Culture
If you want to enhance a locust to be used as a bomb-sniffing bug, there are a few technical challenges that need solving before sending it into the field.
Is there some way to direct the locust -- to tell it where to go to do its sniffing? And because the locusts can't speak (yet), is there a way to read the brain of these cyborg bugs to know what they're smelling?
For that matter, can locusts even smell explosives?
Results from an international clinical trial found that men with advanced prostate cancer who have mutated BRCA1/BRCA2 genes can be treated successfully with a targeted therapy known as rucaparib, resulting in recent FDA approval.
Synthetic drug ebselen could be repurposed to treat SARS-CoV-2 by targeting main protease at distant
Supercomputers around the world work around the clock on research problems. In principle, even novel materials can be simulated in computers in order to calculate their magnetic and thermal properties as well as their phase transitions. The gold standard for this kind of modelling is known as the quantum Monte Carlo method.
Wave-Particle Dualism
Children with autism born to mothers who had immune conditions during their pregnancy are more likely to have behavioral and emotional problems, a UC Davis Health study has found. The study examined maternal immune history as a predictor of symptoms in children with autism.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed artificial intelligence software for powder bed 3D printers that assesses the quality of parts in real time, without the need for expensive characterization equipment.
The software, named Peregrine, supports the advanced manufacturing "digital thread" being developed at ORNL that collects and analyzes data through every step of the manufacturing process, from design to feedstock selection to the print build to material testing.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Why is the COVID-19 virus deadly, while many other coronaviruses are fairly innocuous and just cause colds?
A team of University of Alabama at Birmingham and Polish researchers propose an answer -- the COVID-19 virus acts as a microRNA "sponge." This action modulates host microRNA levels in ways that aid viral replication and stymies the host immune response.
The European Union aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050 and is relying largely on renewable electricity to reach this goal. The implementation of this energy transition is the subject of heated debate: A continental-scale system that concentrates energy generation infrastructure in the most suitable locations would provide the most affordable solution but many citizens favour smaller, more dispersed supply networks. A new study prepared by researchers in Potsdam and Zurich shows that the implementation of such systems would not incur significant additional costs.
Even as studies have shown that the uneven distribution of urban heat islands, urban tree canopy cover, and urban environmental hazards, for example, are strongly dictated by structural racism and classism in cities, relatively few studies have addressed the varied contributions of social factors like race to ecological heterogeneity in cities. Here, Christopher J. Schell and colleagues integrate findings from ecology, evolution, and the social sciences to underscore such relationships.
WASHINGTON (Aug. 13, 2020) -- Fingolimod, an FDA-approved immunosuppressive drug used to treat multiple sclerosis flare-ups, may be used to block HIV infection and reduce the latent reservoir. Researchers at the George Washington University (GW) published their novel findings in PLOS Pathogens.
Mitochondria are small organelles that provide the energy critical for each cell in our body, in particular in the high fuel-consuming brain. In this week's edition of Science, a Belgian team of researchers led by Pierre Vanderhaeghen (VIB-KU Leuven, ULB) finds that mitochondria also regulate a key event during brain development: how neural stem cells become nerve cells. Mitochondria influence this cell fate switch during a precise period that is twice as long in humans compared to mice.
What The Study Did: Excess deaths in New York during the peak of the 1918 influenza pandemic were compared with those during the initial period of the COVID-19 outbreak in this study.
Authors: Jeremy S. Faust, M.D., M.S., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.17527)
What The Study Did: COVID-19-related outcomes in French nursing homes that implemented voluntary staff confinement with residents are investigated in this study.
Authors: Joel Belmin, M.D., Ph.D., of the Hopital Charles Foix in Ivry-sur-Seine, France, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.17533)
What The Study Did: National Cancer Database data from 2004 to 2014 were used to examine the association between overall survival and timing of radiotherapy relative to androgen deprivation therapy in patients with prostate cancer.
Authors: Vinayak Muralidhar, M.D., M.Sc., of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston is the corresponding author.