Culture
Theories on how the Milky Way formed are set to be rewritten following discoveries about the behaviour of some of its oldest stars.
An investigation into the orbits of the Galaxy's metal-poor stars - assumed to be among the most ancient in existence - has found that some of them travel in previously unpredicted patterns.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- In a retrospective case study, Mayo Clinic researchers have found that antibiotics administered to children younger than 2 are associated with several ongoing illnesses or conditions, ranging from allergies to obesity. The findings appear in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19, which could be useful for developing vaccines and treatment strategies, were identified using a nonhuman primate model developed at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB).
Much like investors on the stock market, cell populations prepare for changes in the environment by spreading the risk. The tool box they use contains a repertoire of sensory receptors on the surface of individual cells. These receptors can be tweaked to make individual members of the population responsive to different environmental signals. It was thought that cells could only modify this diversity relatively slowly, by producing new receptor proteins or degrading them.
Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute and Utrecht University developed an advanced technique that makes it possible to monitor a virus infection live. The researchers from the groups of Marvin Tanenbaum and Frank van Kuppeveld expect that the technique can be used to study a wide variety of viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 - the virus responsible for the current pandemic. The technique named VIRIM ('virus infection real-time imaging') is therefore very valuable for gaining insights in virus infection in the human body.
* LDL Cholesterol Lowering Drugs Benefit Older and Younger Patients Equally: Older individuals face an increased incidence of cardiovascular events compared to younger individuals. Paradoxically, however, proven lipid-lowering therapies remain underused in older patients because these individuals have typically comprised small subsets of clinical trials and thus there has been a less persuasive evidence base.
An international study led by scientists at the University of Sussex has provided strong evidence for an effective new target for breast cancer treatment. The five-year study, called "The structure-function relationship of oncogenic LMTK3" to be published in Science Advances, involved researchers from seven institutions across three countries including the UK's Diamond Light Source. It suggests that LMTK3 inhibitors could be effectively used for the treatment of breast cancer, and potentially other types of cancer.
What The Study Did: This Viewpoint discusses the need for new and better testing for COVID-19 to help prevent community transmission, and it explains the limitations of such testing, including performance in the asymptomatic phase and access in resource-limited communities.
Authors: Yukari C. Manabe, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
What The Study Did: The rare incidence of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infection is reviewed in this Viewpoint, which also discusses ways it can be minimized, including use of surgical masks, proper ventilation, physical distancing, eye protection, regular testing and the availability of sick leave for health care workers.
Authors: Aaron Richterman, M.D., of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.
SINGAPORE, 3 Nov 2020 - Long RNA molecules carrying DNA codes that don't get translated into proteins have long been a mystery of the human genome. Now, scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have found a way to systematically investigate their functions and discovered some could play a role in pancreatic cancer. Their findings, published in the journal Genome Medicine, highlight the importance of investigating long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in living organisms.
How hot is the Universe today? How hot was it before? A new study by an international team of researchers, including members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), suggests that the mean temperature of gas in large structures of the Universe has increased about 3 times in the last 8 billion years, to reach about two million Kelvin today.
Researchers from the University of Helsinki, Finland, examined 48 Staffordshire Bull Terriers, of which eight dogs - four healthy and four atopic - were selected for RNA sequencing where their skin gene expression was compared between both atopic and healthy dogs as well as between dogs that ate dry food or raw food.
The diet appears to make a great difference in skin gene expression.
Algorithms have shown that the compositional structure of Western landscape paintings changed "suspiciously" smoothly between 1500 and 2000 AD, potentially indicating a selection bias by art curators or in art historical literature, physicists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
An international team led by the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has studied which types of forest, in terms of biodiversity, are the most effective in storing carbon. Inventory data from natural forests on five continents show that species diversity is optimal for equatorial and tropical rainforests, and that, conversely, in forests located in cold or dry regions, it is the abundance of trees and not their diversity that favours the recapture of CO2.
Kyoto, Japan -- Scanning lasers -- from barcode scanners at the supermarket to cameras on newer smartphones -- are an indispensable part of our daily lives, relying on lasers and detectors for pinpoint precision.
Distance and object recognition using LiDAR -- a portmanteau of light and radar -- is becoming increasingly common: reflected laser beams record the surrounding environment, providing crucial data for autonomous cars, agricultural machines, and factory robots.