Culture
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.
SEATTLE (10 December 2020) - As the world watches how UK residents respond to COVID-19 vaccinations, three leading experts on the virus are urging Americans and the US government to be vigilant against anti-vaccination advocates and their "rumors, misinformation, and conspiracy theories in a fractured media universe."
HOUSTON - (Dec. 10, 2020) - Rice University researchers have discovered a more efficient way for social media companies to keep misinformation from spreading online using probabilistic filters trained with artificial intelligence.
The immunomodulatory activity of a drug would improve the efficacy of immunotherapy in breast cancer
Despite the success of immunotherapy in the treatment of cancers such as lung or melanoma, it is still not effective in breast cancers for being 'cold', with low infiltration of immune cells. Tumours use strategies to evade immune surveillance by reducing the infiltration of cells that could attack them or by attracting immunosuppressive cells. These strategies can contribute to the poor prognosis observed in breast cancer of young women and make them unresponsive to immunotherapy.
Ann Arbor, December 10, 2020 - Quantifying the mitigating impact of social distancing on the spread of COVID-19 is critical for evaluating the efficacy of social restrictions and informing future health policy decisions. While most studies have used government stay-at-home dates in their models, new research finds that individuals actually changed their behavior in reaction to the presence of COVID-19 in their state a median 12 days before a government lockdown.
A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: a hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed "Planet Nine."
The environment is polluted by microplastics worldwide. The tiny particles enter food chains, and thereby the digestive systems of animals and humans; moreover, they can be inhaled. Instead of being excreted, small microplastics can be incorporated into the body tissue. A research team at the University of Bayreuth has now discovered that microplastic particles find their way into living cells more easily if they were exposed to natural aquatic environments, i.e. fresh water and seawater.
A new and less invasive treatment developed by Cancer Research UK researchers is safer than standard major surgery for early-stage rectal cancer, giving patients a better quality of life with fewer life-altering side effects, results from a pilot study show.
Results from the TREC trial show that a combination of local keyhole surgery and radiotherapy, rather than major surgery that removes the whole rectum, prevents debilitating side effects, such as diarrhoea, or the need for a permanent colostomy bag.
Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have developed a method of generating high-quality chest X-ray images that can be used to diagnose COVID-19 more accurately than current methods. The research team, led by Sumeet Menon, a Ph.D. student in computer science at UMBC, will publish its findings in the proceedings of the IEEE Big Data 2020 Conference to be held virtually in December.