Tech

Study taken throughout the pandemic shows those who feel government should be less controlling believe COVID-19 poses less risk, which in turn was associated with the adoption of fewer protective behaviours

"A fearful population is not necessarily desirable... people may be underestimating or overestimating the actual risk at different times."

People's politics and values are exerting a bigger influence on how much of a threat they feel from COVID-19 compared to objective indicators such as the number of confirmed cases.

Crystals inherently possess imperfections. Vacancies, as the simplest form of point defects, significantly alter the optical, thermal, and electrical properties of materials. Well-known examples include colour centres in many gemstones, the nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond, vacancy migration in solid-state batteries, and the metal-insulator transition in phase-change materials. The vacancies in these cases are in frame-works with no or weak interactions. However, the role of vacancies in strongly correlated materials is thus far unclear due to the lack of an ideal prototype.

El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a recurring climate phenomenon involving changes in the temperature of waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most important climate perturbations on Earth because it can change the global atmospheric circulation, which in turn, influences temperature and precipitation across the globe. Scientists have found ENSO has an impact on hydroclimate over the Tibetan Plateau but how it works, or its physical mechanism, remains unclear.

Wikipedia page views could be used to monitor global awareness of biodiversity, proposes a research team from UCL, ZSL, and the RSPB.

Using their new metric, the research team found that awareness of biodiversity is marginally increasing, but the rate of change varies greatly between different groups of animals, as they report in a paper included in an upcoming special section of Conversation Biology.

When power stations burn coal, a class of compounds called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, or PAHs, form part of the resulting air pollution. Researchers have found that PAHs toxins degrade in sunlight into 'children' compounds and by-products.

Some 'children' compounds can be more toxic than the 'parent' PAHs. Rivers and dams affected by PAHs are likely contaminated by a much larger number of toxins than are emitted by major polluters, researchers show in Chemosphere.

Human actions are threatening the resilience and stability of Earth's biosphere - the wafer-thin veil around Earth where life thrives. This has profound implications for the development of civilizations, say an international group of researchers in a report published for the first Nobel Prize Summit, a digital gathering to be held in April to discuss the state of the planet in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cancer immunotherapy may get a boost from an unexpected direction: bacteria residing within tumor cells. In a new study published in Nature, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and their collaborators have discovered that the immune system "sees" these bacteria and shown they can be harnessed to provoke an immune reaction against the tumor. The study may also help clarify the connection between immunotherapy and the gut microbiome, explaining the findings of previous research that the microbiome affects the success of immunotherapy.

As World Water Day is observed around the globe, new research from UBC Okanagan suggests a systematic approach to forest and water supply research may yield an improved assessment and understanding of connections between the two.

Healthy forests play a vital role in providing a clean, stable water supply, says eco-hydrologist Dr. Adam Wei.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than all previous versions. It contains carbon fibre that serves simultaneously as an electrode, conductor, and load-bearing material. Their latest research breakthrough paves the way for essentially 'massless' energy storage in vehicles and other technology.

Patricia Bernal, a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Department of Microbiology of the University of Seville's Faculty of Biology, is working with the bacterium Pseudomonas putida, a biological control agent found in the soil and in plant roots and which, as such, has the ability to protect plants from pathogen attacks (organisms that cause diseases) also known as phytopathogens. Specifically, the US researcher is studying a molecular weapon that bacteria use (Type VI Secretion System or T6SS) to eliminate their competitors.

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2021 -- What's better at finding a hidden bomb -- a dog or an electronic chemical detector? In this episode, the Reactions team travels to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to find out: https://youtu.be/TRwqOFHOjac.

WASHINGTON--Two-thirds of patients with chronic endocrine health problems who need close monitoring say they would like to continue with telemedicine follow-up visits after the COVID-19 pandemic ends, according to a survey that will be presented virtually at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting. Three-quarters of providers also said they want to continue with telehealth after the pandemic.

WASHINGTON--An industry-supported study of an oral testosterone replacement therapy (TRT), testosterone undecanoate (TU, brand name Jatenzo) finds it is an effective, long-term treatment for men with low testosterone levels, with no evidence of liver toxicity. The findings are being presented virtually at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting.

TST is currently available in multiple modes of administration, including implantable pellets, transdermal gels and intramuscular injections.

WASHINGTON--Children with achondroplasia, the most common form of disproportionate short stature, grow taller with trends in improved body proportions after two years of daily vosoritide treatment, a new study analysis finds. Results of the industry-sponsored study will be presented at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting.

"This is the first robust evidence of a precision therapy for achondroplasia," said the lead investigator, Ravi Savarirayan, M.D., Ph.D., a professor at Murdoch Children's Research Institute at Royal Children's Hospital in Parkville, Australia.

New York, NY--March 19, 2020--Columbia Engineering researchers, working with Brookhaven National Laboratory, report today that they have built designed nanoparticle-based 3D materials that can withstand a vacuum, high temperatures, high pressure, and high radiation.