Culture
The virus that gives rise to COVID-19 is the third coronavirus to threaten humanity in the past two decades. It also happens to move more efficiently from person to person than either SARS or MERS did. The first African case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Egypt in mid-February of 2020. Four weeks later, the first lockdowns began across Africa.
Even the mundane act of swallowing requires a well-coordinated dance of more than 30 muscles of the mouth. The loss of function of even one of these, due to disease or injury, can be extremely debilitating. For these people, nerve stimulation offers a ray of hope to regain some of their lost oral function.
A recent University of Arizona College of Pharmacy study suggests that Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) may be a valuable means of assesing clinical skills while providing learning experiences for pharmacy students in community pharmacy settings. While the OSCEs were designed to assess health care professionals in a clinical setting, there was limited data on its use in testing skills required in community pharmacies, until now.
Directing a meeting, dialing up an old acquaintance, dictating the perfect tuna salad sandwich across a drive-through window. For business and for pleasure, human beings are in constant communication.
Our proclivity for socialization is lifelong, equally prominent in the lives of adolescents and adults. A recent study determined key differences in the ways that various age groups communicate, as well as one conversational component that stands the test of time: friendship. Specifically, bonds between individuals who identify as female.
A University of Arkansas researcher and international colleagues found that employed individuals, on average, are 35.3% more likely to be infected with the flu virus.
The findings confirm a long-held assumption about one prevalent way illness spreads and could influence government policy on public health and several issues for private companies, from optimal design and management of physical work spaces to policy decisions about sick leave and remote work.
Wine grapes are particularly finicky when it comes to their environment. For instance, heatwaves and droughts lead to earlier berry ripening and lackluster wine. And these types of episodes are expected to intensify as Earth's climate changes. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have tweaked growing conditions for Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to slow down their ripening, which increased the levels of compounds associated with wine's characteristic floral and fruity notes.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, attacks nerve cells known as motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, gradually leading to paralysis. The loss of function of an important gene, C9orf72, may affect communication between motor neurons and muscles in people with this disease.
Na3V2(PO4)2F3(NVPF), a cathode material used in sodium-ion batteries (SIB), features ultrafast Na+ migration and high structural stability because of its three-dimensional open framework. However, the poor intrinsic electronic conductivity of NVPF often leads to high polarization, low Coulombic efficiency, and unsatisfactory rate performance, which hinder its commercial application.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in developing a method to label mRNA molecules, and thereby follow, in real time, their path through cells, using a microscope - without affecting their properties or subsequent activity. The breakthrough could be of great importance in facilitating the development of new RNA-based medicines.
Male jackdaws don't stick around to console their mate after a traumatic experience, new research shows.
Jackdaws usually mate for life and, when breeding, females stay at the nest with eggs while males gather food.
Rival males sometimes visit the nest and attack the lone female, attempting to mate by force.
In the new study, University of Exeter researchers expected males to console their partner after these incidents by staying close and engaging in social behaviours like preening their partner's feathers.
How common COVID-19 is among infants may depend on the degree of the pandemic virus circulating in a community, a new study finds.
Our universe is expanding, but our two main ways to measure how fast this expansion is happening have resulted in different answers. For the past decade, astrophysicists have been gradually dividing into two camps: one that believes that the difference is significant, and another that thinks it could be due to errors in measurement.
Osaka, Japan - A team of scientists led by the Department of Applied Physics at Osaka University, the Department of Physics and Electronics at Osaka Prefecture University, and the Department of Materials Chemistry at Nagoya University used photoinduced force microscopy to map out the forces acting on quantum dots in three dimensions. By eliminating sources of noise, the team was able to achieve subnanometer precision for the first time ever, which may lead to new advances in photocatalysts and optical tweezers.
Receiving a simple thank you, spending time with peers and further developing their expertise, are all factors that make veterinarians feel good at work, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Adelaide.
In the study published by Vet Record, researchers investigated the positive side of veterinary work and specifically what brings vets pleasure in their job.
Tsukuba, Japan - Depression is a worldwide problem, with serious consequences for individual health and the economy, and rapid and effective screening tools are thus urgently needed to counteract its increasing prevalence. Now, researchers from Japan have found that artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to detect signs of depression.
In a study published this month in BMJ Open, researchers from University of Tsukuba have revealed that an AI system using machine learning could predict psychological distress among workers, which is a risk factor for depression.