Culture
Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Central South University (CSU) in China have for the first time identified a gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
Genetic information from an 800.000-year-old human fossil has been retrieved for the first time. The results from the University of Copenhagen shed light on one of the branching points in the human family tree, reaching much further back in time than previously possible.
An important advancement in human evolution studies has been achieved after scientists retrieved the oldest human genetic data set from an 800,000-year-old tooth belonging to the hominin species Homo antecessor.
An international team of researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have now provided a new and unprecedented perspective on the climate history of Antarctica. In a sediment core collected in the Amundsen Sea, West Antarctica, in February 2017, the team discovered pristinely preserved forest soil from the Cretaceous, including a wealth of plant pollen and spores and a dense network of roots.
What The Viewpoint Says: The authors describe measures taken to reduce the risk of transmitting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2) to medical staff and cancer patients seeking treatment during the COVID-19 outbreak in China.
Authors: Jie Wang, M.D., Ph.D., and Jie He, M.D., of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, are the corresponding authors.
Researchers have found unexpected fossil traces of a temperate rainforest near the South Pole 90 million years ago, suggesting the continent had an exceptionally warm climate in prehistoric times.
A team from the UK and Germany, which includes experts from Northumbria University's Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, discovered a forest soil from the Cretaceous period in the seabed near the South Pole.
A research team led by scientists from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), Japan, has successfully established 3D cultured tissue that mimics liver fibrosis, a key characteristic of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). For making the 3D culture, cells were collected from liver tissues of NASH model mice. Their findings open up an alternative avenue for developing drugs for NASH patients, identifying new markers for early diagnosis, and better understanding the disease progression.
Their findings were published in Biomaterials on Jan 27th, 2020.
The circadian clock controls a variety of biological phenomena that occur during the course of the day, such as sleeping and waking. Perturbation of the circadian clock has been associated with many diseases such as sleep disorders, metabolic syndrome, and cancer. The development of small-molecule compounds to regulate specific components of the circadian clock facilitates the elucidation of the molecular basis of clock function, and provides a platform for the therapeutic treatment of clock-related diseases.
Actuators that can convert various environmental stimuli to mechanical works have revealed great potential for developing smart devices such as soft robots, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and automatic Lab-on-a-Chip systems. Generally, bilayer structures are widely used for design and fabrication of stimuli responsive actuators. In the past decade, to pursue fast and large-scale deformation, great efforts have been devoted to the development of novel smart materials.
One of the most devastating pathogens that lives inside human cells is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. According to the World Health Organization, 1.5 million people died in 2019 from this disease that generally affects the lungs. The rise of multidrug resistant M. tuberculosis strains, which are resistant to many of the most effective anti-tuberculosis drugs, is particularly worrying. In other words, novel drugs to treat tuberculosis are urgently needed.
Tuberculosis bacteria need iron to survive
Scientists have mapped the genome of the German shepherd, one of the world's most popular canine breeds, after using a blood sample from 'Nala,' a healthy five-year-old German shepherd living in Sydney.
In a paper published today in respected 'big data' journal GigaScience, a global team of researchers from institutions including UNSW Sydney detailed the mammoth task of unravelling the 38 pairs of dog chromosomes to decode the 19,000 genes and 2.8 billion base pairs of DNA, using advanced genetic sequencing technology.
Fearfulness is one of the most common behavioural disorders in dogs. As an emotion, fear is a normal and vital reaction that helps individuals survive in threatening circumstances. When the fearfulness is excessive and disturbs the dog's life, it is referred to as a behavioural problem. Excessive fearfulness can significantly impair the dog's welfare, and it is also known to weaken the relationship between dog and owner.
Eggs have been acknowledged as a good source of high-quality proteins and contain bioactive components beneficial for health, while they are also loaded with abundant cholesterol in the yolks, making the public hesitant about consuming whole eggs. Up to now, most studies exploring the association of egg consumption with incident CVD or total death were conducted in high-income countries and findings were inconsistent across populations and CVD subtypes. Accordingly, no consensus has been reached on the recommendation of egg consumption around the world.
More than a third of the food produced ends up being wasted. This situation creates environmental, ethical and financial issues, that also alter food security. Negative effects from waste management, such as bad smells or the emission of greenhouse gases, make the bioeconomy one of the best options to reduce these problems.
Extreme weather events - such as severe drought, storms, and heat waves - have been forecast to become more commonplace and are already starting to occur. What has been less studied is the impact on energy systems and how communities can avoid costly disruptions, such as partial or total blackouts.
Carbon is an essential building block for all living things on Earth and plays a vital role in many of the geologic processes that shape life on the planet, including climate change and ocean acidification. But the total amount of carbon on Earth remains a mystery, because more than 90% of Earth's carbon is inaccessible to direct observation and measurement, deep within the planet at extreme temperature and pressure.