Tech

DURHAM, N.C. -- With mosquito season upon us, people are stocking up on repellents to prevent itchy bites. Bug repellents are important because they don't just protect against the buzzing, blood-sucking little pests -- they also safeguard against the diseases they carry, which kill some 700,000 people worldwide each year.

Surprisingly, despite widespread use, no one understood exactly how most mosquito repellents keep the insects away. Now researchers are starting to uncover the first pieces of the puzzle.

From the branching pattern of leaf veins to the variety of interconnected pathways that spread the coronavirus, nature thrives on networks -- grids that link the different components of complex systems. Networks underlie such real-life problems as determining the most efficient route for a trucking company to deliver life-saving drugs and calculating the smallest number of mutations required to transform one string of DNA into another.

It's widely understood that people taking a common class of antibiotics, like ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin, run the risk of tendonitis and tendon ruptures. However, a new analysis sheds light on newer, third-generation fluoroquinolones and suggests they may have a lower risk of Achilles tendon rupture. Researchers from Jichi Medical University in Tochigi, Japan, used health care administrative data to identify 504 patient cases of Achilles tendon ruptures with co-occurrence of antibiotics.

Skoltech scientists have created a new monitoring system for agricultural applications that performs real-time image segmentation on board the drone to identify hogweed. The research was published in a high-profile journal, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - An acute loss of smell is one of the most common symptoms of COVID-19, but for two decades it has been linked to other maladies among them Parkinson's disease and dementia. Now, a poor sense of smell may signify a higher risk of pneumonia in older adults, says a team of Michigan State University researchers.

Researchers from University of Maryland, North Carolina State University, National Taiwan University, Oxford University, Kings College London, and Perceptronics Solutions, Inc. published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how artificial intelligence (AI)-based text analysis of social media can monitor the extent to which brand reputation rises and falls over time.

A global team of researchers recently released the results of a 'data-rich' modeling approach designed to illustrate a range of what-if scenarios for future oil palm plantation development in Indonesia. The study provides new insight into crop production strategies available to an industry facing increasing scrutiny.

Most of us have imagined how free it would feel to float around, like an astronaut, in conditions of reduced gravity. But have you ever considered what the effects of reduced gravity might have on muscles? Gravity is a constant force on Earth which all living creatures have evolved to rely on and adapt to. Space exploration has brought about many scientific and technological advances, yet manned spaceflights come at a cost to astronauts, including reduced skeletal muscle mass and strength.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In early 2020, a few months after the Covid-19 pandemic began, scientists were able to sequence the full genome of the virus that causes the infection, SARS-CoV-2. While many of its genes were already known at that point, the full complement of protein-coding genes was unresolved.

When horseradish flea beetles feed on their host plants, they take up not only nutrients but also mustard oil glucosides, the characteristic defense compounds of horseradish and other brassicaceous plants. Using these mustard oil glucosides, the beetles turn themselves into a "mustard oil bomb" and so deter predators. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, has now been able to demonstrate how the beetle regulates the accumulation of mustard oil glucosides in its body.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have laid the groundwork for a potential new type of gene therapy using novel CRISPR-based techniques.

Working in fruit flies and human cells, research led by UC San Diego Postdoctoral Scholar Zhiqian Li in Division of Biological Sciences Professor Ethan Bier's laboratory demonstrates that new DNA repair mechanisms could be designed to address the effects of debilitating diseases and damaged cell conditions.

Scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa (CBM-CSIC-UAM) have discovered that the nitric oxide (NO) pathway is overactivated in the aortas of mice and patients with Marfan Syndrome and that the activity of this pathway causes the aortic aneurysms that characterize this disease.

A team of researchers, affiliated with UNIST has recently introduced a new class of magnetic materials for spin caloritronics. Published in the February 2021 issue of Nature Communications, the demonstrated STE applications of a new class of magnets will pave the way for versatile recycling of ubiquitous waste heat. This breakthrough has been led by Professor Jung-Woo Yoo and his research team in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UNIST.

LUND, Sweden--May 11, 2021--PolarCool AB (publ), a Swedish medical device company focusing on treatment of sports-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) and whiplash, today announced that it has submitted a 510(k) pre-market notification to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the PolarCap® System.

In order for metal nanomaterials to deliver on their promise to energy and electronics, they need to shape up -- literally.

To deliver reliable mechanical and electric properties, nanomaterials must have consistent, predictable shapes and surfaces, as well as scalable production techniques. UC Riverside engineers are solving this problem by vaporizing metals within a magnetic field to direct the reassembly of metal atoms into predictable shapes. The research is published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.