Earth
Experts believe that tuberculosis, or TB, has been a scourge for humans for some 15,000 years, with the first medical documentation of the disease coming out of India around 1000 B.C.E. Today, the World Health Organization reports that TB is still the leading cause of death worldwide from a single infectious agent, responsible for some 1.5 million fatalities annually. Primary treatment for TB for the past 50 years has remained unchanged and still requires patients to take multiple drugs daily for at least six months.
Different types of food are linked to risks of different types of stroke, according to the largest study to investigate this, published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Monday).
Until now, most studies have looked at the association between food and total stroke (all types of stroke combined), or focused on ischaemic stroke only. However, the current study of more than 418,000 people in nine European countries investigated ischaemic stroke and haemorrhagic stroke separately.
Under the Paris Climate Agreement, China committed to rely on renewable resources for 20 percent of its energy needs by 2030. Currently, the country is on track to double that commitment, aiming to hit 40 percent by the next decade. Wind power is critical to achieving that goal. Over the past 20 years, China's wind power capacity has exploded from 0.3 gigawatts to 161 gigawatts.
But, in recent years, that growth has slowed and the hopes for China's wind-powered future have dampened.
Why? Location, location, location.
While many of us worry about proteins aggregating in our brains as we age and potentially causing Alzheimer's disease or other types of neurodegeneration, we may not realize that some of the same proteins are aggregating in our muscles, setting us up for muscle atrophy in old age.
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have now found brain cells that help clean up these tangles and prolong life -- at least in worms (Caenorhabditis elegans) and possibly mice. This could lead to drugs that improve muscle health or extend a healthy human lifespan.
Whales undertake some of the longest migrations on earth, often swimming many thousands of miles, over many months, to breed in the tropics. The question is why--is it to find food, or to give birth?
In a research paper in Marine Mammal Science, scientists propose that whales that forage in polar waters migrate to low latitudes to maintain healthy skin.
At least 26 per cent of our oceans need urgent conservation attention to preserve Earth’s marine biodiversity, a University of Queensland-led international study has found.
Dr Kendall Jones said the international community needed to rapidly increase marine conservation efforts to maintain the health of the world’s oceans.
“Preserving a portion of habitat for all marine species would require 8.5 million square kilometres of new conservation areas,” Dr Jones said.
Macrocycles are molecules made of large rings of atoms. Despite being relatively big and flexible, the molecules don't always stay "floppy" -- they can actually lock themselves into specific shapes and geometries.
In manufacturing, controlling the three-dimensional shapes of macrocycles is critical. It helps decide, for example, whether the aroma in a perfume is unique or whether a prescription drug will work on a particular disease.
DNA is the hereditary material in humans, a unique cookbook of who we are. This is where you'll find the answer as to why you have your specific eye and hair colour, or perhaps why you sunburn easily.
Imagine your DNA as a giant cookbook with thousands of recipes. These recipes are genes that have to be read every single day.
You may think that a skin cell only contains the recipes it needs to work as a skin cell, and that a muscle cell only contains the recipes that make it a muscle cell. While this might seem logical, this is not how information in cells is stored.
Lightning - one, two, three - and thunder. For centuries, people have estimated the distance of a thunderstorm from the time between lightning and thunder. The greater the time gap between the two signals, the further away the observer is from the location of the lightning. This is because lightning propagates at the speed of light with almost no time delay, while thunder propagates at the much slower speed of sound of around 340 metres per second.
HAMILTON, ON - New research from McMaster Children's Hospital shows that two out of three young mothers have at least one mental health problem.
Researchers found that teen mothers have a much higher prevalence of mental health challenges than mothers aged 21 and older and teens who aren't parents. Almost 40% of young moms have more than one mental health issue,
including depression, a range of anxiety disorders and hyperactivity. This is up to four times higher than in mothers aged 21 years or older and teens without children.
The low-pressure area that has been lingering west-northwest of American Samoa for several days has organized into a tropical depression. NASA's Terra satellite passed over the Southern Pacific Ocean and provided forecasters with a visible image of Tropical Depression 18P.
On Feb.21, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of 18P that showed an improved cyclonic circulation along the southern end of a line of deep convection and thunderstorms that extends north-to-south.
Researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine and Université de Montréal have discovered a new mechanism involved in the expression of Down syndrome, one of the main causes of intellectual disability and congenital heart defects in children. The study's findings were published today in Current Biology.
A research team at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology and the KU Leuven Department of Biology showed that, contrary to generally held belief, most components of essential oils could meet the criteria set for drug candidates. Essential oil components are the constituents of essential oils, which are complex mixtures of plant metabolites obtained by dry or steam distillation, or by citrus peel pressing.
Revisiting essential oils
It's not easy to do pregnancy tests on whales. You can't just ask a wild ocean animal that's the size of a school bus to pee on a little stick. For decades, the only way scientists could count pregnant females was by sight and best guesses based on visual characteristics. For the last several years, researchers have relied on hormone tests of blubber collected via darts, but the results were often inconclusive (not negative or positive), and researchers couldn't confidently say if the animal was pregnant or just ovulating.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Cancer cells are a wily adversary. One reason the disease outfoxes many potential treatments is because of the diversity of the cancer cell population. Researchers have found this population difficult to characterize and quantify.