Culture
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have developed a new hydrogel based on the body's natural peptide defense. It has been shown to prevent and treat infections in wounds. The formulation kills multi-resistant bacteria, something that is increasing in importance with antibiotic resistance growing globally.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Sometimes scientists make mistakes. Case in point is the chanchita, a South American freshwater fish that has been swimming in Florida's waters for at least two decades, all the while identified by experts as another invader, the black acara.
When it comes to making sound judgements, most people understand and distinguish that being rational is self-serving and being reasonable is fair and balanced, finds new research from the University of Waterloo.
The study is the first systematic attempt to explore what people consider to be sound judgment and whether they understand rationality and reasonableness along the lines advocated by experts in economics, law, and other social scientists.
The BioScience Talks podcast features discussions of topical issues related to the biological sciences.
BUFFALO, N.Y. - Self-esteem is a valuable resource for undergraduate international students trying to socialize with their domestic counterparts at American universities, but new research by a University at Buffalo psychologist suggests that while self-esteem predicts better socialization with domestic students, it is curiously unrelated to how international students socialize with other internationals.
December 27, 2019 - With packed flights during the holiday season, getting from jet bridge to plane seat seems to take forever. Some airlines have tried to speed up the process by boarding passengers from back-to-front or boarding those without overhead luggage first. However, these practices have been challenging to implement. Now, scientists from universities in Norway, Latvia, and Israel suggest letting slow passengers board first may actually decrease time before take off. Researcher Erland et al.
The frequently cited claim that e-cigarettes are "95% less risky" or "95% less harmful" than combustible cigarettes is outdated, misleading and invalid -- and should no longer be made in discussions on the dangers of vaping, according to an editorial published today in the American Journal of Public Health by six leading experts on e-cigarettes and public health.
Stanford, CA-- Corals depend on their symbiotic relationships with the algae that they host. But how do they keep algal population growth in check? The answer to this fundamental question could help reefs survive in a changing climate.
New work published in Nature Communications by a team including Carnegie's Tingting Xiang, Sophie Clowez, Rick Kim, and Arthur Grossman indicates how sea anemones, which are closely related to coral, control the size of their algal populations that reside within their tissue.
CATONSVILLE, MD, January 8, 2020 - Live chat tools allow for communication between sellers and buyers. They are popular instruments for e-commerce sites that don't have the advantage of face-to-face communication that brick-and-mortar stores do. New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research says these live chats can actually increase sales and boost profits.
Media coverage is more likely to influence jurors to vote for acquittal than for conviction. This new finding challenges arguments that pretrial publicity is of greater concern to defendants due to their Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
DALLAS - Jan. 8, 2020 - In work that could have clinical implications, UT Southwestern researchers find that humans and mice with pancreatitis are deficient in a stress hormone called FGF21. Normally, FGF21 is more abundant in the pancreas than in any other organ in the body. They also show that replacement therapy reverses the condition in mouse models in about 24 hours and may even prevent it.
JUPITER, FL -- Jan. 8, 2020 -- A sophisticated new screening platform developed by scientists at Scripps Research has enabled them to discover a set of drug-like compounds, including an ingredient found in sore throat lozenges, that may powerfully protect brain cells from dangerous stresses found in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Your fingerprints stay the same all your life. But what about the "fingerprint" of microbial strains that are shared in the guts of childhood twins?
Using a genomics strain-tracking bioinformatics tool developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers investigated whether those shared bacterial strains remain stable and resilient to changes in diet or environment after adult twins -- who had lived together for decades -- began to live apart.
Want to sway the opinion of climate deniers? Start by acknowledging and respecting people's beliefs. That's one of four suggestions a Stanford researcher unearthed in a review of the psychology behind why some people reject climate change despite knowledge or access to the facts.
Only a tiny minority of people at risk for an opioid overdose actually are prescribed a drug that could save their lives, a new study suggests. And the odds of having a dose of the rescue drug were very low among some of the most at-risk groups, including those who had already survived a previous opioid overdose.