Culture
Scientists have made major advances in understanding and developing treatments for many cancers by identifying genetic mutations that drive the disease. Now a team led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and the New York Genome Center (NYGC) has developed a machine learning technique for detecting other modifications to DNA that have a similar effect.
A new paper in the Journal of the European Economic Association, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that distrust generated by a 2011 CIA-led vaccination campaign ruse designed to catch Osama Bin Laden resulted in a significant vaccination rate decline in Pakistan.
About 42% of rural school districts in the U.S. offered fully in-person instruction as of February, compared with only 17% for urban districts, according to a new RAND Corporation survey of school district leaders. The opposite pattern held for fully remote learning: 29% of urban districts offered fully remote instruction compared with 10% of rural districts and 18% of suburban districts.
New research being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) held online this year, suggests that among girls a low body mass index (BMI) during childhood indicates a higher risk of developing anorexia nervosa as young adults, whereas a high BMI or overweight in childhood indicates a higher risk of bulimia nervosa.
DALLAS, May 10, 2021— Hospitalized COVID-19 patients with impaired first-phase ejection fraction were nearly 5 times more likely to die compared to patients with healthier measures of this early, often undetected sign of heart failure, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. First-phase ejection fraction is a measure of the left ventricular ejection fraction until the time of maximal ventricular contraction.
DALLAS, May 10, 2021 — In a small study, researchers found college athletes who contracted COVID-19 rarely had cardiac complications. Most had mild COVID symptoms that did not require treatment, and in a small percentage of those with abnormal cardiac testing, there was no evidence of heart damage on special imaging tests. All athletes returned to sports without any health concerns, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.
UK landowners and conservationists welcome wider-spread use of Gene Conservation Units (GCUs) to help protect some of the rarest plants and insects, research at the University of York has shown.
In particular the Great Yellow Bumblebee and the Mountain Ringlet Butterfly, which are at risk of further population decline, would benefit from Gene Conservation Units, currently only employed for forest trees and agricultural species or their relatives.
Low levels of serotonin in the brain are seen as a possible cause of depression and many antidepressants act by blocking a protein that transports serotonin away from the nerve cells. A brain imaging study at Karolinska Institutet now shows that the average level of the serotonin transporter increased in a group of 17 individuals who recovered from depression after cognitive behavioural therapy. The results are published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.
In 1884, Edwin Abbott wrote the novel Flatland: A Romance in Many Dimensions as a satire of Victorian hierarchy. He imagined a world that existed only in two dimensions, where the beings are 2D geometric figures. The physics of such a world is somewhat akin to that of modern 2D materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, which include tungsten disulfide (WS2), tungsten diselenide (WSe2), molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and molybdenum diselenide (MoSe2).
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (May 10, 2021) -- The Gulf of Guinea islands harbor an abundance of species found nowhere else on Earth. But for over 100 years, scientists have wondered whether or not a population of limbless, burrowing amphibians--known as caecilians--found on one of the islands is a single or multiple species.
Infertility affects females and males equally. In male infertility, azoospermia (a medical condition with no sperm in semen) is a major problem that prevents a couple from having a child. For the treatment of patients with azoospermia, testicular sperm extraction (TESE) is required to obtain mature sperms. When examined, histological specimens are typically given a score, called the Johnsen score, on a scale of 1 to 10, based on the histopathological features of the testis.
As humans, the weather where we live influences our energy consumption. In climates where weather shifts from hot summers to very cold winters, humans consume more energy since the body has to work harder to maintain temperature.
In much the same way, weather influences microbes such as bacteria and fungi in the soil. Seasonal fluctuations in soil temperature and moisture impact microbial activities that in turn impact soil carbon emissions and nutrient cycles.
BEER-SHEVA, Israel May 10, 2021 - Researchers from Ben-Gurion University (BGU), together with American and German colleagues, have developed new "molecular tweezers" to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their recently announced findings were published in Cell Chemical Biology.
For years, medical professionals have struggled with bacterial infections becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. These molecular tweezers may be the key to battling one of greatest public health issues of the 21st century.
Whether wastewater is full of "waste" is a matter of perspective.
"Why is it waste?" asked Zhen (Jason) He, professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
"It's organic materials," He said, and those can provide energy in a number of ways. Then there's the other valuable resource in wastewater.
Water.
Chinese researchers achieved 51.5dB nonreciprocal isolation in the atomic ensemble, which is the highest isolation ratio in the non-magnetic nonreciprocal field. They discussed the quantum noise problem in nonreciprocal devices for the first time.
The result was published on Nature Communications on April 22, 2021.