Culture
COVID-19 Reflections: Severe lockdowns and Stay-at-Home orders have been hallmark of the national and global response to this Pandemic. They have been imposed with little precedent and scant evidence of their effectiveness as opposed to less restrictive social distancing measures.
Once you crush, cut or fracture a rock, there are no do-overs. It's a fact that means geoscientists have to be particularly careful about which rock samples they can sacrifice to physics experiments versus which ones should stay on the shelf.
A team of geoscience researchers from The University of Texas at Austin is working to change that with a new method for creating digital replicas of rock samples that is more accurate and simpler to use than other techniques.
DALLAS, JUNE 8, 2020 -- Taking blood pressure medication as prescribed helped even the frailest elderly people (65 and older) live longer, and the healthiest older people had the biggest survival boost, according to a large study in northern Italy published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.
Biological tissues have evolved over millennia to be perfectly optimized for their specific functions. Take cartilage as an example. It's a compliant, elastic tissue that's soft enough to cushion joints, but strong enough to resist compression and withstand the substantial load bearing of our bodies: key for running, jumping, and our daily wear and tear.
Vaccines are notoriously difficult to transport to remote or dangerous places, as they spoil when not refrigerated. Formulations are safe between 2°C and 8°C, but at other temperatures the proteins start to unravel, making the vaccines ineffective. As a result, millions of children around the world miss out on life-saving inoculations.
However, scientists have now found a way to prevent warmed-up vaccines from degrading. By encasing protein molecules in a silica shell, the structure remains intact even when heated to 100°C, or stored at room temperature for up to three years.
Already in the 19th century Charles Darwin recognized that the number of male gametes - pollen for plants, sperm for animals - is highly variable among individuals and species. At first sight a high number of male gametes seems beneficial for the competition among males to produce more offspring. However, many domesticated species have a reduced number of male gametes. In theory it might be advantageous to reduce the cost of producing male gametes, for example when the rate of self-fertilization or inbreeding is high and fewer male gametes are necessary for successful reproduction.
Protected areas across the globe are effectively keeping invasive animals at bay, but the large majority of them are at risk of invasions, finds a China-UK research team involving UCL.
The research, led by the Chinese Academy of Science and published in Nature Communications, show that for most protected areas, there is an invasive animal species living less than 10km away that is well suited to the protected area's environment.
Advances in the Production of Minor Ginsenosides Using Microorganisms and Their Enzymes - BIO Integration
https://bio-integration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/bioi20200007.pdf
Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this review article the author Almando Geraldi from the Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia considers the advances in the production of minor ginsenosides using microorganisms and their enzymes.
Buried deep within the varied properties of metals, there is a fundamental question up for grabs: What makes it a metal? In other words, which properties are inherent to a metal and which are incidental?
Scientists at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, collaborating with an international group of researchers, have helped further define what constitutes a metal. In the process, they open the door for organic chemists to improve the synthesis of useful compounds.
The study appears on the cover of the journal Science on June 5.
A collaborative project between the Center for Genome Integrity, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), and the Dundee School of Life Sciences, the EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK) have screened almost 163,000 DNA mutations in 2,700 C. elegans roundworms to shed light on DNA damage. The results, published in Nature Communications, lead to the conclusion that mutation patterns seen in cancer are more complicated than we previously thought.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) analyse a genome-wide set of genetic variants in different individuals to see if any are associated with a trait or disease. Such studies are getting larger and larger and, in some cases, millions of participants are involved. This means that researchers can see smaller and smaller effects increasing the number of genes they can link to a disease or trait.
An investigation into one of the current great mysteries of astronomy has come to the fore thanks to a four-year observing campaign conducted at the Jodrell Bank Observatory.
Using the long-term monitoring capabilities of the iconic Lovell Telescope, an international team led by Jodrell Bank astronomers has been studying an object known as a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB), which emits very short duration bright radio pulses.
Failure to disclose organizational financial conflicts of interest by producers of Canadian clinical practice guidelines on medications is widespread, pointing to the need for reform, a new research paper highlights in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Most Canadian guideline producers who make recommendations on medications routinely receive industry funding, including from companies that produce drugs evaluated in the guidelines.
An educational video about hospice care can provide valuable information for patients with advanced cancer and their caregivers, improve perceptions of this quality form of care at the end of life, and increase its use. These are the findings of a study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society (ACS).
The researchers evaluated the NewAccess program, which is an Australian adaptation of the United Kingdom's IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) approach of delivering low intensity therapies for symptoms of depression and anxiety - and the results have underlined its effectiveness.
"The timeliness of this study is significant, as its findings tie in to current COVID-19 situation and service delivery," says Professor Michael Baigent, from the Department of Psychiatry at Flinders University.