Culture
Over the past few months, a number of drugs have been under investigation to treat COVID-19 without well-established safety or data to support these claims. However, some of these unproven therapies may have underlying genetic reasons for not being effective and resulting in fatal adverse effects as found with hydroxychloroquine.
August 27, 2020 - COVID-19 has upended essentially every sector of the economy, and none more so than healthcare. Healthcare leaders from across the United States share their experiences with disruption and innovation in responding to the COVID-19 crisis in the Fall 2020 issue of Frontiers of Health Servi
Changes to water masses which are stored on the continents can be detected with the help of satellites. The data sets on the Earth's gravitational field which are required for this, stem from the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite missions. As these data sets only include the typical large-scale mass anomalies, no conclusions about small scale structures, such as the actual distribution of water masses in rivers and river branches, are possible.
In a year defined by obstacles, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student rocket team persevered. Working together across five time zones, they successfully designed a hybrid rocket engine that uses paraffin and a novel nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture called Nytrox. The team has its sights set on launching a rocket with the new engine at the 2021 Intercollegiate Rocketry and Engineering Competition.
While high greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are often associated with rapid land-use change in Indonesia, impacts on local water cycles have been largely overlooked. Researchers from the University of Göttingen, IPB University in Bogor and BMKG in Jakarta have now published a new study on this issue. They show that the expansion of monocultures, such as oil palm and rubber plantations, leads to more frequent and more severe flooding.
In a landmark study, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the immense envelope of gas, called a halo, surrounding the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. Scientists were surprised to find that this tenuous, nearly invisible halo of diffuse plasma extends 1.3 million light-years from the galaxy--about halfway to our Milky Way--and as far as 2 million light-years in some directions. This means that Andromeda's halo is already bumping into the halo of our own galaxy.
MHC class II transactivator CIITA induces cell resistance to Ebola Virus and SARS-like coronaviruses
August 27, 2020 (Seattle, Wash.)--Discoveries from the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) have identified a new cellular protection pathway that targets a common vulnerability in several different pandemic viruses, and collaborators at Case Western Reserve University, Boston University School of Medicine and MRIGlobal have shown that this pathway can protect cells from infection by Ebola virus and coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2.
The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the news cycle for the better part of 2020. As guidelines are continually updated to reflect changes in our understanding of how the virus spreads, it is critical people receive accurate, credible information that encourages prevention. Understanding the factors that influence these messages' effectiveness is crucial.
The African baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) is called the tree of life. Baobab trees can live for more than a thousand years and provide food, livestock fodder, medicinal compounds, and raw materials. Baobab trees are incredibly significant. However, there are growing conservation concerns and until now, a lack of genetic information.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - A new COVID-19 mouse model developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill captures many of the features of human disease and has helped advance a COVID-19 vaccine candidate to clinical trial.
Researchers, among them virologists and microbiologists at UNC-Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health, describe the mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 model in a paper fast-tracked and published Aug. 27 in Nature.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Aug. 27, 2020 - Why are men at greater risk than women for more severe symptoms and worse outcomes from COVID-19 regardless of age?
In an effort to understand why this occurs, scientists at Wake Forest School of Medicine conducted a review of published preclinical data on sex-specific hormone activity, especially estrogen. The review is published in the September online issue of the journal Current Hypertension Reports.
MISSOULA - With climate change heating the globe, drought more frequently impacts the reproduction and survival of many animal species.
New research from the University of Montana suggests tropical songbirds in both the Old and New Worlds reduce reproduction during severe droughts, and this - somewhat surprisingly - may actually increase their survival rates.
The work was published Aug. 24 in the journal Nature Climate Change by UM research scientist Thomas Martin and doctoral student James Mouton.
A stretchable, wearable gas sensor for environmental sensing has been developed and tested by researchers at Penn State, Northeastern University and five universities in China.
Maunakea, Hawaii - A cosmic dance between two merging galaxies, each one containing a supermassive black hole that's rapidly feeding on so much material it creates a phenomenon known as a quasar, is a rare find.
Astronomers have discovered several pairs of such merging galaxies, or luminous "dual" quasars, using three Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii - Subaru Telescope, W. M. Keck Observatory, and Gemini Observatory.
An international team of researchers led by the University of Adelaide has developed a new method to better understand the drivers of water theft, a significant worldwide phenomenon, and deterrents to help protect this essential resource.
In a paper published in Nature Sustainability, researchers developed a novel framework and model, which they applied to three case studies: in Australia, the US and Spain.