Culture
All plant cells can be made to react by touch or injury. The carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) has highly sensitive organs for this purpose: sensory hairs that register even the weakest mechanical stimuli, amplify them and convert them into electrical signals that then spread quickly through the plant tissue.
The majority of pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival to the delivery room were asymptomatic, according to a paper by Mount Sinai researchers published in PLOS One on Thursday, December 10. The pregnant patients who tested positive for the coronavirus were also more likely than those who tested negative to identify as Hispanic and report their primary language as Spanish.
The two used methods for detecting amyloid pathology in Alzheimer's disease do not give unambiguous results, with the risk of incorrect or delayed care interventions. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found genetic explanations for the differences. The study is published in Molecular Psychiatry and may be important for more individual diagnostics and the development of future drugs.
UTICA, NY -- Brown fat, also known as brown adipose tissue, is a special type of fat that "turns on" (becomes activated) when you get cold, to help maintain body temperature. Importantly, brown fat is a biological fuel that can increase the metabolic rate, decrease fat storage, and thereby, lower one's propensity for developing obesity. Interestingly, it was previously thought that individuals were born with only a finite number of brown fat cells.
Researchers from the University of Bristol and quantum start-up, Phasecraft, have advanced quantum computing research, bringing practical hybrid quantum-classical computing one step closer.
The team, led by Bristol researcher and Phasecraft co-founder, Dr. Ashley Montanaro, has discovered algorithms and analysis which significantly lessen the quantum hardware capability needed to solve problems which go beyond the realm of classical computing, even supercomputers.
In assessing an employee's performance, employers often listen to his immediate supervisor or colleagues, and these opinions can be highly subjective. Sergey Stepanov, an economist from HSE University, has shown that biased evaluations can actually benefit employers. An article substantiating this finding was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
Although robotics has reshaped and even redefined many industrial sectors, there still exists a gap between machines and humans in fields such as health and elderly care. For robots to safely manipulate or interact with fragile objects and living organisms, new strategies to enhance their perception while making their parts softer are needed. In fact, building a safe and dexterous robotic gripper with human-like capabilities is currently one of the most important goals in robotics.
Photosynthesis in nature uses the CaMn4O5 cluster as the oxygen-evolving center to catalyze the water oxidation efficiently in photosystem II (PS II). Synergistic effect among the multi-metal centers of PSII plays a key role for the high catalytic activity. Mimicking the natural photosynthesis, light-driven overall water splitting to produce H2 and O2 including both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), is a promising pathway for artificial conversion and storage of solar energy.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in a new era, with everyday items evolving into what we now refer to as cyber-physical systems. These systems are physical mechanisms controlled or monitored by computer algorithms and deeply intertwined through the internet. Such systems have pierced their way into industry and are being deployed and used above all to manage and control industrial processes, thus giving rise to the so-called Industry 4.0.
Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) together with leading international experts suggest reconsidering the existing treatment protocol for severe spasticity, one of the main complications after spinal cord injury with partial spinal cord disruption. Spasticity aggravates a patient's state and dramatically reduces the prospects of rehabilitation. The new treatment protocol has been run at FEFU Medical Center. A related article was published in the Progress in Brain Research journal.
Regulators have expressed concerns that audit firms' emphasis on non-audit services (NAS) such as consulting could distract from an audit, and quality does suffer in certain cases, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.
"The distraction effect of non-audit services on audit quality" is forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Economics from Erik Beardsley and Andrew Imdieke, assistant professors of accountancy at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, along with Thomas Omer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Humans, followed by ferrets and to a lesser extent cats, civets and dogs are the most susceptible animals to SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to an analysis of ten different species carried out by researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), based in Barcelona.
The findings, published in PLOS Computational Biology, found that ducks, rats, mice, pigs and chickens had lower or no susceptibility to infection compared to humans.
A population-based study revealed reasons behind elevated suicide risk, attempted suicides, and other self-harm, which require special health care, among adolescents and young adults with autism spectrum disorders. Comorbid disorders, especially non-affective psychoses and affective and anxiety disorders, explained the risk.
New York, NY--December 10, 2020--Cost information, when paired with information about clinical treatment options, greatly enhances the value of shared decision making, reported a FAIR Health brief released today.
Owners of a dog with diabetes are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than owners of a dog without diabetes. No shared risk of diabetes could be detected for cat owners and their cats. These novel findings, from a register-based study conducted at Uppsala University in collaboration with three other universities, have now been published in The BMJ.