Culture
Twice as many women who experienced a hypertensive disorder during any of their pregnancies were at increased risk of developing heart or kidney diseases earlier in life based on incidence per woman versus per pregnancy, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This is one of the first studies to look at incidence of hypertensive disorders per woman vs. per pregnancy, which accounts for women who are pregnant multiple times.
Non-fatal injuries in the US add up to an estimated $1590 and an average of 11 days off work per injured employee every year, indicates an analysis of medical insurance claims and productivity data, published online in the journal Injury Prevention.
These figures exclude people without workplace health insurance, those out of work, and caregivers.
There are more than 30 million annual visits to emergency care for non-fatal injuries every year in the US, with total medical costs exceeding US$133 billion.
In a brilliant dance, a cornucopia of flowers, pinecones and acorns connected by wind, rain, insects and animals ensure the reproductive future of seed plants. But before plants achieved these elaborate specializations for sex, they went through millions of years of evolution. Now, researchers have captured a glimpse of that evolutionary process with the discovery of a new ancient plant species.
Fear is an important survival mechanism and so too is the ability to inhibit fear when it's no longer needed. In order to counter-balance fear, the brain engages in fear extinction. In this process, memories are formed during non-fearful experiences with similar environmental elements. These non-fearful memories then compete with the original fear memory.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- For people who live in the Arctic, sea ice that forms along shorelines is a vital resource that connects isolated communities and provides access to hunting and fishing grounds. A new study by Brown University researchers found that climate change could significantly reduce this "shorefast ice" in communities across Northern Canada and Western Greenland.
SANTA CRUZ, CA - May 04, 2020 - It's only been three years since UC Santa Cruz researchers proved that long-read human genome assembly using the same nanopore technology developed on campus could be done at all. At the time, it was a monumental effort, requiring 150,000 hours of computing time and weeks of work.
A "step-change" in conservation is needed in order to help save species from extinction in the future, according to an academic at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Professor of evolutionary genetics Cock van Oosterhout calls for the smart use of genomic data to make populations more resilient to future genetic drift and inbreeding, and proposes a new 'road map' for what needs to be done in conservation to achieve this.
Millions more people across the EU could have contracted COVID-19 had strict international travel bans not been implemented, shows a new report by computer modelling experts at Stanford University.
Using a newly developed mathematical epidemiology simulation, the study, published in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, predicts the huge impact that limiting air travel across the 27 EU nations had on restricting the spread of the disease.
When cyclones and other natural disasters strike a city or town, the social and economic impacts locally can be devastating. But these events also have ripple effects that can be felt in distant cities and regions -- even globally -- due to the interconnectedness of the world's urban trade networks.
Following the recent Coronavirus outbreak, almost three million people have been infected worldwide, whereas the death toll has already passed the 200,000 mark, according to official reports. Meanwhile, a vaccine remains to be found, and classic medications show low efficacy. Under these conditions, it is up to pharmacologists to do their best in the search of novel treatments. However, laboratory studies are limited by the absence of COVID-19 animal models.
A study to help determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in children and their family members in the United States has begun enrolling participants. The study, called Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2 (HEROS), also will help determine what percentage of children infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, develop symptoms of the disease. In addition, the HEROS study will examine whether rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection differ between children who have asthma or other allergic conditions and children who do not.
Using high-resolution mass spectrometry, researchers have mapped glycan-processing states of the spike protein complex that allows the SARS-CoV-2 virus to infect human cells - finding that SARS-CoV-2 S glycans differ from typical host glycan processing, which may have implications in vaccine design. As scientists seek to combat the virus that causes COVID-19, the development of vaccines has focused on the spike, a protein complex composed of three protomers that protrudes from the virus and binds to the ACE2 receptor on the surfaces of human cells.
Ethanol has five times higher volumetric energy density (6.7 kWh/L) than hydrogen (1.3 kWh/L) and can be used safely in fuel cells for power generation. In Brazil in particular there is great interest in better fuel cells for ethanol as all the country distributes low-cost ethanol produced in a renewable way from sugar cane. Theoretically, the efficiency of an ethanol fuel cell should be 96 percent, but in practice at the highest power density it is only 30 percent, due to a variety of reasons. So there is great room for improvements.
Nafion with nanoparticles
KINGSTON, R.I. - May 4, 2020 - A team of fisheries scientists and marine policy experts, led by a University of Rhode Island researcher, examined how climate change is affecting the ocean environment and found that the changing conditions will likely result in increased fisheries-related conflicts and create new challenges in the management of global fisheries.
The team's research was published last month in the journal Marine Policy.
Washington, DC, May 4, 2020 - Youth who report one of the seven chronic medical conditions (CMCs), including asthma, congenital heart disease, diabetes, epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and sickle cell disease, are often diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.