Culture
New research out of the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) utilizes digital image analysis technology to shed light on some of the challenges children face when representing their imaginations through the medium of paint. The research also offers concrete insight into the development of children's psyches, and importantly, offers suggestions for educators to improve children's cognitive, spatial, and artistic abilities.
Researchers at Pompeu Fabra University have shown for the first time that blood vessels communicate with neurons in the peripheral nervous system, regulating their proliferation and differentiation. The study is published today in the journal Cell Reports and was conducted using zebrafish as a model. It was led by Berta Alsina, principal investigator of the Morphogenesis and Cell Signaling in Sensory Systems group, and involved Laura Taberner and Aitor Bañón.
A research team led by the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) concludes that personal perception can be an important indicator for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease. In a new study involving 449 older adults, published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the scientists report that individuals with subjectively felt memory problems also exhibited on average measurable cognitive deficits that were associated with abnormalities in the spinal fluid.
CHICAGO--July 16, 2020--A rapid laboratory test, the eosinophil count, readily obtained from a routine complete blood cell count (CBC) can aid in the early recognition of COVID-19 in patients, as well as provide prognostic information, according to new research in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.
Current testing, which relies on diagnosis of COVID-19 by nasopharyngeal swab PCR assay, remains unreliable due to variable turnaround time and a high false-negative rate.
One of Charles Darwin's long-standing questions on how turtles find their way to islands has been answered thanks to a pioneering study by scientists.
A team from Deakin University, University of Pisa and Swansea University equipped 33 green sea turtles with satellite tags and recorded unique tracks of green turtles migrating long distances in the Indian Ocean to small oceanic islands.
The study provides some of the best evidence to date that migrating sea turtles have an ability to redirect in the open ocean, but only at a crude level rather than at fine scales.
After interviewing smallholder farmers throughout South and Southeast Asia, one of the top needs they mentioned is development of shorter duration rice varieties with only 100 days from sowing to harvest. Some farmers want to have more time to prepare for the next season crop, whereas other farmers are concerned about irrigation water running out during the dry season. Another benefit in countries such as the Philippines is reducing the risk of adverse weather (e.g., typhoons) affecting the crop compared to longer duration varieties.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new proof-of-concept study reports evidence that a new testing method has the potential to rapidly identify radiation sickness based on biomarkers measured through a single drop of blood. Scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) say the test could help save lives through early and real-time identification of the condition to enable timely clinical interventions.
HOUSTON - (July 15, 2020) - Biomolecular engineers at Rice University have found a C-worthy technique that dramatically enhances the accuracy of gene editing.
The Rice lab of biomolecular engineer Xue Sherry Gao has introduced a set of tools that increase the accuracy of CRISPR-based edits in disease sequence models up to 6,000-fold compared with a current base editor, BE4max, that is considered state-of-the-art.
The work appears in the open-access journal Science Advances.
When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, it gathered water vapor data on Tropical Depression 06E that showed it had opened up into a trough. A trough is an elongated area of low pressure.
On July 14 at 4:50 p.m. EDT (2050 UTC), NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the remnants of Tropical Depression 06E. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Aqua gathered the water vapor content and temperature information. MODIS found minimal concentrations of water vapor and the circulation had opened up into a trough.
A brief reading and writing exercise designed to alleviate worries about sense of belonging helped students at a midwestern broad-access public university with a high Hispanic population stay in school, raising continuous enrollment over 2 years by 9% among socially disadvantaged students, according to a new study. The findings suggest that social belonging interventions may decrease dropout rates at broad-access institutions, which accept more than 75% of applicants and serve many first-generation college students and racial and ethnic minority students.
The so-called "love hormone" or "cuddle hormone" oxytocin is not only involved in strengthening the mother-child relationship and regulating social bonding. It also plays an important role in different mental health disorders like autism, Asperger's syndrome, social anxiety or addiction vulnerability. Furthermore, oxytocin starts labor, the birth process, and features in many aspects of sexual reproduction - as well as corresponding disorders. The hormone exerts all these effects by binding to the oxytocin receptor.
A new finger-stick test can use a single drop of blood to quickly estimate how much harmful radiation mice have been exposed to, according to a study. The test, which could sniff out radiation doses from hours to 1 week after exposure, could potentially address the need for a rapid and workable test to estimate radiation exposure in people after high-risk radiological events.
A new method could help to track groundwater changes better than before. To this end, researchers from Potsdam and Oberlin, Ohio (USA), have compared gravity field data from the GRACE and GRACE-Follow On satellite missions with other measuring methods. They investigated the seasonal water storage in almost 250 river basins in Asia, whose water regime is dominated by monsoon. The results allow the large-scale GRACE data to be scaled down to smaller regions. The researchers report on this in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Boston, MA -- In March of 2020, Mass General Brigham implemented a new policy: everyone working at the hospitals would be required to wear a surgical mask. At the time, the concept of universal masking was new and its potential effectiveness unclear.
Super-agers, or individuals whose cognitive skills are above the norm even at an advanced age, have been found to have increased resistance to tau and amyloid proteins, according to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2020 Annual Meeting. An analysis of positron emission tomography (PET) scans has shown that compared to normal-agers and those with mild cognitive impairment, super-agers have a lower burden of tau and amyloid pathology associated with neurodegeneration, which probably allows them to maintain their cognitive performance.