Culture
A new study by UCLA professors offers a new way to understand how unfounded conspiracy theories emerge online. The research, which combines sophisticated artificial intelligence and a deep knowledge of how folklore is structured, explains how unrelated facts and false information can connect into a narrative framework that would quickly fall apart if some of those elements are taken out of the mix.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Since early March and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., 911 calls for emergency medical services have dropped by 26.1 % compared to the past two years, a new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher has found.
But the study also found that EMS-attended deaths have doubled, indicating that when EMS calls were made, they often involved a far more serious emergency.
Researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology have developed a new method to improve the detection ability of nanoscale chemical imaging using atomic force microscopy. These improvements reduce the noise that is associated with the microscope, increasing the precision and range of samples that can be studied.
The study "Closed-Loop Atomic Force Microscopy-Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging for Nanoscale Molecular Characterization" was published in Nature Communications.
Tsukuba, Japan - When most of us think of dinosaurs, we envision large, lumbering beasts, but these giants shared their ecosystems with much smaller dinosaurs, the smaller skeletons of which were generally less likely to be preserved. The fossilized egg shells of these small dinosaurs can shed light on this lost ecological diversity.
Led by the University of Tsukuba, researchers scoured an exceptional fossil egg site first discovered in 2015 in Hyogo Prefecture, southwestern Japan, and reported their findings in a new study published in Cretaceous Research.
Fast facts
- Published in Science, the paper explains how NYUAD researchers used the method of helioseismology to measure the meridional flow (the flow of plasma in the latitudinal and radial directions) in the Sun's interior, which controls the solar cycle.
- Over the course of the 11-year solar cycle, the number of sunspots - dark patches on the surface of the Sun - reaches a maximum, and the latitudes at which sunspots emerge drift toward the equator.
Paper wasps eavesdrop on fighting rivals to rapidly assess potential opponents without personal risk. This new finding adds to mounting evidence that even mini-brained insects have an impressive capacity to learn, remember and make social deductions about others.
Many vertebrate animals--including some birds and fish and numerous primates--minimize the costs of conflict by using "social eavesdropping" to learn about the fighting ability of potential rivals before interacting with them personally.
Dolphins use unusual techniques to obtain food: One of them, called "shelling", is used by the dolphins in Shark Bay in Western Australia. Dolphins in this population trap fishes inside large empty gastropod shells. The shells are then brought to the surface and vigorously shaken so that the water drains out and the fish falls into their open mouth. Using the empty shell in this manner is comparable to tool use in humans.
Dolphins learn directly from their peers
What The Study Did: The possible association between chilblains and COVID-19 was investigated in this case series that included 31 patients.
Authors: Anne Herman, M.D., of the Université Catholique de Louvain in Brussels, 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/jamadermatol.2020.2368)
A new study brings neural-level evidence that the continuous variation in natural speech makes the discrimination of phonemes challenging for adults suffering from developmental reading-deficit dyslexia.
This may compromise the learning of native language phonemes already at an early age for infants at familial risk for dyslexia.
Monash University researchers have discovered that the devastating bacterial superbug Clostridioides difficile hijacks the human wound healing system in order to cause serious and persistent disease, opening up the development of new therapies to treat the disease.
Clostridioides difficile is the most common hospital-acquired disease and causes persistent and life-threatening gut infections - particularly in elderly and immunocompromised patients.
The basis of the construction industry clashes head-on with environmental sustainability. Extracting raw materials and turning them into building materials has high energetic costs. Granite production, totaling 614,000 tons in Spain in 2013, leaves behind it a series of residues that are difficult to manage. This is the case of granite sludge, the material that results from the mixture of dust particles given off during the cutting process and the water used to cool the blade.
Three members of the BiRTE research group at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Economics and Business have published an analysis of the evolution in electricity prices during a 16-year period (2002 to 2017); the article appears in Energy Economics, a journal positioned in the first decile in the field of Economics. The study set out to see how various factors linked to renewable energy affect the price of electricity.
Starting university is an exciting phase for everyone. However, children from academic households exhibit significantly more stress during this period than those from non-academic families. A Swiss-German research team has found this out by analysing the hair of female first-year students. Study authors Professor Alex Bertrams from the University of Bern and Dr. Nina Minkley from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have concluded that students may be stressed by the fear of jeopardising the social status of their families if they fail their degrees.
Increasing abdominal girth and shrinking muscles are two common side effects of aging. Researchers at the University of Bonn have discovered a receptor in mice that regulates both effects. Experiments with human cell cultures suggest that the corresponding signaling pathways might also exist in humans. The study, which also involved researchers from Spain, Finland, Belgium, Denmark and the USA, has now been published in the renowned journal Cell Metabolism.
In a research letter published in The Journal of General Internal Medicine on COVID-19, Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, a physician researcher in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women's Hospital and colleagues Rohan Khazanchi (University of Nebraska Medical Center student) and Evan Bei