Culture
Boston - Wearing masks and physical distancing - two key infection prevention strategies implemented to stop the spread of COVID-19 - may have led to the dramatic decrease in rates of common respiratory viral infections, such as influenza. A study led by researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC) showed an approximately 80 percent reduction in cases of influenza and other common viral respiratory infections when compared to similar time periods in previous years, before wearing masks, physical distancing, and school closures were implemented to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
While COVID-19 cases may be on the decline, the virus is still prevalent nationwide, and higher education institutions need to prepare for a successful 2021 academic year. New research from Clemson University in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, one of the world's premier peer-reviewed general medical journals, indicates how surveillance-based informative testing (SBIT) mitigates the spread of COVID-19 on campus, paving the way for other institutions, even those without the infrastructure or funding for mass-scale testing.
Amsterdam, NL, March 22, 2021 - The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our world, with disequilibrium, uncertainty, and human suffering making it difficult to envision a human, societal and individual future. Milan Zeleny, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Management Systems, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA, and world-recognized authority on decision making, productivity, knowledge management, and more recently the corporation as a living organism, says that "COVID-19 is rapidly changing from a cause to one of the symptoms of an increasingly unhinged world."
A University of New Mexico research team conducted a data analysis that has found that as a larger portion of the population gets vaccinated against COVID-19, it becomes economically advantageous to start relaxing social distancing measures and open businesses.
Francesco Sorrentino, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is lead author of "Data-driven Optimized Control of the COVID-19 Epidemics," published March 22 in Scientific Reports.
A cast of so-called 'nurse cells' surrounds and supports the growing fruit fly egg during development, supplying the egg -- or 'oocyte' -- with all the nutrients and molecules it needs to thrive. Long viewed as passive in this process, the Drosophila egg actually plays an active role not only in its own growth, but also in the growth of the surrounding nurse cells, Princeton University researchers report on March 21 in Developmental Cell.
Scientists from the Department of Physiology of the University of Granada (UGR) have shown that caffeine (about 3 mg/kg, the equivalent of a strong coffee) ingested half an hour before aerobic exercise significantly increases the rate of fat-burning. They also found that if the exercise is performed in the afternoon, the effects of the caffeine are more marked than in the morning.
LAWRENCE -- When a franchise buys a superstar like Tom Brady or LeBron James, the team tends to win more games. But do the fans follow? How much team loyalty is purchased along with an expensive star? Maybe not as much as some owners might hope -- in the NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs, many fans expressed their dislike of the "bought" Miami team.
Researchers from the Department of Orthopedics of Tongji Hospital at Tongji University in Shanghai have successfully used a nanobiomaterial called layered double hydroxide (LDH) to inhibit the inflammatory environment surrounding spinal cord injuries in mice, accelerating regeneration of neurons and reconstruction of the neural circuit in the spine. The researchers were also able to identify the underlying genetic mechanism by which LDH works.
An international group of researchers led by the University of Adelaide has conducted a comprehensive genetic analysis and found no evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and the ancient humans known from fossil records in Island Southeast Asia. They did find further DNA evidence of our mysterious ancient cousins, the Denisovans, which could mean there are major discoveries to come in the region.
Knee osteoarthritis is a painful condition that affects over 14 million U.S. adults, many of whom have extreme obesity, defined by body mass index (BMI) greater than 40kg/m2. Total knee replacement (TKR) is often recommended to treat advanced knee osteoarthritis, but surgeons may be hesitant to operate on patients with extreme obesity due to concerns about the increased risks of tissue infection, poor wound healing and higher risk of implant failure.
Candidiasis is a fungal infection caused by a yeast called Candida. It is a serious global health problem and it can be vaginal, oral or systemic. The latter is the most severe form of infection, as it can lead to death, but vaginal candidiasis infection is the most prevalent, affecting 80% of women at some point in their lives.
LA JOLLA, CA--An analysis of thousands of genomes from people with and without the rare eye disease known as MacTel has turned up more than a dozen gene variants that are likely causing the condition to develop and worsen for a significant share of patients.
The cost of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used for phones, laptops, and cars has fallen dramatically over the last three decades, and has been a major driver of the rapid growth of those technologies. But attempting to quantify that cost decline has produced ambiguous and conflicting results that have hampered attempts to project the technology's future or devise useful policies and research priorities.
Tailoring light is much like tailoring cloth, cutting and snipping to turn a bland fabric into one with some desired pattern. In the case of light, the tailoring is usually done in the spatial degrees of freedom, such as its amplitude and phase (the "pattern" of light), and its polarization, while the cutting and snipping might be control with spatial light modulators and the like.
Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that food industry interactions with government heavily outnumbered non-industry interactions on Bill S-228, also known as the Child Health Protection Act, which died in the Senate of Canada in 2019.
The researchers looked at more than 3,800 interactions, which included meetings, correspondence and lobbying, in the three years before the bill failed. They found that over 80 per cent were by industry, compared to public health or not-for-profit organizations.