Culture

During the 2016 election cycle, politically polarizing tweets by Russian trolls about vaccination included pro- and anti-vaccination messages targeted at people with specific political inclinations through an assortment of fake persona types, according to a new analysis published this month.

Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as "intermediate-mass," which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too close.

Weighing in at about 50,000 times the mass of our Sun, the black hole is smaller than the supermassive black holes (at millions or billions of solar masses) that lie at the cores of large galaxies, but larger than stellar-mass black holes formed by the collapse of a massive star.

When Spanish invaders arrived in the Americas, they were generally able to subjugate the local peoples thanks, in part, to their superior weaponry and technology. But archeological evidence indicates that, in at least one crucial respect, the Spaniards were quite dependent on an older indigenous technology in parts of Mesoamerica (today's Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras).

A new study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, highlights the feasible use of mobile health (mHealth) devices to help with the screening and detection of a common heart condition.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Increasing numbers of bison in Yellowstone National Park in recent years have become a barrier to ecosystem recovery in the iconic Lamar Valley in the northern part of the park, according to a study by Oregon State University scientists.

In the valley, foraging by bison exerts 10 times the environmental pressure of elk, historically the area's dominant herbivore - that's a problem because bison are powerful "ecosystem engineers."

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) - When UC Davis announced the first case of community transmission of COVID-19 in the U.S. on Feb. 26, it solved a medical mystery at the hospital and led to important changes to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines for novel coronavirus testing.

Highlight

The American Society of Nephrology has launched several initiatives to provide guidance on COVID-19 as it relates to the care of patients with kidney disease.

Washington, DC -- The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is especially threatening to patients with kidney diseases and to their caregivers. The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) has launched several initiatives to provide accurate and updated COVID-19-related information on an ongoing basis to clinicians who care for patients with kidney diseases.

The Ferguson Effect is the idea that increased public criticism and distrust of police following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, lowered police moral, which caused officers to withdraw from proactive policing and boosted the crime rate in major U.S. cities. A new longitudinal study examined whether this effect was real. The study, of law enforcement officers before and after Ferguson, found little support for the concept, though it did identify a reduction in officers' job satisfaction and an increase in their cynicism.

WASHINGTON--Patients with extreme obesity are prone to unconscious food impulses and cravings that may make it challenging for them to maintain weight loss after bariatric surgery, according to research that was accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, and will be published in a special supplemental section of the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

WASHINGTON--Researchers say they have found a viable new therapeutic strategy for estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, even cancers that are resistant to current standard of care treatments. Their new preclinical study was accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, and publication in a special supplemental section of the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

WASHINGTON--In older individuals, the location of a broken bone can have significant impacts on long-term health outcomes, according to research accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, and publication in a special supplemental section of the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

WASHINGTON-- Adults who need medical maintenance treatment of the growth hormone disorder acromegaly respond well to an investigational oral form of the drug octreotide, investigators of the Chiasma OPTIMAL study reported. Results of the phase 3 randomized controlled clinical trial were accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, and will be published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

Two-thirds of transgender teens have depression, and many also have suicidal thoughts and self-injuring behavior, according to research accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting, and publication in a special supplemental section of the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

Researchers also found transgender teens had significant improvement in gender dysphoria--the feeling of being uncomfortable with the gender they were assigned--after starting hormone therapy.

WHAT:
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered a second gene that causes melorheostosis, a rare group of conditions involving an often painful and disfiguring overgrowth of bone tissue. The gene, SMAD3, is part of a pathway that regulates cell development and growth. The researchers are now working to develop an animal model with a mutant version of SMAD3 to test potential treatments for the condition. The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

While Russia seems to have successfully tackled its historic problem: food shortage - with the agri-food sector becoming one of the most steadily developing of the national economy - the country is already facing a new set of challenges. Today, Russia needs to address several key growth factors, such as sustainability, missing national strategies and lagging research and development progress.