Culture
Initial findings reported by the Arizona COVID-19 Genomics Union (ACGU) suggest that following Arizona's first reported case of COVID-19 in late January, the state experienced no subsequent cases that went undetected and was COVID-free until at least 11 distinct incursions occurred between mid-February and early April.
The published results appear in the scientific journal mBio.
Small bivalved crustacean ostracods are the most abundant fossil arthropods since the Ordovician and play an important role in paleoenvironmental reconstruction and evolutionary biology.
The vast majority of fossil ostracods are represented by calcified shells, and their soft parts, which can provide invaluable information about ancient ostracod autoecology, are extremely rare.
The ASF pathogen is a virus which infects domestic pigs and wild boar and which leads to a severe, often lethal, disease in these animals. It is transferred via direct contact or with excretions from infected animals, or through ticks. The ASF virus is endemic to infected wild animals in Africa, but there have also repeatedly been outbreaks in southern Europe. The pathogen has been spreading north-westwards since 2007 from Georgia through Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia. Cases of ASF have been registered in wild boar along with outbreaks in domestic pigs in the Baltic states since 2014.
Cell therapy for cardiac regeneration, while promising, has been hampered by issues with long-term survival of the transplanted cells. Now, a technique that combines three different types of cells in a 3D cluster could improve its efficacy in reducing scar tissue and improving cardiac function after a heart attack.
The Wnt signalling pathway has been studied for decades, still it holds surprises in store. Bon-Kyoung Koo, group leader at IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Tadasuke Tsukiyama at the Hokkaido University have now uncovered a new and unexpected role for a key component of the Wnt pathway, Casein Kinase-1, in regulating the pathway at the plasma membrane.
Rupert Seidl (Professor of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management in Mountain Landscapes at TUM) and his colleague Cornelius Senf (lead author of the study) for the first time produced a high-resolution map of all openings in the canopy of European forests. They have analyzed more than 30,000 satellite images and identified more than 36 million areas where large trees have given way to open spaces of young trees. This corresponds to a loss of the canopy in 17 percent of the European forests in 30 years.
A new study has shown HGV drivers drive much more safely when there are cameras in their cabs monitoring their behaviour.
Computer scientists and driving psychologists from the University of Nottingham analysed data collected before and after the installation of unobtrusive cameras in the cabs of Heavy Good Vehicles (HGV) and found there is a significant reduction of risky driving behaviours with camera monitoring, and that this is even more effective when coupled with coaching. Their findings have been published in Accident Analysis and Prevention Journal.
Increasingly, everyday activities and services are shifting online, making the ability to use the internet an essential skill. The current COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of digital connectivity, especially for older and vulnerable adults, for their continued contact with family and friends. Digital Ambassadors, a Singapore Government initiative to ensure all Singaporeans have access to the fundamental digital tools, helps older adults learn how to use technological tools.
In a recently published study, researchers from the Turku Bioscience Centre at the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University in Finland monitored the production of new proteins as they were produced by the cells' protein building machinery, the ribosome.
They found that in the skin cells obtained from the forearm of Parkinson's patients, translation of RNA into protein was reduced compared to cells from healthy donors of a similar age. The reason for this was an enzyme called LRRK2 which was more active in patient cells compared to cells from healthy donors.
A healthy heart beats 50 to 100 times a minute and pumps 8,000 litres of blood around our body every day. A precondition for this function is the elasticity of the cardiac walls, which dilate as blood flows in (diastole) and contract again as the blood flows out (systole). Millions of tiny cavities in the heart muscle fibres, the sarcomeres, are responsible for this movement. These contractile units contain the largest protein found in the human body called titin.
A genetic predisposition to late-onset Alzheimer's disease affects how the brains of young adults cope with certain memory tasks. Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum report on this in the scientific journal "Current Biology". Their findings are based on studies with magnetic resonance imaging in individuals at the age of about 20 years. The scientists suspect that the observed effects could be related to very early disease processes.
There are billions of bacteria around us and in our bodies, most of which are harmless or even helpful. But some bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella can cause infections. The ability to swim can help bacteria to seek out nutrients or to colonize parts of the body and cause infection.
Researchers from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, have now provided fundamental insight into how this bacterial movement is powered, solving a yearlong mystery within the field.
The cancer called biliary tract cancer (BTC) is not the most widespread form of cancer. In western countries, about 1.6 in 100.000 gets the diagnose every year. It is, however, a very aggressive form of cancer.
The majority of patients with BTC are diagnosed with advanced disease and has an average survival of only 1 year from initiation of chemotherapy. With such narrow survival windows, it is crucial to improve our understanding of the disease.
Researchers of the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have discovered a cell-cleaning system that is key to keeping a healthy heart. This mechanism allows the heart's contractile cells (the cardiomyocytes) to release damaged components outside the cell into particles called exophers. These exophers are then taken up by a network of immune cells living inside the heart-the macrophages, which are in charge of removing them before they cause inflammation in the heart.
The combined effects of the body's microbiota working together with COVID-19 in the lungs could explain the severity of the disease in people with obesity and diabetes, according to a new article published today in eLife.
The review offers important mechanistic insights into why people with obesity and diabetes seem to be at increased risk of developing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) after infection with the COVID-19 virus, and more often require hospitalisation and ventilation.