Culture
Its neck was three times as long as its torso, but had only 13 extremely elongated vertebrae: Tanystropheus, a bizarre giraffe-necked reptile which lived 242 million years ago, is a paleontological absurdity. A new study led by the University of Zurich has now shown that the creature lived in water and was surprisingly adaptable.
ANN ARBOR, Michigan -- When COVID-19 struck, health care pivoted hard. Any unnecessary procedures or appointments were postponed. For people with cancer, that pivot was particularly shattering.
"COVID-19 changed the face of health care in the United States virtually overnight. Oncologists were discussing with their patients whether the benefit of coming in for treatment outweighed the risk of being exposed to the virus in the health care setting," says Laila A. Gharzai, M.D., LLM, a radiation oncology resident at Michigan Medicine.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Several thousand strains of bacteria live in the human gut. Some of these are associated with disease, while others have beneficial effects on human health. Figuring out the precise role of each of these bacteria can be difficult, because many of them can't be grown in lab studies using human tissue.
CHICAGO: A new breast cancer study brings reassuring findings for women with early-stage breast cancer who were forced to delay their cancer operations because of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Ants are the most successful social insects and play an important role in modern terrestrial ecosystems. The origin and early evolution of ants have attracted lots of attention.
Among the earliest fossil ants known, haidomyrmecine "hell ants" from Cretaceous amber reveal an ancient and dramatic early burst radiation of adaptive forms.
Hell ants possessed bizarre scythe-like mouthparts along with a striking array of horn-like cephalic projections. But how did this type of ant evolve? This question was long a mystery.
Contrary to what has been generally assumed so far, a severe course of COVID-19 does not solely result in a strong immune reaction - rather, the immune response is caught in a continuous loop of activation and inhibition. Experts from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the University of Bonn, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), along with colleagues from a nationwide research network, present these findings in the scientific journal Cell.
Despite our broad understanding of the different brain regions activated during rapid-eye-movement sleep, little is known about what this activity serves for. Researchers at the University of Bern and the Inselspital have now discovered that the activation of neurons in the hypothalamus during REM sleep regulates eating behaviour: suppressing this activity in mice decreases appetite.
Rhythms produced by the brain can reliably be used to predict how sensitive we are to pain, new research shows.
The living brain is constantly producing regular rhythmic patterns of activity, which can be compared to musical notes. Scientists at the University of Birmingham in the UK, and the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in the US, have successfully demonstrated that one particularly prevalent pattern of brain activity, called alpha waves, strongly relates to the body's susceptibility or resilience to pain.
Researchers have identified a pattern of longer-term symptoms likely to be experienced by people who were hospitalised with the COVID-19 infection.
They include fatigue, breathlessness, psychological distress - including problems with concentration and memory - and a general decline in quality of life.
Some patients, particularly those who had been in intensive care, had symptoms associated with cases of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
The findings provide the first detailed insight into problems facing patients recovering from COVID-19 in the UK.
BOSTON (Aug. 6, 2020)--Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine and Tufts Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences have discovered neural mechanisms in mice specific to females that can shift estrogen from playing a protective role in glucose metabolism to one that is disruptive. The authors of the study, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS), hypothesize that the metabolic "switch" mediated by estrogen may provide clues to the increased risk of insulin resistance and diabetes among post-menopausal women.
(Jena, Germany) The periodic system contains 118 chemical elements. However, only a few of them, such as hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and silicon, are of major importance in our daily lives. But things become really exciting from a chemical point of view when less well-known elements are involved. An international research group from Germany and Finland discovered astonishing and beautiful molecular structures when, instead of oxygen or sulphur, they used the element tellurium, which has a different weight, in ring-shaped hydrocarbon molecules.
Beginning in March, as COVID-19 cases surged in various states in the U.S., the COVID-19 Pandemic Breast Cancer Consortium released recommendations that operations for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) be deferred due to the pandemic. DCIS, which goes by many names including "stage 0" breast cancer, is a non-invasive form of cancer that begins in the milk ducts and is generally surgically excised. In approximately one in five cases, surgeons may find evidence of invasive cancer during surgery.
Philadelphia and Newark, N.J. August 6, 2020 - A team of researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed an algorithm through machine learning that helps predict sites of DNA methylation - a process that can change the activity of DNA without changing its overall structure - and could identify disease-causing mechanisms that would otherwise be missed by conventional screening methods.
The paper was published online this week by the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.
WASHINGTON (Aug. 6, 2020) -- George Washington University (GW) researchers found five biomarkers, medical indicators found in the blood, associated with higher odds of clinical deterioration and death in COVID-19 patients. Published in Future Medicine, these findings will help physicians better predict outcomes for COVID-19 patients in the U.S.
Bacteria are always with us: These tiny organisms are found within and on our body as is the case with all animals and plants. As part of a healthy microbiome they ensure our wellbeing. But if the microbial community gets dysbalanced, infections can follow. Even in soil and water they are a crucial component of the respective environments and their functioning.