Culture

Toddlers with high daily touchscreen use are quicker to look at objects when they appear and are less able to resist distraction compared to toddlers with no or low touchscreen use - according to new research from Birkbeck, University of London, King's College London and University of Bath.

The research team say the findings are important for the growing debate around the role of screen time on toddlers' development especially given the increased levels of screen time seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Philadelphia, January 26, 2021 - Addiction, or substance use disorder (SUD), is a complex neurological condition that includes drug-seeking behavior among other cognitive, emotional and behavioral features. Synaptic plasticity, or changes in the way neurons communicate with one another, drives these addictive behaviors. These lasting brain changes are at the crux of why addiction is so hard to treat.

By 2020, massive losses of large populations of corals have been observed throughout Florida and into the greater Caribbean basin. Taking into account the high mortality and the large number of susceptible species affected, this is likely the most lethal case of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) ever recorded in modern history.

New research coming out of UBC's Okanagan campus may take the current 'gold standard' for heart valves to a new level of reliability.

A team of researchers at UBCO's Heart Valve Performance Lab (HVPL) has developed a way to improve overall blood flow through the valves, so the design of mechanical heart valves will more closely match the real thing.

Researchers with the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) and collaborators at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and in Orange County, CA, have published the first direct evidence that higher omega-3 blood levels may reduce risk for death from COVID-19 infection. The report was published in the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids on January 20, 2021.

Abusive bosses may retain their positions by taking superficial steps to repair their social images following outbursts, without acting meaningfully to change their behaviors, according to research led by a University of Wyoming business management expert.

New estimates reveal extent of the health burden of armed conflict--affecting at least 630 million women and children worldwide in 2017, and contributing to more than 10 million deaths among children under 5 years of age over 20 years.

Changing nature of war is a growing threat to humanitarian access and the provision of essential health services for women and children, but responses in countries like Syria, Pakistan, and Colombia may provide context-specific innovative ways forward.

A group of scientists is calling on governments to consider the continued use of strict control measures as the only way to reduce the evolution and spread of new COVID-19 variants.

The experts in evolution, virology, infectious disease and genomics - at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Earlham Institute and University of Minnesota - warn that while governments are negotiating a "precarious balance" between saving the economy and preventing COVID-19 fatalities, stronger action now is the best way to mitigate against more serious outcomes from such virulent strains later.

Public health researchers, led by UNSW Sydney, have estimated the number of cancer cases requiring surgery globally each year, predicting the number will rise from 9.1 million to 13.8 million from 2018 to 2040 - an increase of 52 per cent or 4.7 million cases.

Their research shows the greatest relative increase will occur in 34 low-income countries, where the number of cases requiring surgery is expected to more than double by 2040 (314,355 cases to 650,164, or 107 per cent).

The Nagoya University Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM) research team of Designated Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Hirota, Postdoctoral Fellow Simon Miller, Professor Kenichiro Itami and graduate student Tsuyoshi Oshima (Research Fellowship for Young Scientists, JSPS), in collaboration with the group of Professor Ben Feringa and Postdoctoral Fellow Dušan Kolarski of Groningen University in the Netherlands, have achieved a world first: fully reversible manipulation of the period of the circadian clock using light, by exchanging part of a compound with a light-activated switc

DALLAS, Jan. 25, 2021 — Psychological health can positively or negatively impact a person’s health and risk factors for heart disease and stroke, according to “Psychological Health, Well-Being, and the Mind-Heart-Body Connection,” a new American Heart Association Scientific Statement, published today in the Association’s flagship journal Circulation. The statement evaluates the relationship between psychological health and heart health, summarizing ways to help improve psychological health for people with and at risk for heart disease.

DALLAS, Jan. 25, 2021 — The continued global burden of stroke and how it disproportionately affects women are highlighted in new science published online today in the February issue of Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. Stroke editors selected nine manuscripts focused on stroke disparities in women in this collaboration with Go Red for Women®, the Association’s global movement to end heart disease and stroke in women.

Even before public announcements of the first cases of COVID-19 in Europe were made, at the end of January 2020, signals that something strange was happening were already circulating on social media. A new study of researchers at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, published in Scientific Reports, has identified tracks of increasing concern about pneumonia cases on posts published on Twitter in seven countries, between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Man's best friend might actually belong to a woman.

In a cross-cultural analysis, Washington State University researchers found several factors may have played a role in building the mutually beneficial relationship between humans and dogs, including temperature, hunting and surprisingly - gender.

The cover for issue 2 of Oncotarget features Figure 4, "Combination therapy TA99/ICB reduced the lung tumor burden in the B16 model of metastases," published in "Improved therapeutic efficacy of unmodified anti-tumor antibodies by immune checkpoint blockade and kinase targeted therapy in mouse models of melanoma" by Pérez-Lorenzo, et al.