municipalities have taxed sugar-sweetened beverages and schools and worksites have banned their sales, university researchers have found that simple warning labels on such beverages in a college cafeteria helped students reduce their reported consumption of drinks by 14.5 percent. The results signal that such labels could reduce sugar consumption in larger settings.
The creosote is the king of the desert. This scraggly shrub dominates the landscape of the American southwest, creating mini-oases from the harsh heat for desert wildlife.
In a new study, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin leveraged computer algorithms and high-resolution survey data to conduct the first-ever creosote census - counting every creosote in a 135-square-mile conservation site in Nevada's Mojave Desert. The final count was 23 million creosotes among a total population of 66 million plants.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The island of Nihoa, a slice of jagged rock that juts out of the Pacific Ocean, is the sole refuge for a rediscovered species of native Hawaiian land snail previously presumed to be extinct.
COVID-19 transmission in nursing homes may be affected by nurses and direct care workers with multip
Nurses and other long-term care workers in nursing homes who hold multiple jobs, may be one of the factors contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in these facilities, according to a new study published in Medical Care Research and Review. The nature of their work in providing essential care to patients in rather close proximity, and the limited access to personal protective equipment for some workers, has made this profession even riskier during the pandemic.
In recent years, debate has been intensifying over whether the noncompete agreements some companies use to bind employees help or hurt workers. It's an issue management professor Evan Starr at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business has studied extensively -- co-authoring four research papers on the topic forthcoming in top journals. All the results point to the same conclusion: Noncompetes stifle workers.
URBANA, Ill. - Walking rows of soybeans in the mid-summer heat is an exhausting but essential chore in breeding new cultivars. Researchers brave the heat daily during crucial parts of the growing season to look for plants showing desirable traits, such as early pod maturity. But without a way to automate detection of these traits, breeders can't test as many plots as they'd like in a given year, elongating the time it takes to bring new cultivars to market.
Just like other organisms, plants must respond dynamically to a variety of cues over their lifetime. Going through different developmental stages, or altering their form in response to a drought or drastic temperature change requires altering which of their genes are expressed into proteins and when those processes occur.
Michael Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and of immunology and internal medicine at the School of Medicine, and his team are experts in footprinting proteins -- that is, using advanced methods for investigating the structure and interactions of proteins within larger molecules.
A new 5-month longitudinal analysis of 254 COVID-19 patients who displayed a wide range of disease severity - from asymptomatic to deadly illness - suggests that IgA and IgM antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus disappear quickly during convalescence. IgG antibodies likely persist for longer, but Katharina Röltgen and colleagues nonetheless documented a slow, inexorable decline in this antibody class as well, even in severely ill patients who mounted very strong initial antibody responses.
An Asian hornet sets its sights on a busy honey bee hive. If all goes according to plan, the hornet's attack will result in a haul of bee larvae, precious nourishment to pilfer and feed to its own hornet young.
A new study of more than 150 COVID-19 patients shows that IgA antibodies dominate the early response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, coming on more quickly and strongly than IgG and IgM antibodies. This is a somewhat unexpected result, as IgM antibodies are usually the immune system's first responders. The finding may also inform the development of vaccines that encourage the IgA response, as well as IgA-based tests to detect infection at early stages, Delphine Sterlin and colleagues say.
HOUSTON - (Dec. 7, 2020) - Indian women past childbearing age are dying at a higher rate than those in other countries because of poverty and limited access to resources such as food and health care, according to a study from Rice University.
"Why Are Older Women Missing in India? The Age Profile of Bargaining Power and Poverty" was published in a recent edition of the Journal of Political Economy. The research examines the impact of India's substantial gender inequality on the health, poverty and mortality of Indian women 45 and older.
A drug currently prescribed to treat a rare enzyme deficiency can help cells clear the herpes simplex 1 and herpes simplex 2 viruses, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.
The new data shows that the antiviral activity of the drug -- called phenylbutyrate, or PBA -- was even better when used along with acyclovir, a common HSV-1 treatment. When used in combination, less acyclovir is needed to effectively suppress the virus compared to acyclovir alone -- this is important because acyclovir is also known to have toxic side effects in the kidneys.
UCLA researchers are the first to create a version of COVID-19 in mice that shows how the disease damages organs other than the lungs. Using their model, the scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can shut down energy production in cells of the heart, kidneys, spleen and other organs.