Culture
PHILADELPHIA -- An investigational drug that targets an instigator of the TDP-43 protein, a well-known hallmark of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), may reduce the protein's buildup and neurological decline associated with these disorders, suggests a pre-clinical study from researchers at Penn Medicine and Mayo Clinic. Results were published in Science Translational Medicine.
ORLANDO, Sept. 8, 2020 - Storm surges sometimes can increase coastal sea levels 10 feet or more, jeopardizing communities and businesses along the water, but new research from the University of Central Florida shows there may be a way to predict periods when it's more likely that such events occur.
AMHERST, Mass. - Farmers and fruit growers are reporting that climate change is leading to increased ozone concentrations on the soil surface in their fields and orchards - an exposure that can cause irreversible plant damage, reduce crop yields and threaten the food supply, say materials chemists led by Trisha Andrew at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
HOUSTON - (Sept. 8, 2020) - If you're looking for an unconventional approach to doing business, select a CEO with an uncommon name, according to new research co-authored by an expert at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business.
"Using 19 years of data on 1,172 public firms, we show that firms' distinctive strategies are systematically linked to their CEOs' uncommon names," wrote co-authors Yan Anthea Zhang, the Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Professor of Strategy at the Jones School, and Yungu Kang and David H. Zhu of Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business.
Research conducted by the Computational Neuroscience Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has shown for the first time that a computer model can replicate and explain a unique property displayed by a crucial brain cell. Their findings, published today in eLife, shed light on how groups of neurons can self-organize by synchronizing when they fire fast.
BOSTON - Patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 infections who have high levels of the blood clotting protein factor V are at elevated risk for serious injury from blood clots such as deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found.
A research group led by Prof. XUE Tian from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with Prof. WU Qian form Beijing Normal University and Prof. WANG Xiaoqun from Institute of Biophysics of CAS, provided a comprehensive transcriptomic atlas based on 119520 single cells of retina of human and macaque at different ages.
A new application of the CRISPR/Cas molecular scissors promises major progress in crop cultivation. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers from the team of molecular biologist Holger Puchta have succeeded in modifying the sequence of genes on a chromosome using CRISPR/Cas. For the first time worldwide, they took a known chromosome modification in the thale cress model plant and demonstrated how inversions of the gene sequence can be undone and inheritance can thus be controlled specifically.
It was - once again - an unusually hot year: in 2018, large parts of Europe were beset by an extremely hot and dry summer. In Switzerland, too, the hot weather got people sweating - right on the heels of a string of unusually warm months. It was - at the time - the third hottest summer and the fourth warmest spring since measurements began in 1864.
A solid base of measurements
Laser Engineering at Osaka University have successfully used short, but extremely powerful laser blasts to generate magnetic field reconnection inside a plasma. This work may lead to a more complete theory of X-ray emission from astronomical objects like black holes.
The genes regulating pluripotent stem cells in mammals are surprisingly similar across 48 species, Kyoto University researchers report in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution. The study also shows that differences among these 'gene regulating networks' might explain how certain features of mammalian pluripotent stem cells have evolved.
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Science for Life Laboratory in Sweden and Tor Vergata University of Rome in Italy have mapped the immune response in children affected by a rare but life-threatening inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19. The study, which is published in the scientific journal Cell, reveals that the inflammatory response differs from that in Kawasaki disease and severe acute COVID-19.
From the Rocky Mountains to the Alps, the question of whether a deer population migrates can be answered by how springtime comes to the landscapes they occupy.
That's the key finding of a first-of-its-kind study produced by a cross-continental team of researchers working with lead author Ellen Aikens, a recent doctoral student of the U.S. Geological Survey's Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming. The paper was published today (Sept. 7) in Current Biology, a leading journal in the field.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - While acetaminophen is helping you deal with your headache, it may also be making you more willing to take risks, a new study suggests.
People who took acetaminophen rated activities like "bungee jumping off a tall bridge" and "speaking your mind about an unpopular issue in a meeting at work" as less risky than people who took a placebo, researchers found.
Use of the drug also led people to take more risks in an experiment where they could earn rewards by inflating a virtual balloon on a computer: Sometimes they went too far and the balloon popped.
DALLAS - Sept. 8, 2020 - A program that asks patients to mail in stool samples to screen for colon cancer is an effective way to expand screenings to underserved and underinsured communities and offers an alternative to in-person testing during the pandemic, according to a study conducted by UT Southwestern.