Culture
Muscles need dystrophin in order to regenerate. Persons suffering from Duchenne muscular dystrophy lack this essential muscular protein due to mutations in the gene which is responsible for producing dystrophin. As a result, their existing muscle cells deteriorate over time and are gradually replaced by connective and fatty tissue; muscle strength weakens during the course of the disease. The first symptoms usually appear around the age of five.
A University of California, Berkeley, archaeologist has dug up ancient human feces, among other demographic clues, to challenge the narrative around the legendary demise of Cahokia, North America's most iconic pre-Columbian metropolis.
In its heyday in the 1100s, Cahokia -- located in what is now southern Illinois -- was the center for Mississippian culture and home to tens of thousands of Native Americans who farmed, fished, traded and built giant ritual mounds.
WASHINGTON (Jan. 27, 2020) -- The rate of recovery and a patient's length of stay at nursing and rehabilitation facilities are associated with a patient's mobility and their ability to provide self-care when they are discharged following hip fracture surgery, according to a new study from the George Washington University (GW), published in JAMA Network Open.
The authors of the study suggest that a care team should prioritize identifying a patient's recovery trajectory early enough in care to promote the best possible outcomes and allocate resources efficiently.
Bumetanide - a prescription drug for oedema (the build-up of fluid in the body) - improves some of the symptoms in young children with autism spectrum disorders and has no significant side effects, according to a new study from researchers in China and the UK.
Published today in Translational Psychiatry, the study demonstrates for the first time that the drug improves the symptoms by decreasing the ratio of the GABA to glutamate in the brain. GABA and glutamate are both neurotransmitters - chemical messengers that help nerve cells in the brain communicate.
The rate of survival of very preterm babies in Canada increased 25% after the national Evidence-based Practice for Improving Quality (EPIQ) program was introduced in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) across the country, according to new research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.190940
Higher income American households pay the most to finance the nation's health care system, but the burden of payments as a share of income is greatest among households with the lowest incomes, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Households in the bottom fifth of income groups pay an average of 33.9% of their income toward health care, while families in the highest income group pay 16% of their income toward health care.
At a glance:
Research using heart cells from squirrels, mice and people identifies an evolutionary mechanism critical for heart muscle function.
Gene defect that affects a protein found in the heart muscle interferes with this mechanism to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition.
Imbalance in the ratio of active and inactive protein disrupts heart muscle's ability to contract and relax normally, interferes with heart muscle's energy consumption.
Among men with prostate cancer who received care from the Veterans Affairs (VA) Health System, an equal-access health care system, African American men did not have more advanced disease at the time of diagnosis or die earlier than white men, unlike trends seen in the greater U.S. population of patients with prostate cancer.
To help service members perform better in the field, military training emphasizes the importance of certain traits associated with traditional masculinity, including suppression of emotion and self-reliance. But when veterans return home, strict adherence to these traits can become detrimental, leading to more severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and making it more difficult to treat, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
"To secure economic welfare for all people in these times of global warming, we need to balance the costs of climate change damages and those of climate change mitigation. Now our team found what we should aim for," says Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Columbia University's LDEO, New York, head of the team conducting the study. "We did a lot of thorough testing with our computers.
Previous studies regarding the damage of the Zika virus on the brain had already pointed out the virus's predilection for a certain neural cell: the astrocyte. However, few studies have proposed to identify the infection effects on these cells, as well as their association with developmental alterations, including brain malformations and microcephaly.
Men are not better than women at spatial cognition - such as map reading - is the principal finding from ground-breaking work by researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, hosted at University of Limerick (UL), Ireland.
Employing cutting-edge eye-tracking technology researchers Dr Mark Campbell and Dr Adam Toth of the Lero Esports Science Research Lab at UL found that there is no male advantage in mental rotation abilities associated with spatial cognition competences.
Cholesterol is crucial to the formation of the cell membranes of mammals and is part of many life processes. One of the most controversial concepts in biophysics is the hypothesis of the so-called lipid rafts: areas of high concentrations of cholesterol and glycosphingolipids in membranes. These lipid rafts, also known as lipid microdomains, are areas of the cell membrane in which lipids and cholesterol accumulate and play an important role in cell function.
The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 by 175 parties, aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. However, the period 2010-2020 was the planet's hottest decade on record and the long-term trend is upward. Sea level rise is one of the most severe impacts of climate change, with rising waters amplifying coastal floods, threatening coastal communities, infrastructure, and agriculture.
It is a rather trivial statement: if you want to enter the house through a door, it is best to take a key in your hand, open and go inside. But if you have no idea what the key looks like or where it is hidden - under the doormat, on the basement stairs? - it becomes much more difficult.