Culture

Individually, California blackworms live an unremarkable life eating microorganisms in ponds and serving as tropical fish food for aquarium enthusiasts. But together, tens, hundreds, or thousands of the centimeter-long creatures can collaborate to form a "worm blob," a shape-shifting living liquid that collectively protects its members from drying out and helps them escape threats such as excessive heat.

HOUSTON - (Feb. 9, 2021) - Finding a needle in a haystack is hard enough. But try finding a specific molecule on the needle.

Rice University researchers have achieved something of the sort with a new genome editing tool that targets the supporting players in a cell's nucleus that package DNA and aid gene expression. Their work opens the door to new therapies for cancer and other diseases.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A team led by astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, has found that some dwarf galaxies may today appear to be dark-matter free even though they formed as galaxies dominated by dark matter in the past.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The huge forces generated by the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories are being used to replicate the gravitational pressures on so-called "super-Earths" to determine which might maintain atmospheres that could support life.

Astronomers believe that super-Earths -- collections of rocks up to eight times larger than Earth -- exist in the millions in our galaxy. "The question before us is whether any of these super planets are actually Earthlike, with active geological processes, atmospheres and magnetic fields," said Sandia physicist Joshua Townsend.

The notion of social distancing rose to public prominence approximately a year ago, when health officials began recommending it as a way to slow the spread of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus. Despite the novelty of the concept among many contemporary human audiences, social distancing has considerable precedent among animals.

New research by Morgan Philbin, PhD, at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues looks at why Black young men who have sex with men (YMSM) are disproportionately subject to high rates of arrest and incarceration. They find that perceived racial discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, and HIV-status discrimination are all associated with risk for criminal justice involvement in this population.

The research appears in the journal Stigma and Health.

With the COVID-19 pandemic entering its second year, the challenges faced both by individuals and nations remain substantial. While notable medical advancements in the treatment of COVID-19 have been made, a host of questions about how to live with it and how to work to end it remain active.

Wintertime outbreaks of COVID-19 have been largely driven by whether people adhere to control measures such as mask wearing and social distancing, according to a study published Feb. 8 in Nature Communications by Princeton University researchers. Climate and population immunity are playing smaller roles during the current pandemic phase of the virus, the researchers found.

Ancient Amazonian communities fortified valuable land they had spent years making fertile to protect it from conflict, excavations show.
Farmers in Bolivia constructed wooden defences around previously nutrient-poor tropical soils they had enriched over generations to keep them safe during times of social unrest.

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this review article the authors Yue Li, Zhiyi Chen and Shuping Ge from First Affiliated Hospital of University of South China, Hengyang, China and Tower Health and Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA summarize current state of the art applications of microbubble-cell interactions and sonoporation effects to cellular functions.

LA JOLLA, CA--As new COVID-19 variants begin to throw vaccine efficacy in question, two leading scientists are calling for health agencies to invest in the development of vaccines that would be broadly effective against many different variants and strains of potential pandemic viruses.

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a simple optical technique used to detect volumetric changes in peripheral blood circulation. It's used in smart watches, for example, to monitor pulse and heart rate, but PPG biosensors are also found in millions of smartphones, but without any current clinical applications.

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at https://www.acpjournals.org/topic/category/coronavirus.

Rapid, Living Practice Points from ACP: Update on remdesivir use for hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Headlines like "Black Friday Shoppers Trampled in New York" and popular television shows such as "Extreme Couponing" remind us how crazy consumers can get about retail sales promotions. This enthusiasm for getting bargains has been termed "deal proneness."