Culture

OKLAHOMA CITY AND DENMARK - Campylobacter infection, one of the most common foodborne illnesses in the Western world, can also be spread through sexual contact, according to a new research discovery by an OU Hudson College of Public Health faculty member, working in conjunction with colleagues in Denmark.

Despite the increasing frequency and severity of floods, storms, wildfires and other natural hazards, some firms in disaster-prone areas prepare while others do not.

That issue was examined in a new study by Jennifer Oetzel, professor, American University and Chang Hoon Oh, William & Judy Docking Professor of Strategy, University of Kansas published in the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ).

The human body is constantly exposed to various environmental actors, from viruses to bacteria to fungi, but most of these microbial organisms provoke little or no response from our skin, which is charged with monitoring and protecting from external dangers.

Until now, researchers weren't quite sure how that happened -- and why our skin wasn't constantly alarmed and inflamed.

For decades scientists have been puzzled by the formation of rare hyper-enriched gold deposits in places like Ballarat in Australia, Serra Palada in Brazil, and Red Lake in Ontario. While such deposits typically form over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, these "ultrahigh-grade" deposits can form in years, month, or even days. So how do they form so quickly?

Business shutdowns reduce COVID-19 deaths, though with rapidly diminishing returns, with study of Italian lockdowns estimating they saved over 9,400 lives in under a month.

Neurotic personalities found the pandemic most traumatic, while agreeable and conscientious personalities offered protection from the pandemic's negative impacts.

Using magnets, a collaborative group have furthered our understanding of chirality.

Their research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on April 28, 2021.

Chirality is the lack of symmetry in matter. Human hands, for example, express chirality. A mirror image of your right hand differs from your left, giving it two distinguishable chiral states.

Chirality is an important issue in a myriad of scientific fields, ranging from high-energy physics to biology.

New York, NY (May 21, 2021) --Women who were highly exposed to ultra-fine particles in air pollution during their pregnancy were more likely to have children who developed asthma, according to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in May. This is the first time asthma has been linked with prenatal exposure to this type of air pollution, which is named for its tiny size and which is not regulated or routinely monitored in the United States.

More than 100 kg of highly toxic uranium (U) and plutonium (Pu) was dispersed in the form of tiny 'hot' radioactive particles after the British detonated nine atomic bombs in remote areas of South Australia, including Maralinga.

Scientists say that these radioactive particles persist in soils to this day, more than 60 years after the detonations. Previously, we had limited understanding of how Pu was released from these "hot" particles into the environment for uptake by wildlife around Maralinga.

Scientists from Hokkaido University have discovered a novel defensive response to SARS-CoV-2 that involves the viral pattern recognition receptor RIG-I. Upregulating expression of this protein could strengthen the immune response in COPD patients.

The issue of concern was that the Escherichia coli (E. coli) genome, consisting of 4.6 million base pairs of a single circular DNA, is too large to manipulate following the extraction and transfer to other bacteria.

"Abominable mystery" -- the early origin and evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants) was such described by Charles Robert Darwin. So far, we still have not completely solved the problem, and do not know how the earth evolved into such a colorful and blooming world.

Sloughed off skin and bodily fluids are things most people would prefer to avoid.

But for marine biologist like Cheryl Lewis Ames, Associate Professor of Applied Marine Biology in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at Tohoku University (Japan), such remnants of life have become a magical key to detecting the unseen.

Any organism living in the ocean will inevitably leave behind traces containing their DNA - environmental DNA (eDNA) - detectable in water samples collected from the ocean

Researchers at the University of Zurich show how climate mitigation scenarios can be improved by taking into account that the financial system can play both an enabling or a hampering role on the path to a sustainable economic system.

Just half a degree Celsius less warming would save economic losses of Chinese railway infrastructure by approximately $0.63 billion per year, according to a new paper published by a collaborative research team based in Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.