Culture
The 2014 Carlton Complex wildfire in north central Washington was the largest contiguous fire in state history. In just a single day, flames spread over 160,000 acres of forest and rangeland and ultimately burned more than 250,000 acres in the midst of a particularly hot, dry summer.
NEW YORK -- When crossing the street, which way do you first turn your head to check for oncoming traffic? This decision depends on the context of where you are. A pedestrian in the United States looks to the left for cars, but one in the United Kingdom looks right. A group of scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute has been studying how animals use context when making decisions.
A group of University of Alberta researchers who have discovered why the drug remdesivir is effective in treating the coronaviruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) expect it might also be effective for treating patients infected with the new COVID-19 strain.
"Even if you know a drug works, it can be a red flag if you don't know how it works," said virologist Matthias Götte. "It is reassuring if you know exactly how it works against the target.
A team of academic and industry researchers is reporting new findings about how exactly an investigational antiviral drug stops coronaviruses. Their paper was published the same day that the National Institutes of Health announced that the drug in question, remdesivir, is being used in the nation's first clinical trial of an experimental treatment for COVID-19, the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
A full moon conjures an image of a person transforming into a werewolf -- a mythical story of moonlight explaining the unexplainable. While werewolves may only exist in the movies, unusual animal and human behaviors noticed under a full moon are real. Could moonlight be responsible?
A new study published in the African Journal of Ecology considers the role of the moon in driving a particularly rare occurrence: the solo journey of a naked mole rat from one underground colony to start a new one.
TROY, N.Y. -- Working from home is known to be good for a strong work-life balance, advantageous for employee productivity, and is even touted as being beneficial for the environment. However, telecommuting has also carried a stigma -- despite a lack of data to back it up -- that employees who work remotely have difficulties rising in their career.
MADISON -- Parkinson's disease researchers have used gene-editing tools to introduce the disorder's most common genetic mutation into marmoset monkey stem cells and to successfully tamp down cellular chemistry that often goes awry in Parkinson's patients.
MADISON - New research by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists reveals how a cellular filament helps neural stem cells clear damaged and clumped proteins, an important step in eventually producing new neurons.
The work provides a new cellular target for interventions that could boost neuron production when it's needed most, such as after brain injuries. And because clumping proteins are a hallmark of many neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's, the new study could provide insight into how these toxic proteins can be cleared away.
Scientists have detected that a previously overlooked gene behavior could potentially lead to a new way to diagnose Alzheimer's earlier.
Published in the journal Epigenetics, an international research team's findings - discovered in mice and confirmed in human samples - suggest that the gene Presenilin1 (PSEN1) should be monitored as a 'biomarker': to see what environmental triggers, such as lifestyle and nutrition, can influence brain function and neurodegeneration or/and to see how well the body responds to a treatment for the disease.
Liberia was the epicenter of a high-profile Ebola outbreak in 2014-15, which led to more than 10,000 deaths in West Africa. But for all the devastation the illness caused, it could have been worse without an innovative, volunteer-based outreach program Liberia's government deployed in late 2014.
A study of tax incentives aimed at attracting and retaining businesses finds that the vast majority of these incentives ultimately leave states worse off than if they had done nothing.
WASHINGTON -- For the first time, researchers have used an advanced analytical technique known as dual-comb spectroscopy to rapidly acquire extremely detailed hyperspectral images. By acquiring a full spectrum of information for each pixel in a scene with high sensitivity and speed, the new approach could greatly advance a wide range of scientific and industrial applications such as chemical analysis and biomedical sensing.
Different learning difficulties do not correspond to specific regions of the brain, as previously thought, say researchers at the University of Cambridge. Instead poor connectivity between 'hubs' within the brain is much more strongly related to children's difficulties.
Cancer mutations can be caused by common gut bacteria carried by many people. This was demonstrated by researchers from the Hubrecht Institute (KNAW) and Princess Máxima Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. By exposing cultured human mini-guts to a particular strain of Escherichia coli bacteria, they uncovered that these bacteria induce a unique pattern of mutations in the DNA of human cells.
Our skin protects us from physical injury, radiation and microbes, and at the same time produces hair and facilitates perspiration. Details of how skin cells manage such disparate tasks have so far remained elusive. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have systematically mapped skin cells and their genetic programs, creating a detailed molecular atlas of the skin in its complexity. The study is published today in the scientific journal Cell Stem Cell.