Culture

Until recently, data on criminal victimization did not include information on the status--immigrant or citizen--of respondents. In a recent study, researchers used new data that include respondents' status to explore the association between citizenship status and risk of victimization. They found that for many, a person's foreign-born status, but not their acquired U.S. citizenship, protects against criminal victimization.

HOUSTON - (June 22, 2021) - We can't detect them yet, but radio signals from distant solar systems could provide valuable information about the characteristics of their planets.

A paper by Rice University scientists describes a way to better determine which exoplanets are most likely to produce detectable signals based on magnetosphere activity on exoplanets' previously discounted nightsides.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Sunday church service in Amish country is more than just belting out hymns, reading Bible passages and returning home an hour later to catch a football game or nap.

It's an all-day affair: A host family welcomes church members - between 20 to 40 families - into their home to worship and have fellowship with one another from morning to night. Church is a biweekly activity; each gathering takes place in a member's home and is a key ritual in the Amish community which values in-person communication.

Cities must become fully car-free in order to be liveable in the future, according to the UCL experts behind a new modelling report looking at urban car use.

The experts have called for a shift in collective behaviour to reduce the number of private cars in cities. Globally, the number of cars produced is increasing faster than the population; 80m cars were produced in 2019, while the population increased by 78m.

A new study by Penn State researchers, who looked at emergency room admissions across the U.S. over a recent five-year period in a novel way, suggests that the agriculture industry is even more dangerous than previously believed.

Interstate highway systems and networks of dense urban roads typically receive top billing on maps, in infrastructure legislation and in travelers' daily commuting routes. However, more than 80% of all US roads are considered low-volume roads - defined as those that carry fewer than 1000 vehicles per day.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Researchers report that they have developed a method to combine three brain-imaging techniques to more precisely capture the timing and location of brain responses to a stimulus. Their study is the first to combine the three widely used technologies for simultaneous imaging of brain activity. The work is reported in the journal Human Brain Mapping.

The new "trimodal" approach combines functional MRI, electroencephalography and a third technique, called EROS, that tracks the activity of neurons near the surface of the brain using near-infrared light.

Rare-earth elements are in many everyday products, such as smart phones, LED lights and batteries. However, only a few locations have large enough deposits worth mining, resulting in global supply chain tensions. So, there's a push toward recycling them from non-traditional sources, such as waste from burning coal -- fly ash. Now, researchers in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology report a simple method for recovering these elements from coal fly ash using an ionic liquid.

Results of the MOSAiC expedition show: the expected recovery of the ozone layer may fail to happen anytime soon, if global warming is not slowed down

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a technology for cost-effective surveillance of the global spread of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The technique is presented in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Since the onset of the pandemic, thousands of viral genomes have been sequenced to reconstruct the evolution and global spread of the coronavirus. This is important for the identification of particularly concerning variants that are more contagious, pathogenic, or resistant to the existing vaccines.

The origins of seven types of kidney cancer, including several rare subtypes, have been identified by researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and Oncode Institute. The findings confirm that these cancers have their origin in specific forms of developmental cells present in the maturing fetus.

Chronic psychosocial stress--which involves a pathway called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis)--may contribute to the development of Alzheimer's disease. A new review published in Biological Reviews describes how environmental and genetic factors can impact individuals' HPA axis, and ultimately their risk of Alzheimer's disease.

In a study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, investigators developed and validated a genetic risk score for predicting the onset and severity of the most common type of scoliosis in adolescents--called adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). AIS causes spinal deformities in as many as 3% of youth, and because its heritability is high, genetic data could help improve detection.

Viral mutations during the COVID-19 pandemic could cause the SARS-CoV-2 virus to become more dangerous. A new study published in Genetic Epidemiology has examined the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 viruses that have infected patients, looking for links between different mutations and patient deaths.

New research published in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine indicates that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, produces microRNAs that can have impacts on infected cells. MicroRNAs are genetic molecules that prevent the production of particular proteins by binding to and destroying messenger RNAs that code for those proteins.