Culture
Researchers from the Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBIS) have presented a study carried out in the Clinical Biochemistry Service of the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital which identifies the values for six biochemical biomarkers that indicate a patient may be infected with SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19). The key novelty of this study, led by Dr. Juan Miguel Guerrero, head of service and IR of the IBiS Molecular NeuroImmunoendocrinology group, lies in the fact that it was carried out using a blood test and can provide a determination in about 60 minutes.
Neutrinos are chargeless particles with about a mass about a millionth that of an electron that are created by the nuclear processes that occur in the Sun and other stars. These particles are often colourfully described as the 'ghosts' of the particle zoo because they interact so weakly with matter.
New Orleans, LA - A study by researchers at LSU Health New Orleans School of Public Health, believed to be the first study to investigate the role of neighborhood deprivation on COVID-19 in Louisiana, found that the more a neighborhood is deprived, the higher the risk for cases of COVID-19. They report that people living in the most deprived neighborhoods had an almost 40% higher risk of COVID-19 compared to those residing in the least deprived neighborhoods.
The world's largest solar observatory, the U.S. National Science Foundation's Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, just released its first image of a sunspot. Although the telescope is still in the final phases of completion, the image is an indication of how the telescope's advanced optics and four-meter primary mirror will give scientists the best view of the Sun from Earth throughout the next solar cycle.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers have discovered individuals with type 1 and type 2 diabetes infected with COVID-19 are three times more likely to have a severe illness or require hospitalization compared with people without diabetes.
Because of this amplified impact, they are urging policymakers to prioritize these individuals for COVID-19 vaccination. Their findings were published in Diabetes Care, the journal of the American Diabetes Association.
Biologists from RUDN University working together with their colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Flax studied the genes that determine the fatty acid composition in flaxseed oil and identified polymorphisms in six of them. The team also found out what gene variations could extend the shelf life of flaxseed oil. This data can be used to improve the genetic selection of new flax breeds. The results were published in the BMC Plant Biology journal.
In the last five decades, we've learned a lot about the secret lives of proteins -- how they work, what they interact with, the machinery that makes them function -- and the pace of discovery is accelerating.
The first three-dimensional protein structure began emerging in the 1970s. Today, the Protein Data Bank, a worldwide repository of information about the 3D structures of large biological molecules, has information about hundreds of thousands of proteins. Just this week, the company DeepMind shocked the protein structure world with its accurate, AI-driven predictions.
BOSTON - New research from Boston Medical Center finds that the COVID-19 emergency systemic changes made to decrease in-person visits during the pandemic have led to a decrease in hospital-wide Hepatitis C (HCV) testing by 50 percent, and a reduction in new HCV diagnoses by more than 60 percent.
First came their pioneering research a few years ago linking burnout and depression. Now City College of New York psychologist Irvin Sam Schonfeld and his University of Neuchâtel collaborator Renzo Bianchi present the Occupational Depression Inventory [ODI], a measure designed to quantify the severity of work-attributed depressive symptoms and establish provisional diagnoses of job-ascribed depression.
LA JOLLA--Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have found that people with sepsis have never-before-seen particles in their blood. The scientists are the first to show that these particles, called elongated neutrophil-derived structures (ENDS), break off of immune cells and change their shape as they course through the body.
"We actually found a new particle in the human body that had never been described before," explains LJI Instructor Alex Marki, M.D., who served as first author of the study. "That's not something that happens every day."
Boston, Mass. - Since the novel coronavirus emerged at the end of last year, scientists around the world -- including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) immunologist Dan Barouch, MD, PhD -- have been developing vaccines to protect against COVID-19 and to put an end to the global pandemic. As of November 2020, three pharmaceutical companies released early data showing high rates of protection in Phase 3 human trials for their vaccines, but questions remain about how the body develops and maintains immunity after vaccination or infection.
HOUSTON - (Dec. 4, 2020) - In his first year of graduate school, Rice University biochemist Zachary Wright discovered something hidden inside a common piece of cellular machinery that's essential for all higher order life from yeast to humans.
What Wright saw in 2015 -- subcompartments inside organelles called peroxisomes -- is described in a study published today in Nature Communications.
Organic-inorganic hybrid lead iodide perovskites are universally recognized as very promising photovoltaic (PV) materials. While outstanding PV performance is continuously reported, manipulating these hybrid perovskites for extraordinary optoelectronic properties with a greater intrinsic structural stability becomes a growing attention. The soft nature of organic-inorganic halide perovskites renders their lattice particularly tunable to external stimuli such as pressure, undoubtedly offering an effective way to modify their structure for extraordinary optoelectronic properties.
AMHERST, MASS. - If you find yourself in a car with someone outside your household during the COVID-19 pandemic, your instinct may be to roll down your window, whether you're the driver or a back-seat passenger. But a University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist has shown in a new study that opening the car window closest to you isn't always the best option to protect yourself from coronavirus or any airborne infection.
An analysis of lung tissues from patients with different types of pulmonary fibrosis - including cases triggered by COVID-19 - has revealed a promising molecular target to ameliorate the chronic and irreversible disease. Experiments in mouse models of lung fibrosis showed that administering blockers of an epigenetic regulator called MBD2 via intratracheal inhalation protected the mice against fibrotic lung injury, highlighting a potential viable therapy.