Culture
NEW YORK -- Cannabis use makes young brains more sensitive to the first exposure to cocaine, according to a new study on rodents led by scientists at Columbia University and the University of Cagliari in Italy. By monitoring the brains of both adolescent and adult rats after giving them synthetic psychoactive cannabinoids followed by cocaine, the research team identified key molecular and epigenetic changes that occurred in the brains of adolescents -- but not adults.
HOUSTON - (April 20, 2020) - If you're on skis, you want to avoid avalanches. But when the right kind happen in your brain, you shouldn't worry. You won't feel them. They're probably to your benefit.
Scientists at Rice University's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) have simulated the mechanics of a complex network that helps give neurons their ever-changing structures. They found the complex, Arp2/3, may be largely responsible for the "avalanches" observed in the cells' cytoskeletal networks.
April 20, 2020 -- Gender-based violence has been shown to increase during global emergencies. In a paper just published by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, researchers report that according to early evidence it is the same for the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are online in the journal Bioethics.
An exploratory randomized, controlled study on the safety and efficacy of either lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) or Arbidol--antivirals that are used in some countries against HIV-1 and to treat influenza , respectively--as treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, suggests that neither drug improves the clinical outcome of patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate cases of the disease over supportive care. The findings appeared April 17 in Med, a new medical journal published by Cell Press.
New Rochelle, NY, April 20, 2020--A new study analyzing tweets about COVID-19 found that users with larger social networks tend to use fewer uncivil remarks when they have more positive responses from others. The study, which used computer-assisted content analysis, is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
Now you see it, now you don't.
What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system has now seemingly vanished from sight. Though this happens in science fiction, such as Superman's home planet Krypton exploding, astronomers are looking for a plausible explanation.
What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system, has now seemingly vanished from sight. Astronomers now suggest that a full-grown planet never existed in the first place. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope had instead observed an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles caused by a titanic collision between two icy asteroid-sized bodies orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut, about 25 light-years from Earth.
A team of scientists led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center has identified the binding site where drug compounds could activate a key braking mechanism against the runaway growth of many types of cancer.
The discovery marks a critical step toward developing a potential new class of anti-cancer drugs that enhance the activity of a prevalent family of tumor suppressor proteins, the authors say.
The findings, which appear in the leading life sciences journal Cell, are less a story of what than how.
What The Study Did: Rates and methods of detection of thyroid cancer diagnosed in male rescue/recovery workers at the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 terrorist attacks were compared with demographically similar individuals from Olmsted County, Minnesota, to see if increased rates of thyroid cancer among those workers were associated with the identification of asymptomatic cancers detected during heightened nonthyroid-related medical surveillance.
What The Study Did: Data from a study of environmental influences on child health and development were used to investigate the extent to which frequency of screen viewing and social activities such as parent-child play and reading through 18-months of age were associated with the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and ASD-like symptoms among 2,100 children at age 2.
Authors: David S. Bennett, Ph.D., of the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.
An immunological test known as a "tetramer assay" can detect and quantify the T cells in a blood sample that are able to recognize a specific antigen, such as a viral protein. Making the molecular probes needed for this type of assay, however, has always been a difficult and time-consuming process.
Genetic research throughout Europe shows evidence of drastic population changes near the end of the Neolithic period, as shown by the arrival of ancestry related to pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe. But the timing of this change and the arrival and mixture process of these peoples, particularly in Central Europe, is little understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers analyze 96 ancient genomes, providing new insights into the ancestry of modern Europeans.
Scientists sequence almost one hundred ancient genomes from Switzerland
Scientists have discovered an earlier origin to the human language pathway in the brain, pushing back its evolutionary origin by at least 20 million years.
Previously, a precursor of the language pathway was thought by many scientists to have emerged more recently, about 5 million years ago, with a common ancestor of both apes and humans.
Engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have received federal funding for a rapid COVID-19 test using a newly developed technology.
Srikanth Singamaneni, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, and his team have developed a rapid, highly sensitive and accurate biosensor based on an ultrabright fluorescent nanoprobe, which has the potential to be broadly deployed.
A galactic visitor entered our solar system last year - interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. When astronomers pointed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward the comet on 15 and 16 December 2019, for the first time they directly observed the chemicals stored inside an object from a planetary system other than our own. This research is published online on 20 April 2020 in the journal Nature Astronomy.