Culture
New Orleans, LA - A review of heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products from the laboratory of Dr. Jason Gardner, Professor of Physiology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, reports an association with elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, cell death, and circulatory dysfunction shown by early studies. Additionally, chemicals found in the vapor produced by HNB devices have previously been shown to impair lung function, put users at risk of heart attack and stroke, cause cancers, increase circulating low-density lipoprotein ("bad cholesterol") and more.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Knowing you have developed antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus after recovering from COVID-19 doesn't tell you everything about your immunity. The levels and even types of antibodies can differ among patients, and those differences can influence whether a person is protected against being reinfected.
Situated at the threshold of the South Asian monsoon, the Thar Desert is an important region for understanding how past environmental change impacted patterns of human migration and adaptation to new habitats (Figure 1). Recent research highlighting the role of the Thar Desert in human prehistory has indicated that humans spread eastwards into the region starting from 114 thousand years ago during a phase of enhanced monsoonal rainfall, when the desert was transformed into lush grasslands.
October 19, 2020
JUPITER, FL--Human cells are encased by a membrane coated with diverse sugar molecules known as glycans. These glycans play many roles in health and disease, making them important to understand. Due to their unique properties, however, scientists have had limited tools to study them and their interactions in the body.
HERSHEY, Pa. -- Certain oral antiseptics and mouthwashes may have the ability to inactivate human coronaviruses, according to a Penn State College of Medicine research study. The results indicate that some of these products might be useful for reducing the viral load, or amount of virus, in the mouth after infection and may help to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Transfers from the nursing home to the emergency department (ED) or the hospital can have negative longer-term impact on the health of older adults. A new study from Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine looked at which residents were most likely to be admitted to the hospital after a trip to the ED with the hope of identifying areas to improve care and reduce unnecessary transfers.
Life on Earth has a long, but also an extremely turbulent history. On more than one occasion, the majority of all species became extinct and an already highly developed biodiversity shrank to a minimum again, changing the course of evolution each time. The most extensive mass extinction took place about 252 million years ago. It marked the end of the Permian Epoch and the beginning of the Triassic Epoch. About three quarters of all land life and about 95 percent of life in the ocean disappeared within a few thousands of years only.
The social and economic impacts of COVID-19 have battered small- and medium-sized enterprises, putting millions of jobs in the U.S. at risk. And a year rife with natural disasters has not done many struggling businesses any favors.
More than a third of people (34%) in Turkey and one sixth of people (17%) in the UK are 'hesitant' about a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a study by UCL and Dokuz Eylul University in Turkey.
A new study, led by the doctors who regularly treat gunshot victims, examined the way the media covers shootings and found that news reports place a disproportionate emphasis on fatal and multiple shootings, while also focusing on uncommon victims, such as women. The researchers fear that the gap between what is covered - and what goes uncovered - in the news could be painting an unrealistic picture of gun violence, which might affect the way the public perceives it. The study was published today in the journal Preventive Medicine.
Abu Dhabi, UAE - October 17, 2020: Large swaths of single-celled eukaryotes, non-bacterial single-cell organisms like microalgae, fungi or mold, can control microbiomes (a collection of tiny microbes, mostly bacteria) by secreting unusual small molecules around their cells, maintaining host survival and ecological success, according to a new study by NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Assistant Professor of Biology Shady Amin.
The Polish-Israeli team from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw and the Weizmann Institute of Science has made another significant achievement in fluorescent microscopy. In the pages of the Optica journal the team presented a new method of microscopy which, in theory, has no resolution limit. In practice, the team managed to demonstrate a fourfold improvement over the diffraction limit.
Twenty years after the release of the human genome, the genetic "blueprint" of human life, an international research team, including the University of British Columbia's Chris Overall, has now mapped the first draft sequence of the human proteome.
Their work was published Oct. 16 in Nature Communications and announced today by the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO). Overall is the only Canadian scientist involved in the Nature Communications paper.
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields lack diversity. It is an issue that a group of University of Minnesota-led biology education researchers is aiming to address through a targeted effort to bring diverse perspectives to the foreground.
Their report published in CBE--Life Sciences Education lays out gaps in the biology education field and proposes leveraging an existing research coordination network called Equity and Diversity in Undergraduate STEM (EDU-STEM) to tackle them.
A specific region of messenger RNAs, the 3' untranslated region (3'UTR), plays an important role for cells to function properly. During embryonic development, 3'UTRs in hundreds of RNAs lengthen exclusively in neurons, which is crucial for the cells of the brain to function properly. The lab of Valérie Hilgers at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg was now able to show that in Drosophila, an elegant and robust mechanism secures this process of 3'UTR extension.