Tech
Synthetic antibodies constructed using bacterial superglue can neutralise potentially lethal viruses, according to a study published on April 21 in eLife.
The findings provide a new approach to preventing and treating infections of emerging viruses and could also potentially be used in therapeutics for other diseases.
The extensive use of epidemiological surveillance, isolation of infected patients, and quarantines of exposed individuals in the Chinese city of Shenzhen in the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak allowed scientists to estimate important characteristics of this now-pandemic infectious disease, according to a study co-led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
It is known that approximately 80% of human immune system functions in the gastrointestinal tract. Gut bacteria and their metabolites play a fundamental role in the interaction between gut and other organs. Since the organic acids produced by colon bacteria (acetate, lactate, propionate, succinate and butyrate) activate a number of immune and hormonal processes, the microbiota composed of hundreds of different bacterial species is of vital importance for the normal functioning and health of the human body.
Scientists at the University of Southampton and Forest Research say understanding the risk of damage by deer to new and existing forests in Britain is crucial when considering their expansion.
With antimicrobial resistance (AMR) increasing around the world, new research led by the University of Bristol has shown a new drug formulation could possibly be used in antifungal treatments against Candida infections.
Philadelphia, April 28, 2020 - Researchers report the development of a sensitive and specific assay to detect different serotypes of Salmonella, paving the way for rapid serotyping directly from specimens. This improvement upon current testing methods can play a critical role in quickly tracing the origin of the infection. The report appears in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier.
Researchers at Aalto University and Turku PET Centre have developed a new method for simultaneous imaging brain activity from two people, allowing them to study social interaction.
In a recent study, the researchers scanned brain activity from 10 couples. Each couple spent 45 minutes inside the MRI scanner in physical contact with each other. The objective of the study was to examine how social contact activates the brain. The results were published in the theme issue Social Interaction in Neuropsychiatry of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.
Health care providers and parents have been valuable partners in managing adolescent sexual and reproductive health. But research has been limited concerning the efficacy of "triadic" interventions, or those implemented with parents and providers with the goal of reducing adolescent sexual risk behavior.
Now, a randomized clinical trial carried out under a grant by the National Institutes of Health shows the efficacy of a triadic intervention to postpone adolescent sexual debut and to promote condom use among adolescents aged 11 to 14 years.
An invasive species first identified in the Mediterranean Sea just eight years ago is likely to become a permanent feature of the region, a new study suggests.
First seen off the coast of Cyprus in 2012, lionfish (Pterois miles) are now thriving and well-established in the area and across southern Europe.
However, the increasing densities observed over time - combined with the species' generalist diet and consumption of ecologically and socio-economically important fish - may result in further disruption of an already stressed marine environment.
PITTSBURGH--Today's virtual reality systems can create immersive visual experiences, but seldom do they enable users to feel anything -- particularly walls, appliances and furniture. A new device developed at Carnegie Mellon University, however, uses multiple strings attached to the hand and fingers to simulate the feel of obstacles and heavy objects.
A global collaboration of scientists has more than doubled the known number of regions on the human genome that influence the risk of developing melanoma.
The research, involving the University of Leeds in the UK, QIMR Berghofer in Australia, and the National Cancer Institute in the US, has been published today in the journal Nature Genetics.
Melanoma is a sometimes-deadly skin cancer, with an estimated 350,000 cases worldwide in 2015, resulting in nearly 60,000 deaths.
As the UK government looks for an exit strategy to Britain's COVID-19 lockdown a nanomedicine expert from The University of Manchester believes a care model usually applied to cancer patients could provide a constructive way forward.
Kostas Kostarelos, is Professor of Nanomedicine at The University of Manchester and is leading the Nanomedicine Lab, which is part of the National Graphene Institute and the Manchester Cancer Research Centre.
New UBC research shows for the first time that soil silicates--the most abundant material on the Earth's crust--play a key role in blood clotting.
"Soil is not simply our matrix for growing food and for building materials. Here we discovered that soil can actually help control bleeding after injury by triggering clotting," says the study's senior author Christian Kastrup, associate professor in the faculty of medicine's department of biochemistry and molecular biology and a scientist in UBC's Michael Smith Laboratories and Centre for Blood Research.
New research by an international team of scientists reveals that endangered North Atlantic right whales are in much poorer body condition than their counterparts in the southern hemisphere. The alarming results from this research, led by Dr Fredrik Christiansen from Aarhus University in Denmark, were published last week in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.
WASHINGTON, April 27, 2020 — As demand for higher-efficiency and smaller electronics grows, so does demand for a new generation of materials that can be printed at ever smaller dimensions. Such materials are critical to national security applications and space exploration. But materials that work well on Earth don’t always hold up well at high altitudes and in space. Scientists are now creating new metal-based nanomaterials for circuit boards that could be resistant to the high-altitude radiation encountered by electronics in aerospace equipment, fighter jets and weapon systems.