Culture
For the first time, researchers have discovered how antibiotic resistance genes are spreading, at a continental scale, via bacterial plasmids in the hospital superbug, Klebsiella pneumoniae.
Leesburg, VA, September 24, 2020--According to an open-access article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), because coronavirus disease (COVID-19) may present with medium to large arterial and venous abdominal and extremity macrothrombi, radiologists should raise concern for COVID-19 when identifying thromboembolic abdominopelvic findings.
Scientists have for the first time documented all of the different cell types and genes expressed in the healthy human heart, in new research published in the journal Nature.
LA JOLLA--Your lungs and airways need to be stretchy, sort of like balloons. Take a big breath, and they'll open right up.
Damaged lungs can't open properly. Patients with asthma, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and systemic sclerosis suffer from fibrosis and tissue remodeling, where a build-up of tissue and immune cells, and proteins that form a glue-like substance, keep the airways from expanding. As fibrosis gets worse, taking a breath feels like blowing up a balloon filled with concrete.
In the United States, individual state laws barring 18- to 20-year-olds from buying or possessing a handgun make little difference in the rate of homicides involving a gun by people in that age group, a new University of Washington study has found.
"The central issue is that there's a very high degree of informal access to firearms, such as through family members or illicit channels," said Caitlin Moe, the study's lead author and a PhD student in epidemiology in the UW School of Public Health. "And we can't address that kind of availability with age limits."
As Natsumi Hookabe snorkeled around Panama's Bocas del Toro archipelago, during the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Training in Tropical Taxonomy program, she encountered an unusual ribbon worm or nemertean: large and dark colored, with numerous pale spots. It was her first field trip outside of Japan, so she wondered if it was a rare species or just one that she had never seen before.
Natsumi had been interested in worms since childhood, but when nemerteans were introduced during a university course, she was hooked.
The cell membrane, the wall-like boundary between the cell interior and its outside environment, is primarily made up of two kinds of biomolecules: lipids and proteins. Different lipid species closely pack together to form a double layer, or "bilayer," the membrane's fundamental structure, while proteins are embedded within or attached to the bilayer.
At the south pole of Jupiter lurks a striking sight--even for a gas giant planet covered in colorful bands that sports a red spot larger than the earth. Down near the south pole of the planet, mostly hidden from the prying eyes of humans, is a collection of swirling storms arranged in an unusually geometric pattern.
Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modelling of a prodigious University of Queensland undergraduate student.
Fourth-year Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) student Germain Tobar has been investigating the possibility of time travel, under the supervision of UQ physicist Dr Fabio Costa.
"Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system," Mr Tobar said.
Researchers have sequenced the genome of Alexander Fleming's penicillin mould for the first time and compared it to later versions.
Alexander Fleming famously discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928 while working at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, which is now part of Imperial College London. The antibiotic was produced by a mould in the genus Penicillium that accidentally started growing in a Petri dish.
The COVID-19 pandemic has fired up interest in outdoor activities in our parks and forests. Now a new UBC study highlights the need to be mindful of how these activities may affect wildlife living in protected areas.
Why are some tarantulas so vividly coloured? Scientists have puzzled over why these large, hairy spiders, active primarily during the evening and at night-time, would sport such vibrant blue and green colouration - especially as they were long thought to be unable to differentiate between colours, let alone possess true colour vision.
A comprehensive search of genetic variation databases has revealed no significant differences across populations and ethnic groups in seven genes associated with viral entry of SARS-CoV-2.
African Americans and Latinos in the United States and ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. They are more likely to develop severe symptoms and also show significantly higher mortality compared with other regional and ethnic groups.
Philadelphia, September 24, 2020 - According to a new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, published by Elsevier, the percentage of heavy sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumers - those who drink more than 500 calories of SSBs daily - trended downwards in the United States between 2003 and 2016.
Researchers at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), in collaboration with American scientists, have uncovered a new parvovirus strategy for reaching the cell nucleus which is their site of replication.