Culture
Bottom Line: Cannabis use apparently continues to increase among older adults in the U.S. based on findings reported in this research letter. Researchers analyzed national survey data from 2015-2018 for nearly 15,000 adults 65 and older to estimate how common past-year cannabis use was. Previous studies have indicated sharp increases from 2006-2016. Cannabis has been legalized in many states for medical and recreational use. Authors of the current study estimate the proportion of adults who reported past-year marijuana use increased from 2.4% to 4.2% from 2015 to 2018.
The Neolithic revolution, and the corresponding transition to agricultural and pastoralist lifestyles, represents one of the greatest cultural shifts in human history, and it has long been hypothesized that this might have also provided the opportunity for the emergence of human-adapted diseases. A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution led by Felix M.
ORLANDO, Feb. 24, 2020 - Speculation about where laws come from ranges from crediting judges and legal scholars to God.
However new research co-authored by a University of Central Florida researcher and appearing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour today offers evidence that criminal laws come from an intuitive and shared, universal sense of justice that humans possess.
HOUSTON - (Feb. 24, 2020) - In one pot, at room temperature, chemists at Rice University are able to make valuable pharmaceutical precursors they say could change the industry.
The Rice group of chemist László Kürti introduced an inexpensive organic synthesis technique that catalyzes the transfer of nitrogen atoms to olefins, unsaturated organic compounds also known as alkenes.
Exposed nitrogen atoms are critical to drug discovery. The Rice process combines nitrogen and hydrogen atoms in triangular aziridine products that are readily available to react with other agents.
Cancer cells are notorious for their genetic disarray. A tumor cell can contain an abundance of DNA mutations and most have the wrong number of chromosomes. A missing or extra copy of a single chromosome creates an imbalance called aneuploidy, which can skew the activity of hundreds or thousands of genes. As cancer progresses, so does aneuploidy. Some advanced tumors can harbor cells that have accumulated more than 100 chromosomes, instead of 46 in normal cells.
Cameras, light barriers, and movement sensors have one thing in common: They work with light sensors that are already found in many applications. In future, these sensors might also play an important role in telecommunications, as they enable data transmission via light. At the InnovationLab in Heidelberg, scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) succeeded in making decisive progress: Printable light sensors that can see colors. The results are now reported in Advanced Materials (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201908258).
The addition of dietary L-serine, a naturally occurring amino acid necessary for formation of proteins and nerve cells, delayed signs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in an animal study.
The research also represents a significant advance in animal modeling of ALS, a debilitating neurodegenerative disease, said David A. Davis, Ph.D., lead author and research assistant professor of neurology and associate director of the Brain Endowment Bank at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
Healthy lung cells support the survival of breast cancer cells, allowing them to hibernate in the lung before forming secondary tumours, according to new research from the Crick. The findings could help the development of new treatments that interfere with this behaviour, reducing the number of secondary cancers.
Taking a cat to the vets can be a stressful experience, both for cat and owner. However, a study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (JFMS)1 has shown that playing cat-specific music during the visit can help.
In search of new ways to sequence human genomes and read critical alterations in DNA, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have successfully used the gene cutting tool CRISPR to make cuts in DNA around lengthy tumor genes, which can be used to collect sequence information.
A report on the proof-of-principle experiments using genomes from human breast cancer cells and tissue appears in the Feb. 10 issue of Nature Biotechnology.
For the first time, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have recorded a "3D film" of magnetic processes on the nanometer scale. This reveals a variety of dynamics inside the material, including the motion of swirling boundaries between different magnetic domains. The insights were gained with a method newly developed at the Swiss Light Source SLS. It could help to make magnetic data storage devices more compact and efficient. The researchers are publishing the results of their investigations today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Researchers have developed a new, inexpensive technology that could save lives and money by routinely screening women for breast cancer without exposure to radiation.
The system, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo, uses harmless microwaves and artificial intelligence (AI) software to detect even small, early-stage tumors within minutes.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists deployed motion-sensitive camera traps across a 50-square-mile swath of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southern Sumatra and, over the course of eight years, recorded the haunts and habits of dozens of species, including the Sumatran tiger and other rare and endangered wildlife. Their observations offer insight into how abundant these species are and show how smaller creatures avoid being eaten by tigers and other carnivores.
The structure of a transport complex used by bacteria to import aspartate has been mapped in unique detail by University of Groningen scientists. The proteins were imaged using cryo-electron microscopy. The results reveal that the transporter works very efficiently. This is especially interesting as a similar transporter is vital for signal transduction between human brain cells. The study results were published in Nature Communications on 21 February.
Researchers at McGill University have discovered that a protein found in the membrane of our sensory neurons are involved in our capacity to feel mechanical pain, laying the foundation for the development of powerful new analgesic drugs.
The study, published in Cell, is the first to show that TACAN, a highly conserved protein among vertebrates whose function remained unclear, is in fact involved in detecting mechanical pain by converting mechanical pressures into electric signals.