Culture
Sometimes toxins, such as hazardous wastes and industrial byproducts, seep into groundwater, the source of our drinking water. One such pollutant is perchlorate, a chemical compound used in rocket fuels, fireworks, fertilizers and other materials. The compound is thought to contribute to health issues in humans such as hypothyroidism, the decreased production of hormones from the thyroid gland, which can impact development.
People respond very differently to infection with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). While some patients develop no symptoms at all, others will develop severe disease and may even die. For this reason, there is an urgent need for 'biomarkers', quantifiable biological characteristics which could provide a reliable means of predicting disease progression and severity. A research team led by Prof. Dr.
Researchers have used an unmanned aerial system (or drone) to gather data on schooling juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Maine.
This pilot study tested whether a drone could keep up with the tuna while also taking photographs that captured physical details of this fast-moving fish. The drone was equipped with a high-resolution digital still image camera. Results show that drones can capture images of both individual fish and schools. They may be a useful tool for remotely monitoring behavior and body conditions of the elusive fish.
An indoor residual spray made by combining a type of volcanic glass with water showed effective control of mosquitoes that carry malaria, according to a new study. The findings could be useful in reducing disease-carrying mosquito populations - and the risk of malaria - in Africa.
Antibiotic resistance surveillance in the Philippines has moved into the genomic era, enabling better tracking of dangerous bacteria. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance (CGPS housed at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and The Big Data Institute (BDI), University of Oxford), and the Philippine Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), set up local DNA sequencing and analysis of drug resistant bacteria in the Philippines.
Spain is one of the European countries besides the UK and Italy that was particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic in March. Early on, it was not possible to predict the extent of the outbreak. The first case in Spain was a German tourist who brought the virus to La Gomera in the Canary Islands at the end of January; a second case, this time a British tourist, was identified on Mallorca on February 10. Three days later, the first patient in Spain died of COVID-19 (however it was diagnosed later on postmortem)- followed by a rapidly rising death toll.
For more than 40 years, scientists and commercial companies have been recreating human skin in laboratories around the world. Yet all of these products lack important aspects of normal skin--hair, nerves, and fat.
To answer a question crucial to technologies such as energy conversion, a team of researchers at the University of Michigan, Purdue University and the University of Liverpool in the U.K. have figured out a way to measure how many "hot charge carriers"--for example, electrons with extra energy--are present in a metal nanostructure.
A new study published in Economic Modelling by researchers at Ca' Foscari University and CMCC shows that owning and using an Air Conditioner greatly increases the electricity bills of households, with important implications for the energy poverty of the less well-off.
Germany was not hit as hard by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as many other European countries. The reason for this is that the wave of infection reached Germany later, that the authorities were warned by the situation in Italy and Spain and at an early stage ordered a lockdown and conducted extensive testing. Up to June 2, 2020, there were 182,028 cases of COVID-19 and 8,522 deaths. As in other countries, dialysis patients were at high risk, due to the fact that they often are of older age, have more comorbidities and, of course, suffer from an impaired immune system.
Cystic fibrosis is the most frequent severe inherited disorder worldwide. Every year, hundreds of families are confronted with this diagnosis - and to date, there is no cure for this disease that mainly affects the respiratory system. Besides supportive treatments, a lung transplant is often the only option to save a patient's live. Researchers of the Universities of Münster and Regensburg have now discovered a novel disease that might lead to a better understanding of cystic fibrosis and new treatment options in the future.
Early data from a clinical study suggest that blocking the Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) protein provided clinical benefit to a small group of patients with severe COVID-19. Researchers observed that the off-label use of the cancer drug acalabrutinib, a BTK inhibitor that is approved to treat several blood cancers, was associated with reduced respiratory distress and a reduction in the overactive immune response in most of the treated patients.
Editorial: COVID-19 Pandemic Likely to Result in Lasting Changes to Medical School Curricula
The drug acalabrutinib, FDA-approved for the treatment of several types of B cell cancers, improved the oxygenation levels and decreased molecular markers of inflammation in a majority of 19 patients hospitalized for the treatment of severe COVID-19, according to a new study by Mark Roschewski and colleagues. The drug was administered to 11 patients on supplemental oxygen and 8 patients on mechanical ventilation over a 10-to-14-day course of treatment.
Researchers at the University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have been hard at work studying the solar corona, the outermost atmosphere of the sun that expands into interplanetary space. The properties of the solar corona are a consequence of the Sun's complex magnetic field, which is produced in the solar interior and extends outward into space.