Culture
Physician-scientists specializing in heart failure wanted to know: if their heart transplant patients contract COVID-19, would they have a different experience than the general public or others who are also immunosuppressed?
A team of Michigan Medicine Frankel Cardiovascular Center researchers, led by Matthew Konerman, M.D., identified 13 patients who had a previous heart transplant and were admitted to one of two hospitals in southeast Michigan in March or April for COVID-19 symptoms. All were black males.
Scientists have discovered new evidence for active volcanism next door to some of the most densely populated areas of Europe. The study 'crowd-sourced' GPS monitoring data from antennae across western Europe to track subtle movements in the Earth's surface, thought to be caused by a rising subsurface mantle plume. The work is published in Geophysical Journal International.
The Eifel region lies roughly between the cities of Aachen, Trier, and Koblenz, in west-central Germany. It is home to many ancient volcanic features, including the circular lakes known as 'maars'.
Information about the new COVID-19 infection is constantly evolving based on what clinicians see firsthand. One constant, so far, is that the older population tends to fare worse than younger folks with this disease.
A team led by Daniel Goldstein, M.D., already studies aging and the influenza viral infection, and took this spring away from their lab to figure out if any of their other research, and other research they regularly read, could be helpful in the fight against COVID-19.
The effects of human presence on the social relationships of wild animals have rarely been studied. Even if the animals are not hunted or killed, increasing contact with humans could have profound indirect impacts. This is because proximity to humans could disturb the animals' ability to perform at tasks that are important for survival - such as feeding together or rearing young.
Alcohol use disorders are associated with high social welfare and health care costs - but what causes them? A new Finnish study looks at the magnitude and reasons behind the economic burden alcohol use disorders have on society.
Earlier studies have shown that alcohol use disorders lead to various health and social problems, which cause an increase in the need and use of various services. However, the magnitude and distribution of the related costs have not been studied before.
Resistance to antibiotics has become a serious public health problem. Hospital infections, prostheses or surgical implants that become infected and do not respond to treatment are a real challenge to the research community, which has been seeking alternatives for effectively eliminating these bacteria for years. In 2012 the researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Vladimir Baulin and Sergey Pogodin, opened a line of research to develop antibacterial models that were inspired by insects.
When humans get infected by pathogenic bacteria, the body's immune system tries to eliminate the intruders. One way of doing this is by launching an inflammatory response - a cascade of events that includes the expression of protective proteins, the activation of immune cells, and a process of controlled cell death when infected cells can't be saved.
Researchers at the Nanoscience Center and at the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have demonstrated that new distance-based machine learning methods, developed in the University of Jyväskylä, are capable of predicting structures and atomic dynamics of nanoparticles reliably. The new methods are significantly faster than traditional simulation methods used for nanoparticle research and will facilitate more efficient explorations of particle-particle reactions and particles' functionality in their environment.
Studies by Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), have provided a new understanding into the roles two essential amino acids play in metabolic health, which may help scientists in the fight against obesity.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) have found that people who hold negative opinions of genetically-modified (GM) food are likely to feel the same about nano-enabled food - food with nano-additives to enhance flavour, nutrition or prolong shelf life.
For the first time, researchers at The Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR) have identified and described a new and unique subset of human cells that are involved in the immune response against hepatitis B (HBV) infection. The discovery could help develop new treatments for HBV and inform future vaccine design.
Currently, HBV vaccination protects against subsequent infection through immunological memory - the vaccine 'trains' the immune system to eliminate pathogens when the body is exposed to the virus.
Some of the world's largest, most spectacular and unheralded mammals are silently slipping away, species like Tibetan wild yaks and Patagonia's huemul, Bhutan's takin and Vietnam's saola. Even Africa's three species of zebras and wildebeest have suffered massive reductions over the last several decades.
Long-term research is important to understand how land management impacts runoff and erosion, which pose serious threats to soil and water quality worldwide. To better understand these processes in agricultural landscapes of the southern Great Plains of the United States, eight 1.6 -ha watersheds were established and instrumented in 1976 at the USDA-ARS Grazinglands Research Laboratory in El Reno, Oklahoma.
The world's waterfront cities should not be deluged with apparently green developments because they still carry the potential to cause damage to the marine and coastal environment, scientists have warned.
Coastal urban areas all over the world have expanded at an increasingly fast pace in recent years, with developers innovating a variety of ways to try and minimise their impact on natural habitats.
In contrast to the prehistoric remains of the Near East, the megalithic monuments of Arabia remain largely unknown. These monumental structures, made of dry stone walls, still hold many secrets in terms of their construction, function and chronology. An international collaboration (1) of scientists from France, Saudi Arabia and Italy (2), led by Olivia Munoz, a researcher at the CNRS, have discovered a 35-metre long triangular platform in the oasis of Dûmat al-Jandal (northern Saudi Arabia).