Culture
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.
Many aquatic animals like frogs and turtles spend a big part of their lives under water and have adapted to this condition in various ways, one being that they have excellent hearing under water.
A new study shows that the same goes for a diving bird, the great cormorant.
This is surprising because the great cormorant spends most of its time out of the water. It is the first time we see such extensive hearing adaptations in an animal that does not spend most of its time under water, says biologist Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, University of Southern Denmark.
As part of their project BioSCAN - devoted to the exploration of the unknown insect diversity in and around the city of Los Angeles - the scientists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (USA) have already discovered numerous insects that are new to science, but they are still only guessing about the lifestyles of these species.
Hamilton, ON (April 1, 2020) - An international team including McMaster University researchers has come together to issue guidelines for health-care workers treating intensive care unit (ICU) patients with COVID-19.
The Surviving Sepsis Campaign COVID-19 panel has released 54 recommendations on such topics as infection control, laboratory diagnosis and specimens, the dynamics of blood flow support, ventilation support, and COVID-19 therapy.
The panel of 36 experts, with six from McMaster, telescoped what would have been more than a year of work into less than three weeks.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the U.S. and the world, Purdue University scientists are working to move solutions to diagnose and treat the virus to the marketplace as soon as possible.
The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization is working with innovators from across the university to patent and license technologies that focus on the diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of treating COVID-19.
Among the technologies being developed:
A new report on Covid-19 data up to March 30 from Italy, prepared by an Italian expert for the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA), says that the number of daily deaths in Italian hospitals is today still accelerating at the maximum rate, and significant numbers of deaths in hospital are likely to continue until at least mid-April and could go on until early June. The report is by Davide Manca, Professor of Process Systems Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy.
While using large swaths of coarse satellite data can be an effective tool for evaluating forests on a national scale, the resolution of that data is not always well suited to indicate whether or not those forests are growing or degrading.