Culture
VIRTUAL MEETING (CST), November 22, 2020 -- The rapid spread of COVID-19 overwhelmed hospitals that were unable to contend with the increasing number of patients, many requiring ventilators and other critical care. Such conditions can put medical workers at risk. Now researchers are studying methods to increase hospital safety and efficacy during the pandemic.
A shortage of life-saving ventilators, which typically cost around $30,000 each, hit hospitals particularly hard.
VIRTUAL MEETING (CST), November 22, 2020 -- Mechanical engineer Roberto Zenit spent the summer of 2019 trying to solve a problem that now plagues science departments around the world: How can hands-on fluid dynamics experiments, usually carried out in well-stocked lab rooms, be moved off campus? Since the pandemic hit, leading researchers like Zenit have found creative ways for students to explore flow at home.
VIRTUAL MEETING (CST), November 22, 2020 --They burst out of toilet bubbles, swim across drinking water, spread through coughs. Tiny infectious microbes--from the virus that causes COVID-19 to waterborne bacteria--kill millions of people around the world each year. Now engineers are studying how zinc oxide surfaces and natural hydrodynamic churning have the power to kill pathogens first.
Engineering a spaceship is as difficult as it sounds. Modeling plays a large role in the time and effort it takes to create spaceships and other complex engineering systems. It requires extensive physics calculations, sifting through a multitude of different models and tribal knowledge to determine singular parts of a system's design.
Faster, smaller, smarter and more energy-efficient chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing could soon be on the way after engineers at The University of Texas at Austin created the smallest memory device yet. And in the process, they figured out the physics dynamic that unlocks dense memory storage capabilities for these tiny devices.
A gene known for helping facilitate communication between neurons in the nervous system has been discovered to be connected with Alzheimer's dementia and cognitive decline, according to a national research team led by The Jackson Laboratory and University of Maine.
ITHACA, N.Y. - A multi-institution team co-led by a Cornell University researcher has identified the genetic mechanisms that enable the production of a deadly toxin called Victorin - the causal agent for Victoria blight of oats, a disease that wiped out oat crops in the U.S. in the 1940s.
Victoria blight is caused by the fungus Cochliobolus victoriae, which produces the Victorin toxin, but until now no one has uncovered the genes and mechanisms involved.
Humans have a longstanding relationship with the sea that spans nearly 200,000 years. Researchers have long hypothesized that places like coastlines helped people mediate global shifts between glacial and interglacial conditions and the impact that these changes had on local environments and resources needed for their survival. Coastlines were so important to early humans that they may have even provided key routes for the dispersal of people out of Africa and across the world.
VIRTUAL MEETING (CST), November 22, 2020 -- Swelling is one of the most dangerous and immediate consequences of a brain injury or stroke. Doctors have long known about the dangers of swelling, which has traditionally been blamed on ruptured blood vessels. New research suggests the brain's other plumbing system, the one that circulates cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), may play an underappreciated role in both good health and response to injury.
In a recent article in The Quarterly Review of Biology, "Beyond Equilibria: The Neglected Role of History in Ecology and Evolution," author Hamish G. Spencer argues for a revitalized view of history. This historical view is a response to current research in the field of ecology and evolution, which is dominated by an ahistorical view of dynamic systems. In this ahistorical view, mathematical models are extensively used to describe and analyze systems at an equilibrium.
Bulbs of the plant known as Lu Bei (Fritallaria delavayi) have been used in Chinese medicine for more than two thousand years. Now, researchers reporting November 20 in the journal Current Biology have found that, in places where the herb is harvested more, the plant has evolved to blend in better with the background, making them harder for people to find. As a result, the plant varies in color from brown or grey to green, depending on whether it lives in a place that is frequented by human collectors or not.
A new study adds another layer to the remarkable evolutionary transition of life from water to land on Earth.
The international study of the prehistoric 'relic' tetrapods, including salamander and lobe-finned lungfish and coelacanths, adds another perspective to the evolution of other four-legged land animals, including related animals such as frogs and reptiles which live in both terrestrial and aqueous environments.
Machine learning could teach us how to make the manufacturing of materials cleaner and more sustainable by taking a holistic view to identify the greenest production method, suggest KAUST researchers.
A new technique to make cheaper more efficient biological enzyme hybrids could have valuable applications in future water recycling, targeted drug manufacturing and other industries, Flinders University green chemistry researchers say in a new publication.
The model enzyme system, which immobilises a catalyst enzyme hybrid for continuous flow use in the high-speed vortex fluidic device, showed a 16-fold increase in its efficiency, the researchers say in American Chemical Society journal, ASC Applied Materials & Interfaces.
OAK BROOK, Ill. - In response to the critical shortage of nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Radiology at University of South Florida (USF) Health in Tampa set out to design, validate and create NP swabs using a point-of-care 3D printer. Results of the first clinical trial of 3D-printed NP swabs for COVID-19 testing are being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).