Culture
In recent decades, researchers have found that most mammals' guts are surprisingly complex environments - home to a variety of microbial ecosystems that can profoundly affect an animal's well-being. Scientists have now learned that the bear appears to be an exception, with its gut playing host to a microbial population that varies little across the intestinal tract.
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, together with their colleagues at the Barcelona Beta Research Centre in Spain, the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the University of Paris, have found new forms of tau protein that become abnormal in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease before cognitive problems develop. The scientists developed new tools to detect these subtle changes and confirmed their results in human samples.
New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides further evidence for tidal disruption in the galaxy NGC 1052-DF4. This result explains a previous finding that this galaxy is missing most of its dark matter. By studying the galaxy's light and globular cluster distribution, astronomers have concluded that the gravity forces of the neighbouring galaxy NGC 1035 stripped the dark matter from NGC 1052-DF4 and are now tearing the galaxy apart.
Analysis of social media messages between care home staff on the coronavirus front line reveal their growing concerns over how to manage in the face of the virus.
Thousands of Whatsapp messages between 250 care home workers during the first coronavirus wave show workers were often asking questions which went unanswered due to a lack of proper guidance.
Staff asked where to purchase PPE; whether guidelines existed for isolating residents returning from hospital and how they could access testing.
Scientists at Keele University and King's College London have found that 64% of people would be likely to have a COVID-19 vaccination when one became available.
The online survey of 1,500 UK adults also reported that 27% were unsure if they would have the vaccination, and just 9% - fewer than 1 in 10 - reported that they were unlikely to be vaccinated.
The online cross-sectional survey was conducted by a research team from Keele University and King's College London in collaboration with Public Health England, to understand the expected uptake of a future COVID-19 vaccine.
The German media have disparaged dissenting voices on climate change, according to research published on 8 October in the high impact factor journal Media Culture & Society. Its authors are Lena von Zabern, UPF alumni who won the award for best master's degree final project in UPF Planetary Wellbeing, and Christopher D. Tulloch, who supervised her work and is a researcher with the Department of Communication.
Many animal groups decide where to go by a process similar to voting, allowing not only alphas to decide where the group goes next but giving equal say to all group members. But, for many species that live in stable groups - such as in primates and birds - the dominant, or alpha, group members often monopolise resources, such as the richest food patches and access to mates.
Research at Cranfield University is paving the way for a new solution to kill aerosolised COVID-19 in enclosed environments such as hospitals and long-term care facilities.
Computational modelling has shown that low dose far-ultraviolet C (UVC) lighting can be used to disinfect in-room air, increasing disinfection rates by 50-85% compared to a room's ventilation alone.
The Fraser River estuary in British Columbia is home to 102 species at risk of extinction. A new study says it's not too late to save these species if action is taken now.
"There is currently no overarching plan to save them. If we don't act quickly, many species, including species of salmon and southern resident killer whales, are likely to be functionally extinct in the next 25 years," says senior author Tara Martin, a professor of conservation science at UBC, in a paper published today in Conservation Science and Practice.
Having conducted a large-scale study, a team of scientists improved the classification of human diurnal activity and suggested using 6 chronotypes instead of just 'early birds' and 'night owls'. Two thousand participants, including the employees of the Institute of Medicine of RUDN University, were tested in the course of the research. The results of the work were published in the Personality and Individual Differences journal.
An international study led from the University of Turku, Finland, discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from a comet. The finding indicates that all the most important elements necessary for life may have been delivered to the Earth by comets.
Researchers have discovered phosphorus and fluorine in solid dust particles collected from the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It takes the comet 6.5 years to orbit the Sun.
In new research presented at Euroanaesthesia (the annual meeting of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care [ESAIC]), doctors report a highly unusual case of a right-handed patient performing unconscious 'mirror-writing' with her left hand while in the midst of having epileptic seizures in the emergency room. The study is by Dr Laura Freitas and Dr Sofia R. de Valdoleiros, Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Porto, Portugal, and colleagues.
People borrowing money for the first time should only be given small amounts until they have proved their competence, a new study says.
The paper argues that new borrowers - especially young people and those of an "impulsive" disposition - need protection to prevent them falling into long-term debt.
It says lenders should have a duty of care, requiring them to consider age, experience and personality traits, which can be detected by psychometric tests.
Decreases in hospital attendances and admissions amid fears of COVID-19 may result in avoidable harm for under 16s say researchers, who warn against the "unintended consequences of pandemic control measures".
Research led by Dr Rachel Isba from Lancaster University, Dr Rachel Jenner from Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, and Dr Marc Auerbach from Yale University analysed attendances and admissions to Paediatric Emergency Departments (PED) at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in the UK and Yale New Haven Children's Hospital in the US.
Jena, Germany (27.11.2020) Antibiotics work in different ways. Some, including penicillin, attack the cell wall of the bacteria by inhibiting their synthesis. But the bacteria are not helpless against this attack. "We have been able to identify a small ribonucleic acid that has a decisive influence on the antibiotic-resistance of the cholera-triggering bacterium Vibrio cholerae," says Kai Papenfort, Professor of General Microbiology at the University of Jena, Germany.