Culture
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.
Despite the traditional view that species do not exchange genes by hybridisation, recent studies show that gene flow between closely related species is more common than previously thought. A team of scientists from Uppsala University and Princeton University now reports how gene flow between two species of Darwin's finches has affected their beak morphology. The study is published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
(Boston)--Researchers have developed a computer algorithm based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can accurately predict the risk for and diagnose Alzheimer's disease using a combination of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), testing to measure cognitive impairment, along with data on age and gender.
As the coronavirus pandemic has swept across the U.S., in addition to tracking the number of COVID daily cases, there is a worldwide scientific community engaged in tracking the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.
Efrem Lim leads a team at ASU that looks at how the virus may be spreading, mutating and adapting over time.
To trace the trail of the virus worldwide, Lim's team is using a new technology called next-generation sequencing at ASU's Genomics Facility, to rapidly read through all 30,000 chemical letters of the SARS-CoV-2 genetic code, called a genome.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University College of Engineering researchers used a vacuum cleaner and the personalities of three of the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White to demonstrate that people can correctly infer a robot's personality solely by how it moves.
Unexpectedly, study participants also discerned intelligence from robot motion behaviors, suggesting people might trust an autonomous system more or less depending on their observations of its movements.
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School student Paul Lavadera expected his career would put him on the front lines of dealing with medical emergencies.
But he never could have imagined he'd be graduating during the biggest global pandemic in a century when he joined forces two years ago with Tracey Shors, Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, on a study to find out whether aerobic exercise and meditation would reduce stress and improve the quality of life for medical students like him.
By studying how the tiniest organisms in the Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the driest places on Earth, extract water from rocks, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, University of California, Irvine, and U.C. Riverside revealed how, against all odds, life can exist in extreme environments.
If warming continues unabated in the Midwest, in 50 years we can expect the best conditions for corn and soybean production to have shifted from Iowa and Illinois to Minnesota and the Dakotas, according to Penn State researchers.
A study has shown how ecotourism in the Philippines has transformed people's attitudes towards marine conservation.
Researchers from the University of Victoria in Canada and Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (LAMAVE), visited three sites where tourists pay to swim with whale sharks in the wild. They interviewed a range of locals who work for the tour operators in Oslob, Donsol and Pintuyan, including fishers and ex-whale shark hunters.