Culture
Emphysema is a progressive, debilitating lung disease in which the lung's breathing sacs, or alveoli, enlarge, get thinner, and eventually are destroyed as the cells die off. It can be fatal, and there is currently no cure. New research at Boston Children's Hospital, using lung cells and mouse models of emphysema, offers hope in the form of a small, engineered peptide molecule called PR1P.
Clean-up devices that collect waste from the ocean surface won't solve the plastic pollution problem, a new study shows.
Researchers compared estimates of current and future plastic waste with the ability of floating clean-up devices to collect it - and found the impact of such devices was "very modest".
However, river barriers could be more effective and - though they have no impact on plastic already in the oceans - they could reduce pollution "significantly" if used in tandem with surface clean-up technology.
Plastic from used personal protective equipment (PPE) can, and should, be transformed into renewable liquid fuels - according to a new study, published in the peer-reviewed Taylor & Francis journal Biofuels.
Effective contact tracing and epidemic control measures are essential for safe opening of schools during COVID-19 pandemic, according to two studies published simultaneously in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal.
Shakespeare once wrote that the "eyes are the window to your soul." But scientists have found it challenging to peer into the brain to see how it derives meaning from a look into another's eyes.
Psychologists at Yale and Harvard have now found a new way to study this mystery by examining the universal and embarrassing tendency to avert one's gaze when caught looking at someone else.
New Haven, Conn. -- Sarecycline, a drug approved for use in the United States in 2018, is the first new antibiotic approved to treat acne in more than 40 years. Now, researchers at Yale and the University of Illinois-Chicago have discovered how its unique chemical structure makes it effective.
Their new study is the most detailed biological analysis to date for sarecycline, one of a number of tetracycline antibiotics (such as doxycycline and minocycline) used to treat acne. The researchers report findings Aug. 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
For patients, especially those living with chronic conditions, nonadherence to prescription medicines due to cost is a common problem. By not filling prescriptions, skipping doses, delaying refills, or splitting pills, patients risk compromising the therapeutic benefit of their treatments. To understand the extent of this problem, Jamie Daw, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, studied survey data from 11 high-income countries.
NASA's satellites were working overtime as they snapped pictures of the large Apple Fire in Banning Canyon near San Bernardino, California on Aug. 02, 2020. This fire began on July 31, 2020 and the cause of the fire is still under investigation. To date the fire has consumed 20,516 acres and is 5% contained.Much of the northern and eastern edge of the fire is located in very steep, rugged hillsides not easily accessible to firefighting vehicles.
Soils harbour a substantial part of the world's biodiversity, yet data on the patterns and processes taking place below ground does not represent all relevant ecosystems and taxa. For example, tropical and subtropical regions largely remain a blind spot when it comes to soil biodiversity. This is one of the results of a new study published in Nature Communications and led by scientists from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Leipzig University (UL).
Social networks have been found to influence academic performance: students tend to perform better with high-performers among their friends, as some people are capable of inspiring others to try harder, according to Sofia Dokuka, Dilara Valeyeva and Maria Yudkevich of the HSE University. Their paper was published in PLOS ONE.
Key Takeaways:
Larger daily deal platforms with bigger consumer marketplaces can exert more bargaining power during negotiation.
Merchants can build their own businesses by choosing the right daily deal platforms. Merchants' choice of a platform depends on their characteristics and the consumer base of the platform.
Underdog platforms help merchants by providing an alternative outlet in price negotiation.
A team of scientists has engineered antiviral compounds that can kill several types of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The compounds neutralized viruses in human airway cells and improved survival in mice infected with a deadly, closely related virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The new compounds' broad activity suggest that they should be further developed as treatments for infections with emerging coronaviruses, which currently have few effective antivirals and no approved vaccines.
With these new findings scientists can potentially better understand the subtle changes that can occur in genes and brain circuits that can lead to mental health disorders such as anxiety and autism spectrum disorders.
When two neutron stars slam together, the result is sometimes a black hole that swallows all but the gravitational evidence of the collision. However, in a series of simulations, an international team of researchers including a Penn State scientist determined that these typically quiet--at least in terms of radiation we can detect on Earth--collisions can sometimes be far noisier.
A common green apple vape flavor enhances nicotine reward and is also rewarding itself, according to research in mice recently published in eNeuro.
Vaping entices adolescents into nicotine use with fun flavors like green apple and cotton candy. Nicotine-free flavored vapes have also gained popularity. But of the over 7000 available flavor chemicals, only a handful have been studied. With or without nicotine, flavored vapes pose potential risks for the brain, including addiction.