As people increasingly social distance themselves to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, social media is an appealing way to stay in contact with friends, family and colleagues. But it can also be a source of misinformation and bad advice – some of it even dangerously wrong.
Culture
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Similarly to how a picked lock gives away that someone has broken into a building, the stiffening of a structure surrounding cells in the human body can indicate that cancer is invading other tissue.
Monitoring changes to this structure, called the extracellular matrix, would give researchers another way to study the progression of disease. But detecting changes to the extracellular matrix is hard to do without damaging it.
A study has uncovered a new neurodegenerative disorder in which children experience developmental regression and severe epilepsy.
The study, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, found a variation in a gene causes a severe childhood-onset neurodegenerative disorder that has never before been described.
A Giant Right Atrial Myxoma with Blood Supply from the Left and Right Coronary Arteries: Once in a Blue Moon
In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2019.0566, Yichao Xiao, Zhenfei Fang, Xinqun Hu, Qiming Liu, Zhaowei Zhu, Na Liu, Xiaofan Peng and Shenghua Zhou from the Department of Cardiology, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China consider Cardiac myxomas.
Lasers are becoming one of the dominant tools in the current manufacturing industry. Much effort has been devoted to improving the processing accuracy, and spatial resolutions as low as micrometers have been achieved in laser cutting, wedding, marking and stereolithography in an atmospheric environment. The femtosecond laser (fs-laser) is a particularly promising approach from this point of view, in addition to its three-dimensional (3D) processing capability and broad-spectrum material usability.
The retrieval of phase of electromagnetic fields is one of the most important problems in optics as it allows the shape of transparent objects, including cells, to be quantified using visible light. Phase is a quantity that relates to the wave nature of light; it is not directly detectable by our eyes or common cameras, and yet carries important information about objects the light went through. Measuring the phase with very little light can be even more interesting and useful.
Researchers at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), working with an international network of scientists, have identified an inflammatory regulatory circuit in the eye controlled by a subtype of endothelial cells, the cells that line the interior of blood vessels. The discovery was made by analyzing gene expression in 8000 cells of the choroid--the vascular layer at the rear of the eye between the retina and the sclera.
The marine heatwave of 2016 was one of longest and hottest thermal anomalies recorded on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, influencing multiple species of marine ectotherms, including coral reef fishes.
Sugars like polysaccharides are found everywhere in nature and are believed to be essential for life to arise. In humans, they cover the surface of all cells and the family of polysaccharides called GAGs (glycosaminoglycans) are particularly abundant and difficult to analyse.
Nitrogen is essential for all living things. Synthetic fertilizer, which contains rich reactive nitrogen, has sustained food production and thereby the global population, but the nitrogen it emits is also a burden to the environment--air pollution, soil acidification, water eutrophication, to name just some of the consequences.
WESTMINSTER, Colorado - MARCH 20, 2020 - Many millions of homeowners use feeders to attract birds. But a two-year study featured in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management suggests there may be one unintended consequence to this popular hobby. Bird feed mixtures may be helping to spread troublesome weeds that threaten agricultural crops.
When researchers examined the contents of 98 commercially available bird feed mixes, they uncovered several significant findings:
Bats are famous for their sonar-based navigation. They use their extremely sensitive hearing for orientation, emitting ultrasound noises and receiving an image of their surroundings based on the echo. Seba's short-tailed bat (Carollia perspicillata), for example, finds the fruits that are its preferred food using this echolocation system. At the same time, bats also use their voices in a somewhat deeper frequency range to communicate with other members of their species.
About one in five Danes are affected by depression at some point in their lives. The severe depressions may be treated with the so-called 'tricyclic antidepressants', an antidepressant drug that is more effective than the drugs used for mild and moderate depressions.
But unfortunately, the tricyclic antidepressants also have a downside: significantly more and more serious side effects. So serious that many people stop taking the drug and thus receive no treatment for their depression.
The law on keeping dangerous snakes as pets should be tightened up, animal welfare experts demand in this week's issue of the Vet Record.
The call follows an investigation by the journal, showing that several species of venomous and potentially lethal snakes, such as cobras, vipers, and rattlesnakes, can easily be bought through pet shops in England, but that the licensing arrangements for ownership are somewhat lax.
The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s - captured by the novels of John Steinbeck - was an environmental and socio-economic disaster that worsened the Great Depression.
The Dust Bowl was an extreme event. But due to climate change, massive crop failures are more likely to happen again in the future. New research in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems aimed to answer what these impacts may look like.