Culture
Traffic noise leads to inaccuracies and delays in the development of song learning in young birds. They also suffer from a suppressed immune system, which is an indicator of chronic stress. A new study by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and colleagues shows that young zebra finches, just like children, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of noise because of its potential to interfere with learning at a critical developmental stage.
New Orleans, LA - Research conducted by an international team of scientists discovered a mechanism that leads to Herceptin resistance, representing a significant clinical obstacle to successfully treating HER2-positive breast cancer. They also identified a new approach to potentially overcome it. The work is published online in Nature Communications, available here.
People who work nontraditional work hours, such as 11 p.m.-7 a.m., or the "graveyard" shift, are more likely than people with traditional daytime work schedules to develop a chronic medical condition -- shift work sleep disorder -- that disrupts their sleep. According to researchers at the University of Missouri, people who develop this condition are also three times more likely to be involved in a vehicle accident.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, a trio of science communication researchers proposes to treat the Covid-19 misinformation "infodemic" with the same methods used to halt epidemics.
"We believe the intertwining spreads of the virus and of misinformation and disinformation require an approach to counteracting deceptions and misconceptions that parallels epidemiologic models by focusing on three elements: real-time surveillance, accurate diagnosis, and rapid response," the authors write in a Perspective article.
New research led by the University of Kent has found that people fail to recognise the role of factory farming in causing infectious diseases.
The study published by Appetite demonstrates that people blame wild animal trade or lack of government preparation for epidemic outbreaks as opposed to animal agriculture and global meat consumption.
HOUSTON - Cytokine-activated natural killer (NK) cells derived from donated umbilical cord blood, combined with an investigational bispecific antibody targeting CD16a and CD30 known as AFM13, displayed potent anti-tumor activity against CD30+ lymphoma cells, according to a new preclinical study from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Boston - Pregnant women with symptomatic COVID-19 have a higher risk of intensive care unit admissions, mechanical ventilation and death compared to non-pregnant reproductive age women. Increases in preterm birth and still birth have also been observed in pregnancies complicated by the viral infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that people who are pregnant may choose to be vaccinated at their own discretion with their healthcare provider.
Despite having been driven nearly to extinction, the California condor has a high degree of genetic diversity that bodes well for its long-term survival, according to a new analysis by University of California researchers.
Nearly 40 years ago, the state's wild condor population was down to a perilous 22. That led to inbreeding that could have jeopardized the population's health and narrowed the bird's genetic diversity, which can reduce its ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions.
TORONTO, ON - A team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Toronto has shown that Anolis lizards, or anoles, are able to breathe underwater with the aid of a bubble clinging to their snouts.
Anoles are a diverse group of lizards found throughout the tropical Americas. Some anoles are stream specialists, and these semi-aquatic species frequently dive underwater to avoid predators, where they can remain submerged for as long as 18 minutes.
The stock market is a staple of business news, but it is unclear how meaningful stock prices are to the larger economy. Do changes in stock prices directly affect shorter-term consumption, or are they just leading indicators for subsequent economic activity? The U.S. Federal Reserve, for its part, usually seems to act as if stock-based wealth does help drive spending and employment. But is this correct?
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- May 13, 2021 -- In the largest study of the associations between smoking and cardiovascular disease on cognitive function, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, found both impair the ability to learn and memorize; and that the effects of smoking are more pronounced among females, while males are more impaired by cardiovascular disease.
The results appear today in the journal Scientific Reports.
College Park, Md. - Companies have often considered app adoption among their customers to have a positive impact on customer spending. According to new research from marketing professor P.K. Kannan at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, higher app adoption among hotel chains could be linked to lower spending among lower-level loyalty customers, who are more likely to use apps to get the best deals.
Viruses require the resources of an infected cell to replicate and then infect further cells, and transfer to other individuals. One essential step in the viral life cycle is the production of new viral proteins based on the instructions in the viral RNA genome. Following these construction plans, the cell's own protein synthesis machine, called the ribosome, produces the viral proteins.
First co-author, Junior Research Associate of the Rheological and Thermochemical Research Lab Richard Djimasbe, comments, "To obtain bitumen as a half-solid product from heavy oil, you have to extract light fractions, and the rest is non-oxidized bitumen. Because of the relatively low ratio of light fractions in heavy oil, it's a simple and cheap way of bitumen production. The method allows for rational use of both heavy oil and light oil."
A large-scale randomised trial of annual screening for ovarian cancer, led by UCL researchers, did not succeed in reducing deaths from the disease, despite one of the screening methods tested detecting cancers earlier.
Results from the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) have been published in a report in the medical journal The Lancet.