Culture
Nearly 11 percent of people admitted to an intensive care unit in Sweden between 2010 and 2018 received opioid prescriptions on a regular basis for at least six months and up to two years after discharge. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in Critical Care Medicine. The findings suggest some may become chronic opioid users despite a lack of evidence of the drugs' long-term effectiveness and risks linked to increased mortality.
Study using surveys of more than 1.1 million 13-15-year-olds from 140 countries between 1999 and 2018, finds that the prevalence of smoking cigarettes on at least one day during the past 30 days decreased in 80 countries (57%) but was unchanged or increased in 60 countries (43%).
However, during the same time period, the prevalence of using other tobacco products, such as chewing tobacco, snuff, dip, cigars, cigarillos, pipe, or electronic cigarettes, levelled off or increased in 81 (59%) of 137 countries with available data.
Researchers developing renewable plastics and exploring new processes for plastics upcycling and recycling technologies will now be able to easily baseline their efforts to current manufacturing practices to understand if their efforts will save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Benchmark data calculated and compiled at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provide a measurement--at the supply chain level--of how much energy is required and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from the production of a variety of plastics in the United States.
An international research team from the Photobiotechnology Research Group at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) led by Professor Thomas Happe and the Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines (CNRS) in Marseille has been able to get to the bottom of this unique feature. They describe the molecular mechanism in Nature Communications on 2 February 2021.
Enzyme repeatedly survives the attack unharmed
DANVILLE, Pa. and GAITHERSBURG, Md. - Researchers have discovered a strong link between genetic changes known to cause neurodevelopmental disabilities and cerebral palsy.
BOSTON -- Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have typically excluded diverse and minority individuals in the search for gene variants that confer risk of disease. Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and other institutions around the world have now developed a free-access software package called Tractor that increases the discovery power of genomics in understudied populations.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 2, 2021) -- What does bile acid production in the digestive tract have to do with Parkinson's disease?
Quite a lot, according to a sweeping new analysis published in the journal Metabolites. The findings reveal that changes in the gut microbiome -- the rich population of helpful microbes that call the digestive tract home -- may in turn alter bile acid production by favoring synthesis of toxic forms of the acids.
Amsterdam, February 2, 2021 - The Canadian Neuromuscular Disease Registry (CNDR) was launched in 2010 to increase efficient patient access to cutting-edge research and clinical trials, to increase understanding of the natural history and epidemiology of neuromuscular disease across Canada, and to facilitate research collaboration.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Studies have shown that nearly half of all medical students in the U.S. report symptoms of burnout, a long-term reaction to stress characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of decreased personal accomplishment. Beyond the personal toll, the implications for aspiring and practicing physicians can be severe, from reduced quality of care to increased risk of patient safety incidents.
Period poverty, a lack of access to menstrual hygiene products, and other unmet menstrual health needs can have far-reaching consequences for women and girls in the United States and globally.
Telehealth use has surged during the pandemic at clinics that serve lower-income Americans, which allowed the clinics to maintain access to care at a time when many other health care organizations saw significant declines in utilization, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
However, most of the telehealth appointments have been audio-only visits, which may pose challenges in the future if payers consider dropping reimbursement for such services.
Nanoscience - Blowing the whistle on COVID-19
Collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are developing a breath-sampling whistle that could make COVID-19 screening easy to do at home.
The technology incorporates a unique hydrogel material to capture aerosols from exhaled breath and preserve the samples, which could either be sent to a lab for analysis or, for a fully at-home approach, transferred to an accompanying test kit that could detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
Ten months into COVID-19 living, people are adapting to speaking from behind, and understanding others who are wearing, a cloth face mask, University of California, Davis, researchers suggest in a new study.
Yale researchers are developing a skin cancer treatment that involves injecting nanoparticles into the tumor, killing cancer cells with a two-pronged approach, as a potential alternative to surgery.
The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A new study from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing shows that the potential genetic burden of mutations arising from retrogenes is significantly greater than originally thought.