Culture
A kidney transplant is often denied to patients who are obese due to an increased risk of surgical complications, particularly infections. Surgeons at UI Heath -- the clinical and academic health enterprise of the University of Illinois Chicago -- have pioneered the use of robotic-assisted surgery for kidney transplants in obese patients to successfully reduce surgical complications. The procedure has opened up a life-saving door to patients who would otherwise be stuck on dialysis to treat their kidney disease, which carries its own serious risks.
Even with decades of unprecedented development in computational power, the human brain still holds many advantages over modern computing technologies. Our brains are extremely efficient for many cognitive tasks and do not separate memory and computing, unlike standard computer chips.
In the last decade, the new paradigm of neuromorphic computing has emerged, inspired by neural networks of the brain and based on energy-efficient hardware for information processing.
Rank in social hierarchy is a condition not solely claimed by humans. In the animal kingdom, male peacocks exhibit brightly colored plumes to illustrate dominance, and underwater, male fish show pops of bright colors to do the same. Despite the links identified between social status, physiology and behavior, the molecular basis of social status has not been known, until now.
As the weather turns cooler and people move activities indoors, the number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases being reported in the United States is rising. This mirrors COVID-19 activity already seen in Europe and elsewhere across the globe.
Meanwhile, supply-chain problems are likely to cause limited supplies of filtering facepiece respirators, such as N95 masks. Yet strategies to decontaminate personal protective equipment, or PPE, remain unresolved in many hospitals with limited resources, both in the United States and abroad.
Heidelberg, November 10, 2020: Dementia is associated with an impaired self-perception with potentially harmful consequences for health status and clinical risk classification in this patient group with an extraordinary high risk of falling.
New Rochelle, NY, November 9, 2020--Use of thyroid hormone to boost hepatocyte proliferation enhanced the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene correction in the mouse liver. This dietary induction of hepatocyte regeneration may be a viable clinical strategy to enhance gene repair in the liver, according to the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the full-text article free through December 9, 2020.
Despite advances in sequencing technologies and computational methods in the past decade, researchers have uncovered genomes for just a small fraction of Earth's microbial diversity. Because most microbes cannot be cultivated under laboratory conditions, their genomes can't be sequenced using traditional approaches. Identifying and characterizing the planet's microbial diversity is key to understanding the roles of microorganisms in regulating nutrient cycles, as well as gaining insights into potential applications they may have in a wide range of research fields.
Osaka, Japan - Silicon has been the workhorse of electronics for decades because it is a common element, is easy to process, and has useful electronic properties. A limitation of silicon is that high temperatures damage it, which limits the operating speed of silicon-based electronics. Single-crystal diamond is a possible alternative to silicon. Researchers recently fabricated a single-crystal diamond wafer, but common methods of polishing the surface—a requirement for use in electronics—are a combination of slow and damaging.
Some of the world's most valuable ecosystems are facing a "triple threat" to their long-term durability and survival, new research shows.
The study found that mangrove forests, their large biodiversity and the coastal protection they provide are under pressure from three distinct threats - sea-level rise, lack of mud and squeezed habitats.
Understanding what other people want, how they feel, and how they see the world is becoming increasingly important in our complex, globalised society. Social skills enable us to make friends and create a network of people who support us. But not everyone finds it easy to interact with other people. One of the main reasons is that two of the most important social skills - empathy, i.e. being able to empathise with the other person's emotions, and the ability to take a perspective, i.e.
'Diseases of despair', such as substance abuse, alcohol dependency, and suicidal thoughts and behaviours, have soared in the US over the past decade, reveals an analysis of health insurance claims data published in the online journal BMJ Open.
And they now affect all ages, with suicidal thoughts and behaviours among the under 18s rocketing by 287% between 2009 and 2018, and by 210% among 18-34 year olds, the analysis shows.
Severe COVID-19 infection appears rare in newborn babies, suggests a new study.
The UK-wide analysis, led by researchers from Imperial College London and the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, is the first study analysing COVID-19 infections in newborns across the whole UK.
The study, published in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health, traced all babies less than 29 days old with COVID-19 across the UK, who needed to be admitted into hospital.
Loneliness is responsible for 18% of depression among people over 50 in England, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.
The findings, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, suggest that almost one in five depression cases among older adults could be prevented if loneliness were eliminated.
The researchers found that people's subjective experiences of loneliness contributed to depression up to 12 years later, independent of more objective measures of social isolation.
Integrating family caregivers into a patient's health care team can help improve care quality and the quality of life for both patients and their families, yet family caregivers face significant barriers coordinating their efforts with the formal health care team, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
New policies and approaches may be needed to overcome those hurdles, such as rules to identify and record information on family caregivers, and incentives to encourage providers to engage with family caregivers.
Researchers from Rutgers University and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the phenomenon of user-generated content during experiences.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Generating Content Increases Enjoyment by Immersing Consumers and Accelerating Perceived Time" and is authored by Gabriela Tonietto and Alixandra Barasch.