Culture

Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) researchers report a cross-linker for dental cement that breaks down under UV light, making treatments easier to reverse.

News at a Glance:

Analysis of Victorian data by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute suggests that COVID-19 cases in schools and childcare were mainly driven by community transmission

373 students possibly acquired COVID-19 via a school or early childhood education centre

The COVID-19 in Victorian Schools Report recommends prioritising opening schools and childcare for onsite learning as soon as community transmission levels fall and provides detailed mitigation plans for outbreaks

A group of researchers developed a promising fix to CRISPR-Cas9's problem with unwanted genetic changes using a method that allows them to turn off gene-editing until it reaches key cell cycle phases where more accurate repairs are likely to happen.

Reactive oxygen molecules, also known as "free radicals", are generally considered harmful. However as it now turns out, they control cellular processes, which are important for the brain's ability to adapt - at least in mice. Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) at TU Dresden published the findings in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

A combined research team from the Universities of Portsmouth and Bournemouth and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust has shown that an assessment score used to measure a patient's severity of illness can be applied to patients with Covid-19 without modification.

The Portsmouth Academic ConsortIum For Investigating COVID-19 (PACIFIC-19) team has shown that the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) is equally good at predicting certain adverse clinical outcomes in patients with Covid-19 and other groups of patients admitted to hospital.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet and the Helmholtz Diabetes Research Center shows that primary cilia, hair-like protrusions on endothelial cells inside vessels, play an important role in the blood supply and delivery of glucose to the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreatic islets. The findings are published in eLife and may be relevant for transplantation therapies in diabetes, as formation of functional blood vessels is important for the treatment to be successful.

Emotions are complex phenomena that influence our minds, bodies and behaviour. A number of studies have sought to connect given emotions, such as fear or pleasure, to specific areas of the brain, but without success. Some theoretical models suggest that emotions emerge through the coordination of multiple mental processes triggered by an event. These models involve the brain orchestrating adapted emotional responses via the synchronisation of motivational, expressive and visceral mechanisms.

Researchers from the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBIS) have presented a study carried out in the Clinical Biochemistry Service of the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital which identifies the values for six biochemical biomarkers that indicate a patient may be infected with SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19). The key novelty of this study, led by Dr. Juan Miguel Guerrero, head of service and IR of the IBiS Molecular NeuroImmunoendocrinology group, lies in the fact that it was carried out using a blood test and can provide a determination in about 60 minutes.

Neutrinos are chargeless particles with about a mass about a millionth that of an electron that are created by the nuclear processes that occur in the Sun and other stars. These particles are often colourfully described as the 'ghosts' of the particle zoo because they interact so weakly with matter.

New Orleans, LA - A study by researchers at LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health, believed to be the first study to investigate the role of neighborhood deprivation on COVID-19 in Louisiana, found that the more a neighborhood is deprived, the higher the risk for cases of COVID-19. They report that people living in the most deprived neighborhoods had an almost 40% higher risk of COVID-19 compared to those residing in the least deprived neighborhoods.

The world's largest solar observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, just released its first image of a sunspot. Although the telescope is still in the final phases of completion, the image is an indication of how the telescope's advanced optics and four-meter primary mirror will give scientists the best view of the Sun from Earth throughout the next solar cycle.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered individuals with type 1 and type 2 diabetes infected with COVID-19 are three times more likely to have a severe illness or require hospitalization compared with people without diabetes.

Because of this amplified impact, they are urging policymakers to prioritize these individuals for COVID-19 vaccination. Their findings were published in Diabetes Care, the journal of the American Diabetes Association.

Biologists from RUDN University working together with their colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Flax studied the genes that determine the fatty acid composition in flaxseed oil and identified polymorphisms in six of them. The team also found out what gene variations could extend the shelf life of flaxseed oil. This data can be used to improve the genetic selection of new flax breeds. The results were published in the BMC Plant Biology journal.

In the last five decades, we've learned a lot about the secret lives of proteins -- how they work, what they interact with, the machinery that makes them function -- and the pace of discovery is accelerating.

The first three-dimensional protein structure began emerging in the 1970s. Today, the Protein Data Bank, a worldwide repository of information about the 3D structures of large biological molecules, has information about hundreds of thousands of proteins. Just this week, the company DeepMind shocked the protein structure world with its accurate, AI-driven predictions.

BOSTON - New research from Boston Medical Center finds that the COVID-19 emergency systemic changes made to decrease in-person visits during the pandemic have led to a decrease in hospital-wide Hepatitis C (HCV) testing by 50 percent, and a reduction in new HCV diagnoses by more than 60 percent.