Culture
A recent study found that a prior induced abortion did not negatively impact a woman's psychological well-being or her thoughts about her competence as a parent when she later became a mother.
In the Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica study, questionnaires were administered to 492 first-time mothers, 37 of whom had previously had an abortion, and their partners when their child was 18 months old.
A new study from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports demonstrates that formation of small blood vessels is impaired in the muscle tissue of postmenopausal women. The study's findings highlight the importance of physical activity for women prior to and during menopause, as a means to prevent the development of disease later in life.
A new nationwide model of care for hip and knee joint replacements appears to reduce disparities in health outcomes for Black patients, according to new research led by Oregon Health & Science University.
During a special COVID-19 session at this year's online Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Prof. Daniel J. Drucker (Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada) will present a new review the latest clinical findings linking diabetes to risk of infection and differential outcomes in people with COVID-19 infection.
U.S. cellphone data analysis finds "hotspots" where COVID-19 social distancing levels are low, as well as revealing how demographics and governmental restrictions interact. Rajesh Narayanan and colleagues at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on September 22.
Fairy circles are one of nature's greatest enigmas and most visually stunning phenomena. An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has now, for the first time, collected detailed data to show that Alan Turing's model explains the striking vegetation patterns of the Australian fairy circles. In addition, the researchers showed that the grasses that make up these patterns act as "eco-engineers" to modify their own hostile and arid environment, thus keeping the ecosystem functioning. The results were published in the Journal of Ecology.
Widespread fungal disease in plants can be controlled with a commercially available chemical that has been primarily used in medicine until now. This discovery was made by scientists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of the State of Paraná in Brazil. In a comprehensive experiment the team has uncovered a new metabolic pathway that can be disrupted with this chemical, thus preventing many known plant fungi from invading the host plant. The team reported on their study in the scientific journal Phytopathology.
University of Warwick astronomers have shown that water vapour can potentially be detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets by peering literally over the tops of their impenetrable clouds.
By applying the technique to models based upon known exoplanets with clouds the team has demonstrated in principle that high resolution spectroscopy can be used to examine the atmospheres of exoplanets that were previously too difficult to characterise due to clouds that are too dense for sufficient light to pass through.
People with 'silent' COVID-19 infection have as much coronavirus in their noses and throats as those with symptoms, reveals research published online in the journal Thorax.
Given how many of these people there are---a fifth of those infected, the study findings show--they may have a key role in driving the spread of COVID-19, warn the researchers, who go on to suggest that this warrants extending testing provision.
Individuals from Black and Hispanic backgrounds in the United States are twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 than their White counterparts, according to new research in PLOS Medicine.
Led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Yale University, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the study found this disparity even after accounting for factors such as underlying health conditions, where they live and where they receive care.
A special session at this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, held online 23-25 September) will see a new review of the evidence presented to address the difficult issue of school closures and reopenings. The session has been co-organised with the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), Stockholm, Sweden.
"Children are more likely to have mild or asymptomatic infection, meaning that infection may go undetected or undiagnosed based on testing strategies," says presenter Jonathan Suk of ECDC. (see full slide presentation link below)
A number of studies have shown how playing video games can lead to structural changes in the brain, including increasing the size of some regions, or to functional changes, such as activating the areas responsible for attention or visual-spatial skills. New research from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has gone further to show how cognitive changes can take place even years after people stop playing.
A review of studies (meta-analysis) presented at this year's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, online 23-25 September) shows that 40% of healthcare workers who test positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic, raising the risk of silent transmission in healthcare settings.
New research presented at this this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, online 23-25 September) suggests that the poor outcomes and higher death rates in cancer patients with COVID-19 could be due to them generally being older and having more underlying conditions, rather than due to the cancer itself. The study is by Dr Maria Rüthrich, Jena University Hospital, Germany, and colleagues.
We process language differently depending on whether we are reading alone or in the company of another person, according to a study carried out by teachers and researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) and published in Cortex.
The results of recording electrical activity in the brain indicated that when we read in company, our language processing is more heuristic, i.e. more global, controlled, integrated and possibly more creative.