Culture
URBANA, Ill. - Walking rows of soybeans in the mid-summer heat is an exhausting but essential chore in breeding new cultivars. Researchers brave the heat daily during crucial parts of the growing season to look for plants showing desirable traits, such as early pod maturity. But without a way to automate detection of these traits, breeders can't test as many plots as they'd like in a given year, elongating the time it takes to bring new cultivars to market.
Just like other organisms, plants must respond dynamically to a variety of cues over their lifetime. Going through different developmental stages, or altering their form in response to a drought or drastic temperature change requires altering which of their genes are expressed into proteins and when those processes occur.
Michael Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and of immunology and internal medicine at the School of Medicine, and his team are experts in footprinting proteins -- that is, using advanced methods for investigating the structure and interactions of proteins within larger molecules.
A new 5-month longitudinal analysis of 254 COVID-19 patients who displayed a wide range of disease severity - from asymptomatic to deadly illness - suggests that IgA and IgM antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus disappear quickly during convalescence. IgG antibodies likely persist for longer, but Katharina Röltgen and colleagues nonetheless documented a slow, inexorable decline in this antibody class as well, even in severely ill patients who mounted very strong initial antibody responses.
An Asian hornet sets its sights on a busy honey bee hive. If all goes according to plan, the hornet's attack will result in a haul of bee larvae, precious nourishment to pilfer and feed to its own hornet young.
A new study of more than 150 COVID-19 patients shows that IgA antibodies dominate the early response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, coming on more quickly and strongly than IgG and IgM antibodies. This is a somewhat unexpected result, as IgM antibodies are usually the immune system's first responders. The finding may also inform the development of vaccines that encourage the IgA response, as well as IgA-based tests to detect infection at early stages, Delphine Sterlin and colleagues say.
HOUSTON - (Dec. 7, 2020) - Indian women past childbearing age are dying at a higher rate than those in other countries because of poverty and limited access to resources such as food and health care, according to a study from Rice University.
"Why Are Older Women Missing in India? The Age Profile of Bargaining Power and Poverty" was published in a recent edition of the Journal of Political Economy. The research examines the impact of India's substantial gender inequality on the health, poverty and mortality of Indian women 45 and older.
A drug currently prescribed to treat a rare enzyme deficiency can help cells clear the herpes simplex 1 and herpes simplex 2 viruses, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances.
The new data shows that the antiviral activity of the drug -- called phenylbutyrate, or PBA -- was even better when used along with acyclovir, a common HSV-1 treatment. When used in combination, less acyclovir is needed to effectively suppress the virus compared to acyclovir alone -- this is important because acyclovir is also known to have toxic side effects in the kidneys.
UCLA researchers are the first to create a version of COVID-19 in mice that shows how the disease damages organs other than the lungs. Using their model, the scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can shut down energy production in cells of the heart, kidneys, spleen and other organs.
(December 7, 2020) - A team of UTSA researchers has discovered that economic implications because of COVID-19 can have a devastating ripple effect on children. Monica Lawson, assistant professor of psychology, Megan Piel, assistant professor of social work and Michaela Simon, psychology graduate student in the UTSA College for Health, Community and Policy, have recently published a research article on the effects of parental job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic and risk of psychological and physical abuse toward children.
Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, US science leaders and others have expressed frustration with the lack of an informed and coherent federal response, a sentiment that echoes objections to the handling of other pressing issues, such as climate change.
Philadelphia, December 8, 2020 - As schools across the United States are grappling with remote and hybrid learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, investigates the initial responses of child nutrition administrative agencies in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia (DC), five US territories, and the US Department of Interior Bureau of Indi
Unplanned purchases are an important profit source for retailers. Because looking at products is always the first step in making a purchase decision, retailers apply various strategies in order to bring shoppers in juxtaposition with the store assortment. "Over the past decades, retailers have developed many sales strategies that focus on the visual attention of customers," says Mathias Streicher from the Institute for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
A disease common during the First World War, trench fever, has been found in some urban populations experiencing homelessness in Canada, and physicians should be aware of this potentially fatal disease, highlights a practice article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
A novel form of an Alzheimer's protein found in the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord indicates what stage of the disease a person is in, and tracks with tangles of tau protein in the brain, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Tau tangles are thought to be toxic to neurons, and their spread through the brain foretells the death of brain tissue and cognitive decline. Tangles appear as the early, asymptomatic stage of Alzheimer's develops into the symptomatic stage.