Tech
A survey of plastic pollution on Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands has revealed the territory's beaches are littered with an estimated 414 million pieces of plastic debris.
The study led by IMAS researcher Dr Jennifer Lavers and published in the journal Scientific Reports estimated beaches on the Indian Ocean islands are littered with 238 tonnes of plastic, including 977 000 shoes and 373 000 toothbrushes.
Rochester, MN, May 15, 2019 - Systemic amyloidosis is a major cause of renal injury, mostly due to direct kidney damage caused by deposits of abnormal protein called amyloid, in the kidney parenchyma. In patients with cardiac amyloidosis, renal infarction is associated with acute kidney injury according to a new study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, published by Elsevier.
TAMPA, Fla. -- The two primary hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease are clumps of sticky amyloid-beta (Aβ) protein fragments known as amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles of a protein called tau. Abnormal accumulations of both proteins are needed to drive the death of brain cells, or neurons. But scientists still have a lot to learn about how amyloid impacts tau to promote widespread neurotoxicity, which destroys cognitive abilities like thinking, remembering and reasoning in patients with Alzheimer's.
Hate speech has become a growing topic of discussion on a global scale, especially as advances in the internet have transformed communication on many levels. Nowadays, it's easy to spread hate speech on user-generated and anonymous online platforms.
A practical and creative way for policy-makers to raise awareness of these issues is to create culturally sensitive and effective counter narratives with the help of arts education. It also helps teachers empower students to fight against hate speech.
Recently, multi-component materials have become one of the most promising materials in the engineering and biomedical applications. Compared with traditional alloys, the composition design of multi-component materials is more complicated, and lots of alloys with different compositions need to be prepared and tested. In addition, the relationship between the mixing entropy and performance of multi-component materials are nonlinear, thereby the structure and performance cannot be effectively predicted by mixing entropy values, which makes it more difficult to design the alloys efficiently.
A drug used in the treatment of overactive bladder can accelerate atheroclerosis in mice, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). According to the researchers, the results suggest that in some cases the drug might potentially increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke in humans.
New Haven, Conn. -- Yale researchers have pinpointed a key reason why people are more likely to get sick and even die from flu during winter months: low humidity.
While experts know that cold temperatures and low humidity promote transmission of the flu virus, less is understood about the effect of decreased humidity on the immune system's defenses against flu infection.
COLUMBUS, Ohio--Researchers have built a more efficient, more reliable potassium-oxygen battery, a step toward a potential solution for energy storage on the nation's power grid and longer-lasting batteries in cell phones and laptops.
Lisbon, Portugal - 12 May 2019: Machine learning is overtaking humans in predicting death or heart attack. That's the main message of a study presented today at ICNC 2019.1
The International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT (ICNC) is co-organised by the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC), the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM).
The smallest pixels yet created - a million times smaller than those in smartphones, made by trapping particles of light under tiny rocks of gold - could be used for new types of large-scale flexible displays, big enough to cover entire buildings.
The colour pixels, developed by a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge, are compatible with roll-to-roll fabrication on flexible plastic films, dramatically reducing their production cost. The results are reported in the journal Science Advances.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Children living in food-insecure households are more likely to attend school on Fridays if they're participating in a food-distribution program that provides them with backpacks of meals for the weekend, researchers at the University of Illinois found in a new study.
Students participating in the BackPack food program missed one Friday on average during the school year, about the same rate as the 155 children in the comparison group, said Barbara H. Fiese, the first author of the study and the director of the U. of I.'s Family Resiliency Center.
CHICAGO -- A common chronic skin condition affecting 125 million people worldwide, psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, a class of disorders in which the immune system attacks the body's own healthy cells. In recent years, new medications -- known as biologics -- that inhibit the overactive immune system by targeting specific inflammatory pathways, have revolutionized the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune diseases. However, until now, few studies have documented the comparative safety of these various biologics.
CHAPEL HILL, NC - Results from a study published in the Journal of the National Medical Association show that a pragmatic system-based intervention within cancer treatment centers can nearly eliminate existing disparities in treatment and outcomes for black patients with early-stage lung and breast cancer. The treatment completion rates before this intervention were 87.3 percent for white patients versus 79.8 percent for black patients. With the intervention in place, treatment completion climbed to 89.5 percent for white patients and 88.4 percent for black patients.
Collaborating scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Princeton University have discovered a new layered ferromagnetic semiconductor, a rare type of material that holds great promise for next-generation electronic technologies.
Bottom Line: The time of day of a primary care appointment was associated with the likelihood of a physician ordering cancer screenings and of patients completing those screenings in this study of 33 practices with patients eligible for breast or colorectal cancer screening. The likelihood of physicians ordering cancer screenings decreased as the clinic day progressed and so did the likelihood of patients completing those screenings within one year of the office visit.