Culture

Irvine, Calif. - April 8, 2020 - Amyloid is a key feature of Alzheimer's disease, but the accumulation of these sticky proteins may not be the only risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study published this week. Other, modifiable risk factors, such as the amount of fats in our blood and how efficiently our bodies generate energy could also play important roles.

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, a common question is, can infectious diseases be connected to environmental change? Yes, indicates a study published today from the University of California, Davis' One Health Institute.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The bright chirp of the coquí frog, the national symbol of Puerto Rico, has likely resounded through Caribbean forests for at least 29 million years.

A new study published in Biology Letters describes a fragmented arm bone from a frog in the genus Eleutherodactylus, also known as rain frogs or coquís. The fossil is the oldest record of frogs in the Caribbean and, fittingly, was discovered on the island where coquís are most beloved.

Pregnant women who deliver early are more likely to have a diverse community of vaginal bacteria, finds a new study published in Frontiers in Microbiology. These findings also highlight specific bacteria associated with premature birth and could help identify the women most at risk of giving birth prematurely.

People are no better than chance at identifying when someone else is recounting a false or real memory of a crime, according to a new UCL study.

The findings, published in Frontiers in Psychology, build on a previous study that was the first to successfully implant false memories of committing a crime - involving either assault or assault with a weapon that resulted in police contact.

Going to bed early and following a consistent bedtime routine may help reduce children's risk of becoming overweight or obese, according to a new study published in Acta Paediatrica.

In the study of 1,258 Indigenous Australian children with an average age of 6 years, children who consistently went to bed late experienced greater weight gain over several years than those who went to bed early.

Adults with irritable bowel syndrome experienced fewer gastrointestinal symptoms after they participated in a mindfulness program meant to reduce stress. Results of the study are published in Neurogastroenterology & Motility.

In the study, 53 women and 15 men with irritable bowel syndrome participated in an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction class.

The avian influenza virus subtype H16N3 is currently detectable in many countries. To examine the potential threat to humans of H16N3, researchers recently performed an extensive avian influenza surveillance in major wild bird gatherings across China from 2017-2019. The findings are published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.

Leafhoppers are tiny insects. They are only about 3 millimeters long, smaller than a grain of rice. But they can cause big damage to crops, including beans.

In temperate areas, leafhoppers can cause bean crop losses of up to 20 percent. They are even more damaging in tropical areas. There, leafhopper infestations can lead to crop losses of more than 75 percent.

To combat the leafhopper threat, researchers are continuously trying to develop resistant varieties of crops.

Italy was the main origin of the individuals who first brought the novel coronavirus to Brazil, according to a study by Brazilian researchers in collaboration with colleagues in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Brazil between February and early March.

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2020 -- In recent years, chaos theory and other forms of computational modeling have sought to leverage findings in the social sciences to better describe -- and maybe one day predict -- how groups of people behave. One approach looks to update a widely used model to examine how changes in political opinions ripple through a group and how polarization can arise.

WASHINGTON, April 7, 2020 -- Bottle emptying is a phenomenon most of us have observed while pouring a beverage. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee discovered how to make bottles empty faster, which has wide-ranging implications for many areas beyond the beverage industry.

Creating new blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis, for tumors in lymph nodes is different than for tumors in other parts of the body, such as the colon or lung, a team from the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) reports in the journal Cancer Research. Scientists from the MDC labs of Dr. Armin Rehm, Dr. Uta Höpken and Professor Holger Gerhardt were involved in this project. The team identifies potentially more effective treatment targets to slow tumor growth for lymphoma patients.

Our brain is steadily engaged in soliloquies. These internal communications are usually also bombarded with external sensory events. Hence, the impact of the two neuronal processes need to be permanently fine-tuned to avoid their imbalance. A team of scientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) revealed the role of the neurotransmitter Serotonin in this scenario. They discovered that distinct serotonergic receptor types control the gain of both streams of information in a separable manner.

The protein STING (Stimulator of Interferon Genes) is a critical component of the body's innate immune defence system, but can also contribute to chronic autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.

Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) researchers led by Dr Dominic De Nardo have discovered the mechanism behind one of two signalling arms involved in the cGAS-STING pathway. Their findings, published in Cell Reports today are important for the field and have significant implications for therapeutic targeting of this pathway.