Culture
The slurred speech, poor coordination, and sedative effects of drinking too much alcohol may actually be caused by the breakdown of alcohol products produced in the brain, not in the liver as scientists currently think. That is the finding of a new study led by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It was published recently in the journal Nature Metabolism and provides new insights into how alcohol may affect the brain and the potential for new treatments to treat alcohol misuse.
Most people by now have memorized the public health guidelines meant to help minimize transmission of COVID-19: wash your hands, wear a mask, keep six feet apart from others. That part is easy.
What some may not realize is that upholding these guidelines in certain urban areas can present new challenges.
To better understand how RNA in bacteria gives rise to protein--and along the way, target these processes in the design of new antibiotics--researchers are turning their attention to the unique way this process happens in bacteria.
"New evidence of the importance of the Roman/Byzantine Mons Smaragdus settlement within the emerald mining network"
The U.S. military veteran population is known to have abnormally high rates of suicide, so health officials have been concerned that the COVID-19 pandemic might elevate risk of psychiatric disorders, particularly among those suffering from post-traumatic stress and related disorders.
A recent national study of more than 3,000 veterans participating in the National Health and Resilience in Veterans Study did find that 12.8% reported post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms related to COVID-19 and 8% said they had contemplated suicide during the pandemic.
Biological energy flows, such as in photosynthesis and respiration, depend on the transfer of electrons from one molecule to another. Despite its importance to sustaining life, factors governing the rate of electron transfer, especially over long distances, are not well understood because the systems that mediate such ultrafast processes are very complex. A better understanding of electron transfer rates would help scientists improve chemical transformations, energy conversion, electronic devices, and photonic technologies.
New research by University of Texas at Dallas scientists could help solve a major challenge in the deployment of certain COVID-19 vaccines worldwide -- the need for the vaccines to be kept at below-freezing temperatures during transport and storage.
More than 30 years ago, wilderness areas - natural areas that have not been considerably modified by humans - were identified as priorities of conservation and protection actions. Only recently has there been a push to define how to measure wilderness, with a focus on intact habitats. The integrity of natural ecosystems has also been recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as an important goal in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
A new study in SLEEP, published by Oxford University Press, demonstrates the significant benefits of later school start times for middle and high school students' sleep schedules.
Sleep is essential to a student's overall health, social development, and academic achievement, yet lack of sleep is common among children and adolescents. Biological changes to sleep cycles during puberty make falling asleep early difficult for adolescents. This, coupled with early school start times, means that students often end up with insufficient sleep.
As females age, their bodies typically undergo two significant changes that generally occur during adolescence and middle age. The first, known as menarche, is the time during puberty when a girl begins having monthly menstruation cycles, which often tends to range from 8-13 years of age. She enters the second change, known as menopause, 12 months following her last menstruation cycle when her ovarian function ceases, usually sometime in her 40s or 50s.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Women's increased agricultural labor during harvest season, in addition to domestic house care, often comes at the cost of their health, according to new research from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI).
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- April 13, 2021 -- Findings of a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that increasing expression of a gene known as ABCC1 could not only reduce the deposition of a hard plaque in the brain that leads to Alzheimer's disease, but might also prevent or delay this memory-robbing disease from developing.
In a new study, Dr. LU Xiankai and his colleagues from the South China Botanical Garden (SCBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found that tropical forests can capture carbon dioxide (CO2) into soils and thus reduce emitted CO2. But how exactly do tropical forest soils capture atmospheric CO2?
Current knowledge of forest soil carbon sequestration mainly focuses on temperate and boreal forests, where most ecosystems are nitrogen-limited, and an increase in nitrogen supply can enhance net primary productivity (NPP) and subsequent soil carbon sequestration.
A group of researchers from Kobe University and Chiba University has successfully developed a flexible and simple method of artificially producing genetic switches for yeast, a model eukaryotic organism. The group consisted of Researcher TOMINAGA Masahiro*1, Associate Professor ISHII Jun*2 and Professor KONDO Akihiko*3 (of Kobe University's Graduate School of Science, Technology and Innovation/Engineering Biology Research Center), and Professor UMENO Daisuke et al. (of Chiba University's Graduate School of Engineering).
Little is known about azhdarchid pterosaurs, gigantic flying reptiles with impressive wingspans of up to 12 meters. Cousins of dinosaurs and the largest animals ever to fly, they first appeared in the fossil record in the Late Triassic about 225 million years ago and disappeared again at the end of the Cretaceous period about 66 million years ago. One of their most notable features for such a large flighted animal was a neck longer than that of a giraffe.