Culture
A global research effort
'There is broad agreement on the importance of academic freedom, yet we have strikingly little knowledge about global or country-level trends,' says Prof. Kinzelbach, Professor for International Politics of Human Rights. 'This is why we decided to assess academic freedom worldwide and across time.'
Ithaca, NY--According to a new study, Zebra Finches exposed to low levels of environmental PCBs as nestlings show changes in breeding behavior as adults. The study published in the journal PLoS ONE was conducted by scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Though polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were banned in 1979, they still contaminate the environment because of improper disposal.
Washington, DC - March 20, 2020 - SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease is more transmissible, but has a lower mortality rate than its sibling, SARS-CoV, according to a review article published this week in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
In humans, coronaviruses cause mainly respiratory infections. Individuals with SARS-CoV-2 may remain asymptomatic for 2 to 14 days post-infection and some individuals likely transmit the virus without developing disease symptoms.
Research published in the journal Microbiology has found that a unique type of algae, usually only seen on the shells of turtles, affects the surrounding microbial communities.
It is hoped that these findings can be applied to support the conservation of turtles. Previous research has shown that a diverse microbiome can protect animals against infections.
As scientists scramble to learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, two recent studies of the virus' genome reached controversial conclusions: namely, that snakes are intermediate hosts of the new virus, and that a key coronavirus protein shares "uncanny similarities" with an HIV-1 protein. Now, a study in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research refutes both ideas and suggests that scaly, anteater-like animals called pangolins are the missing link for SARS-CoV-2 transmission between bats and humans.
Maintaining vitamin D receptor (VDR) levels in pancreatic cells that synthesize and secrete insulin (β cells) could contribute to protecting against the development of diabetes and counteract pancreatic cell damage caused by the progression of the disease. This is suggested by a study conducted by researchers of the CIBER's area of Diabetes and Associated Metabolic Diseases (CIBERDEM) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), which points to this receptor as a potential therapeutic target in the prevention and treatment of the disease.
Most ovarian cancer starts in fallopian tubes. Then it sloughs from its site of origin and floats around in fluid until finding new sites of attachment. It's not easy for cancer cells to survive away from their moorings. Observations by ovarian cancer doctors at University of Colorado Cancer Center and elsewhere hint at how they might do it: These doctors have seen that ovarian cancer cells often collect in tissues with high fat content. Could these cells be somehow using fat to survive the journey from their point of origin to their sites of growth?
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs.
The models will be spectral templates for astronomers to use in the approaching new era of powerful telescopes, and in the hunt for Earth-like planets in distant solar systems.
The cerebral cortex is the relatively thin, folded, outer "gray matter" layer of the brain crucial for thinking, information processing, memory, and attention. Not much has been revealed about the genetic underpinnings that influence the size of the cortex's surface area and its thickness, both of which have previously been linked to various psychiatric traits, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism.
AURORA, Colo. (March 26, 2020) - Assessing adverse childhood experiences and current anxiety and depression symptoms may help ease cognitive distress in women who have undergone a surgical menopause for cancer risk-reduction, or RRSO, according to a new study published in Menopause.
Recent research by Rafael C. Bernardi at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign examines why a common tool in biotechnology -- the binding of streptavidin to biotin -- shows different mechanical resilience in different research labs.
Highly focused, intense doses of radiation called stereotactic ablative radiation (SABR) may slow progression of disease in a subset of men with hormone-sensitive prostate cancers that have spread to a few separate sites in the body, according to results of a phase II clinical trial of the therapy.
MADISON, Wis. -- Removing a gene from the cells that produce insulin prevents mice from developing Type 1 diabetes by sparing the cells an attack from their own immune system, a new UW-Madison study shows.
The cellular sleight-of-hand may suggest ways to prevent Type 1 diabetes in high-risk individuals, as well as other diseases in which the immune system targets the body's own cells.
What The Study Did: Head congestion is one of the most common symptoms experienced by astronauts during spaceflight. This observational study examined preflight and postflight head magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of 35 astronauts who participated in either a short-duration (30 days or less) Space Shuttle mission or a long-duration (greater than 30 days) International Space Station mission.
How the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 made the leap from animals to humans is a puzzle that scientists are trying to solve as humanity comes to grip with the deadly pandemic sweeping the globe.
At the frontline of this scientific work is Professor Edward Holmes, an evolutionary virologist who holds a joint position with the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney.