Culture
As the COVID-19 pandemic exploded across the globe in early 2020, the world's leaders were faced with a flurry of tough moral dilemmas. Should schools and businesses shut down, and if so, for how long? Who should receive scarce resources, such as ventilators, when there wouldn't be enough for everyone? Should people be required to practice contact tracing to control the spread of infection? Should life-saving medicine be held for a country's own citizens or shared with those in greater need?
Nanosized molecules of a particular chemical element can inhibit the formation of plaque in the brain tissues. This new discovery by researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, in collaboration with researchers in Croatia and Lithuania, provides renewed hope for novel treatments of, for instance, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in the long run.
"This is indeed a very important step that may form the basis of new and efficient treatments of neurodegenerative diseases in the future," says Professor Ludmilla Morozova-Roche at Umeå University.
Economists at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, economists found passers-by often donated more when paying via a digital platforms like apps, QR codes, PayPal and even Bitcoin, compared to the centuries' old payment method of loose coins.
Using data from the online platform The Busking Project, the study analysed individual payments to over three and half thousand active buskers from 121 countries to predict the characteristics of performers who were more likely to receive online donations.
There is a significant discrepancy between theoretical and observed amounts of lithium in our universe. This is known as the cosmological lithium problem, and it has plagued cosmologists for decades. Now, researchers have reduced this discrepancy by around 10%, thanks to a new experiment on the nuclear processes responsible for the creation of lithium. This research could point the way to a more complete understanding of the early universe.
One year after infection by SARS-CoV-2, most people maintain anti-Spike antibodies regardless of the severity of their symptoms, according to a study with healthcare workers co-led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) and the Jordi Gol Institute (IDIAP JG), with the collaboration of the Daniel Bravo Andreu Private Foundation. The results suggest that vaccine-generated immunity will also be long-lasting.
The eruption of the Laacher See volcano in the Eifel, a low mountain range in western Germany, is one of Central Europe's largest eruptions over the past 100,000 years. The eruption ejected around 20 cubic kilometers of tephra and the eruption column is believed to have reached at least 20 kilometers in height, comparable to the Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1991. Technical advances in combination with tree remains buried in the course of the eruption now enabled an international research team to accurately date the event.
Scientists at the University of Helsinki have found an essential factor from the extracellular matrix that regulates functionality of the breast tissue for instance during pregnancy.
Extracellular matrix (ECM) has previously been recognised as an important element for the growth of various epithelial cells, but rather as a scaffold. A new study shows that ECM can also regulate the function of epithelial cells.
An important function of our vision is to segregate relevant figures from the irrelevant background. When we look at a visual stimulus, it drives a cascade of neural activity from low-level to higher level visual brain areas. The higher areas also provide feedback to the lower areas, where figures elicit more activity than the background, as if figures in the brain are highlighted with extra activity.
The tiny beetle Triamyxa coprolithica is the first-ever insect to be described from fossil faeces. The animal the researchers have to thank for the excellent preservation was probably the dinosaur ancestor Silesaurus opolensis, which 230 million years ago ingested the small beetle in large numbers.
MINNEAPOLIS - A new study suggests that even when differences in socioeconomic status are taken into consideration, Black people with multiple sclerosis (MS) may be more negatively impacted by the disease than white people with MS. The research is published in the June 30, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study found that Black people with MS had lower scores on certain measures of neurological health, like dexterity and walking tests and showed more evidence of disease progression on brain scans.
Researchers have found that eating disorder behaviors, such as binge-eating, alter the brain's reward response process and food intake control circuitry, which can reinforce these behaviors. Understanding how eating disorder behaviors and neurobiology interact can shed light on why these disorders often become chronic and could aid in the future development of treatments. The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean has long been considered by researchers to have been the 'first international age,' especially the period from 1600-1200 BC, when powerful empires from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt set up large networks of subordinate client kingdoms in the Near East. These empires fought, traded, and corresponded with one another, and ancient texts from the period reveal rich economic and social networks that enabled the movement of people and goods.
University of Leeds news
Embargo: Wednesday 30 June, 7pm GMT
Bereavement care lacking for ethnic minorities
Grieving friends and relatives from ethnic minority backgrounds are suffering from a lack of appropriate help to cope with the loss of a loved one, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers say.
And the scarcity of data on the services that are available means providers do not know how support should be delivered to ensure they are suitable for different groups of people.
A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital examines the associations between wealth mobility and long-term cardiovascular health. The multidisciplinary study borrowed methodology from the field of economics to analyze longitudinal changes in wealth. The team's results indicate that negative wealth mobility is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events, while positive wealth changes are associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular events.
Research at Baylor College of Medicine, the Texas Heart Institute and collaborating institutions is moving a novel promising gene therapy to treat heart failure closer to the clinic.