Culture
ATLANTA--Paid sick leave (PSL) mandates like those found in the federal government's Families First Coronavirus Response Act may be helping to slow the spread of COVID-19, according to a new study by health economists at Georgia State and Tulane universities.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN- May 29, 2020 - According to the National Autism Association, people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may experience sensory hypersensitivity. A University of Minnesota Medical School researcher recently published an article in Nature Communications that illustrates why that may be true by showing the differences in visual motion perception in ASD are accompanied by weaker neural suppression in the visual cortex of the brain.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Harm reduction strategies have proven effective for use of opioids, alcohol, and tobacco products. University at Buffalo and University of Michigan researchers say harm reduction techniques also have potential for cannabis users - but first, public health practitioners and organizations need to do a better job of making cannabis users aware of those strategies.
Researchers assessed harm reduction awareness by surveying nearly 500 participants at the 2019 Hash Bash, a popular marijuana advocacy event on the campus of the University of Michigan.
Farmers in Bangladesh achieved significantly higher yields and revenues by growing insect-resistant, genetically engineered eggplant, a new Cornell study has found.
The four genetically engineered (Bt) varieties yielded, on average, 19.6% more eggplant - known as brinjal in Bangladesh - than non-Bt varieties and earned growers 21.7% higher revenue, according to the study, published May 25 in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology.
A team of researchers led by Swansea University have developed new technology to monitor cholesterol in brain tissue which could uncover its relation to neurodegenerative disease and pave the way for the development of new treatments.
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, shows the major locations of cholesterol in the brain and what molecules it can be converted to.
Plants produce the hormone jasmonic acid as a defence response when challenged. This is how they ensure that their predators no longer like the taste of their leaves. Biologists want to find out whether biological precursors and other variants of jasmonic acid lead to similar or different effects. But such derivatives of the hormone have so far been too expensive for experiments and difficult to come by.
A combination of genetic shuffling and evolutionary selection of near-identical genetic sequences among specific bat and pangolin coronaviruses may have led to the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and its introduction into humans, a new study suggests. The results also showed that the virus' entire receptor binding motif (RBM), a component that plays a key role in viral entry into host cells, was introduced through recombination with pangolin coronaviruses.
DURHAM, N.C. -- A team of scientists studying the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic, found that it was especially well-suited to jump from animals to humans by shapeshifting as it gained the ability to infect human cells.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- How might the novel coronavirus be prevented from entering a host cell in an effort to thwart infection? A team of biomedical scientists has made a discovery that points to a solution.
In complex surgery, is there a correlation between the volume of services provided per hospital and the quality of treatment results? This is the question addressed in eight commissions on minimum volumes that the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) awarded to the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG). The IQWiG report is now available for the sixth intervention to be tested, complex oesophageal surgery.
Due to the devastating worldwide impact of COVID-19, the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, there has been unprecedented efforts by clinicians and researchers from around the world to quickly develop safe and effective treatments and vaccines. Given that COVID-19 is a complex new disease with no existing vaccine or specific treatment, much effort is being made to investigate the repurposing of approved and available drugs, as well as those under development.
Wearing face masks at home might help ward off COVID-19 spread among family members
79% effective at curbing transmission--but only before symptoms emerge
Wearing face masks at home might help ward off the spread of COVID-19 infection among family members living in the same household, but only before symptoms develop, suggests a study of Chinese families in Beijing, accepted for publication in BMJ Global Health.
The first study of COVID-19 to specifically analyse the effect of the disease in hospitalised patients with diabetes has found that one in ten patients dies within 7 days of hospital admission, and one in five is intubated and mechanically ventilated by this point. The research is published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes [EASD]), by Professor Bertrand Cariou and Professor Samy Hadjadj, diabetologists at l'institut du thorax, University Hospital Nantes, INSERM, CNRS, and University of Nantes, France, and colleagues.
The combination of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) did not show superior efficacy in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma absent a high-risk disease prognosis, compared with the standard of care--bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (VRd). Data from a planned interim analysis for efficacy and toxicity for the ENDURANCE (E1A11) randomized phase three trial will be presented in the plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting to occur virtually from May 29-31 (Abstract LBA3).
If physical distancing measures in Ontario are relaxed too much or too quickly, the province could see hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients as well as exponential growth in deaths, concludes new research involving a University of Guelph infectious disease modeller.
The findings, contained in a research letter published in Annals of Internal Medicine, suggest that if Ontarians increase their contacts to normal levels in the coming weeks, the virus will quickly spread and result in cases exceeding hospital ICU (intensive care unit) capacity.