Culture

NEW YORK, NY--While there was extensive use of drug repurposing throughout the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was substantial heterogeneity over the types of drugs used for treatment purposes globally. Some drugs, including hydroxychloroquine, saw sharp declines in use, while adjunctive therapies grew into a more relied upon method for patient management.

In a number of cases, scientific discovery overturned misconceptions proclaimed via press conferences and social media.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Young people with diverse gender identities may be bullied and victimized up to three times more often than peers who identify as male or female, a new study of more than 4,464 adolescents in Illinois found.

The students were part of a statewide survey of eighth- through 12th-grade youths in Illinois schools.

Can a protein found in a mosquito lead to a better understanding of the workings of our own brains? Prof. Ofer Yizhar and his team in the Weizmann Institute of Science's Neurobiology Department took a light-sensitive protein derived from mosquitos and used it to devise an improved method for investigating the messages that are passed from neuron to neuron in the brains of mice. This method, reported today in Neuron, could potentially help scientists solve age-old cerebral mysteries that could pave the way for new and improved therapies to treat neurological and psychiatric conditions.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - As climate change threatens global food security, researchers at Michigan State University are building better beans crucial to human nutrition by tapping into the genetics of the more heat-resistant tepary bean.

Severe symptoms of COVID-19, leading often to death, are thought to result from the patient's own acute immune response rather than from damage inflicted directly by the virus. Immense research efforts are therefore invested in figuring out how the virus manages to mount an effective invasion while throwing the immune system off course. A new study, published today in Nature, reveals a multipronged strategy that the virus employs to ensure its quick and efficient replication, while avoiding detection by the immune system. The joint labor of the research groups of Dr.

New science about the fate of freshwater ecosystems released today by the journal Sustainability finds that only 17 percent of rivers globally are both free-flowing and within protected areas, leaving many of these highly-threatened systems¬--and the species that rely on them --at risk.

Quick: Pick your three favorite fast-food restaurants.

If you're like many people, McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King may come to mind--even if you much prefer In-N-Out or Chick-fil-A.

Autoimmune diseases have something in common with horses, bachelor's degrees and daily flossing habits: women are more likely to have them.

One reason for autoimmune diseases' prevalence in women may be sex-based differences in inflammation. In a new study, West Virginia University researcher Jonathan Busada investigated how sex hormones affect stomach inflammation in males and females. He found that androgens--or male sex hormones--may help to keep stomach inflammation in check.

Brown bears that are more inclined to grate and rub against trees have more offspring and more mates, according to a University of Alberta study. The results suggest there might be a fitness component to the poorly understood behaviour.

"As far as we know, all bears do this dance, rubbing their back up against the trees, stomping the feet and leaving behind odours of who they are, what they are, what position they're in, and possibly whether they are related," said Mark Boyce, an ecologist in the Department of Biological Sciences.

The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) has helped Gaia achieve millimagnitude (mmag) precision in photometry, according to a study led by researchers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Beijing Normal University (BNU).

Their study was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The polar vortex is a large area of upper-atmosphere cyclonic air circulation surrounding both poles. It is bounded by the polar jet stream and its associated cold air is usually confined to the polar regions. Within the Antarctic circle, and southern polar vortex, ozone quantities are the lowest, globally. A research published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, led by Dr.

Touchscreens are notoriously difficult to type on. Since we can't feel the keys, we rely on the sense of sight to move our fingers to the right places and check for errors, a combination of efforts we can't pull off at the same time. To really understand how people type on touchscreens, researchers at Aalto University and the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) have created the first artificial intelligence model that predicts how people move their eyes and fingers while typing.

Gold leaf -- gold metal hammered into thin sheets -- is used by artists and crafters to gild picture frames, artwork and clothing. Despite its luxurious appearance, the material is affordable and available at most craft stores. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have developed gold leaf electrodes that, in combination with a CRISPR-based assay, could sensitively detect human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA in human samples. The method also could be modified to diagnose other viral infections.

Coal combustion by power plants and industry pollutes the air, causing many governments to implement mitigation actions and encourage cleaner forms of energy. Now, a new study in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology indicates that in China, indoor air pollution from residential coal burning causes a disproportionate number of premature deaths from exposure to tiny, inhalable pollutants known as PM2.5.

Trained to see patterns by analyzing thousands of chest X-rays, a computer program predicted with up to 80 percent accuracy which COVID-19 patients would develop life-threatening complications within four days, a new study finds.

Developed by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the program used several hundred gigabytes of data gleaned from 5,224 chest X-rays taken from 2,943 seriously ill patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the infections.