Culture
A new study suggests that adults experienced few changes in "Big Five" personality traits as a result of the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. Angelina Sutin of Florida State University College of Medicine and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 6, 2020.
When we dream, our brains are filled with noisy electrical activity that looks nearly identical to that of the awake brain.
But University of California, Berkeley, researchers have pulled a signal out of the noise that uniquely defines dreaming, or REM sleep, potentially making it easier to monitor people with sleep disorders, as well as unconscious coma patients or those under anesthesia.
Are we medically intervening in maternity care when we don't need to?
Researchers from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin have provided an international perspective on differences in key birth interventions as part of a European research network on understanding and contextualising physiological labour and birth (EU COST Action IS1405), which provides insights into maternity care practices and costs in Ireland.
A post-lockdown economic recovery plan that incorporates and emphasises climate-friendly choices could help significantly in the battle against global warming, according to a new study.
This is despite the sudden reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants during lockdown having a negligible impact on holding down global temperature change.
The researchers warn that even with some lockdown measures staying in place to the end of 2021, without more structural interventions global temperatures will only be roughly 0.01°C lower than expected by 2030.
Transgender and gender-diverse adults are three to six times more likely as cisgender adults (individuals whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth) to be diagnosed as autistic, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre.
This research, conducted using data from over 600,000 adult individuals, confirms previous smaller scale studies from clinics. The results are published today in Nature Communications.
Glaciers in the Southern Alps of New Zealand have lost more ice mass since pre-industrial times than remains today, according to a new study.
Research led by the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, mapped Southern Alps ice loss from the end of the Little Ice Age -- roughly 400 years ago -- to 2019.
Researchers from Michigan State University, University of South Florida, St. John's University, and American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) published a new paper that analyzes relationships between customer complaints, complaint handling by companies, and customer loyalty to understand how customer complaint management affects companies' performance and to inform companies how to manage customer complaints much better and more consistently.
Galit Alter, PhD, Group Leader at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Helen Chu, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, University of Washington School of Medicine, and UW Medicine physician, have recently published a paper which identifies five immune response markers which, collectively, were able to correctly classify both convalescent COVID-19 patients and those who did not survive the disease. The study was published in the journal Immunity.
TAMPA, Fla. (Aug. 7, 2020) -- Despite frequent news announcing "medical breakthroughs," advancements in biomedical and clinical science typically happen incrementally. Scientists refine our understanding of how the world works by harnessing new tools and data that can challenge conventional thinking - a continual process of revision that elicits new answers to old questions, and often poses different questions.
In severe cases of COVID-19, the infection can lead to obstruction of the blood vessels in the lung, heart and kidneys. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers have now shown that activated immune cells and blood platelets play a major role in these pathologies.
Chemical reactions driven by the geological conditions on the early Earth might have led to the prebiotic evolution of self-replicating molecules. Scientists at Ludwig-Maximilians Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now report on a hydrothermal mechanism that could have promoted the process.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) took a census of stellar eggs in the constellation Taurus and revealed their evolution state. This census helps researchers understand how and when a stellar embryo transforms to a baby star deep inside a gaseous egg. In addition, the team found a bipolar outflow, a pair of gas streams, that could be telltale evidence of a truly newborn star.
In JST Strategic Basic Research Programs, a group of Zhongrui Duan (Researcher, Waseda University) and Motoki Tominaga (Associate professor, Waseda University) et al. succeeded in promoting plant growth and increasing seed yield by heterologous expression of protein from Arabidopsis (artificially modified high-speed motor protein(1) ) in Camelina sativa, which is expected as a useful plant for biodiesel.
Researchers from Kumamoto University in Japan have used comprehensive genetic analysis to find that the enzyme NSD2, which is known to regulate the actions of many genes, also works to block cell aging. Their experiments revealed 1) inhibition of NSD2 function in normal cells leads to rapid senescence and 2) that there is a marked decrease in the amount of NSD2 in senescent cells. The researchers believe their findings will help clarify the mechanisms of aging, the development of control methods for maintaining NSD2 functionality, and age-related pathophysiology.
Taking advantage of a total lunar eclipse, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected ozone in Earth's atmosphere. This method serves as a proxy for how they will observe Earth-like planets around other stars in the search for life. This is the first time a total lunar eclipse was captured from a space telescope and the first time such an eclipse has been studied in ultraviolet wavelengths.