Culture
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.
Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concludes that current evidence is insufficient to make a recommendation about screening for hearing loss in asymptomatic adults 50 and older. Nearly 16% of U.S. adults 18 and over report difficulty hearing. Hearing loss has been associated with an increased risk of falls, hospitalizations, social isolation and cognitive decline. The USPSTF routinely makes recommendations about the effectiveness of preventive care services and this recommendation is similar to its 2012 statement.
WASHINGTON, March 23, 2021 -- According to the National Institutes of Health, respiratory viruses are the most frequent cause of disease and death in humans, a fact highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the potential to cause severe disease, over 70% of viral infections remain asymptomatic.
Animal models have been used widely to understand how these viruses infect the host and how the host responds to prevent infection and onset of diseases. Data based on animal models, however, does not always apply well to humans, given the variability in species and genetics.
What The Study Did: This study of working-age people enrolled in private health plans from March 2019 through June 2020 documented patterns of care at the onset of COVID-19.
Authors: Jonathan P. Weiner, Dr.P.H., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.2618)
What The Study Did: Researchers investigated representation of Black Americans in clinical trials of cardiovascular drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between 2006 and 2020.
Authors: Jiarui Li, M.D., of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.2640)
A large proportion of dementia deaths in England and Wales may be due to socioeconomic deprivation, according to new research led by Queen Mary University of London.
The team also found that socioeconomic deprivation was associated with younger age at death with dementia, and poorer access to accurate diagnosis.
Dementia is the leading cause of death in England and Wales, even during the COVID pandemic, and is the only disease in the top ten causes of death without effective treatment.
It can be hard to resist lapsing into an exaggerated, singsong tone when you talk to a cute baby. And that's with good reason. Babies will pay more attention to baby talk than regular speech, regardless of which languages they're used to hearing, according to a study by UCLA's Language Acquisition Lab and 16 other labs around the globe.
A pioneering study, published in Scientific Reports, found that the Parkinon's gene PINK1 is important for the generation of dopamine-producing neurons throughout life, and is not just responsible for the premature death of these neurons
The international research, led by University of Sheffield's Neuroscience Institute, used two model systems to examine how neurons are produced throughout our lifetime
Parkinson's disease is a relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects around 145,000 people in the UK
Uncovering detailed travel patterns and habitat use of sharks along and across shelf territories has been historically challenging - especially for most pelagic shark species - which remain offshore for most of their lives. Their vertical diving behavior has been a subject of inquiry for a long time, and for young sharks in particular, has remained elusive.