Culture
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended many parts of daily life, one of them being our work life. Research carried out by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has studied the factors that help make efficient work teams. The explanation is multidimensional and multilevel.
"Inspiring leadership builds employees' resilience and willingness to undertake new challenges," said Pilar Ficapal Cusi, professor at the UOC's Faculty of Economics and Business and one of the authors of the study, which was published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered the individual traits of fungi, and how their hyphae - that is, the fungal threads that grow in soil - behave very differently as they navigate through the earth's microscopic labyrinths.
A greater exposure to air pollution at the very start of life was associated with a detrimental effect on people's cognitive skills up to 60 years later, the research found.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh tested the general intelligence of more than 500 people aged approximately 70 years using a test they had all completed at the age of 11 years.
The participants then repeated the same test at the ages of 76 and 79 years.
To evaluate the chemical composition of food from a physiological point of view, it is important to know the functions of the receptors that interact with food ingredients. These include receptors for bitter compounds, which first evolved during evolution in bony fishes such as the coelacanth.
A process that releases iron in response to stress may contribute to heart failure, and blocking this process could be a way of protecting the heart, suggests a study in mice published today in eLife.
People with heart failure often have an iron deficiency, leading some scientists to suspect that problems with iron processing in the body may play a role in this condition. The study explains one way that iron processing may contribute to heart failure and suggests potential treatment approaches to protect the heart.
Trees are by far the tallest organisms on Earth. Height growth is made possible by a specialized vascular system that conducts water from the roots to the leaves with high efficiency, while simultaneously providing stability. The so-called xylem, also known as wood, is a network of hollow cells with extremely strong cell walls that reinforce the cells against the mechanical conflicts arising from growing tall. These walls wrap around the cells in filigree band and spiral patterns. So far, it is only partly known, how these patterns are created.
Scientists have identified a potential new treatment approach for Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), a progressive genetic disorder that causes rapid and premature aging in children.
The findings in mice, published today in eLife, show that blocking a protein called ICMT can improve the condition of affected cells without reducing cell division and growth. ICMT is involved in modifying the structure of progerin, the mutant protein that causes HGPS.
Researchers have given new insights into why people would choose to donate Covid-19 plasma after recovering from the virus, which will be used to support the recruitment of convalescent plasma donors to help treat current Covid-19 patients and support ongoing trials.
The immune system can be a mixed blessing: Usually it is highly effective in protecting the human organism against bacteria, viruses and mycosis and even cancer. But these defense cells can also turn against the body's own tissues and trigger autoimmune diseases, including for example rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, an illness involving chronic dermatitis and inflammation of the joints, the nervous system and internal organs or even become cancer cells themselves and develop into leukemias or lymphomas. But what causes these destructive immune system attacks?
Raising kids can be tough, and sometimes you need all the help you can get. Biologists at the University of Bristol argue that some animals might be able to blackmail reluctant relatives into assisting with the rearing of young. The study is published today [2 February] in The American Naturalist.
In a Darwinian sense, family members are valuable as vehicles for shared genes. Whether helping evolves depends on a simple cost-benefit calculation known as 'Hamilton's rule': help if it will lead to a net increase in copies of your genes in the population.
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.