Stem cell study illuminates the cause of a devastating inherited heart disorder

What The Study Did: Researchers used near real-time social media data to capture the public's changing COVID-19-related attitudes when former President Trump was infected. Authors: Sean D. Young, Ph.D., of the University of California, Irvine, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0101) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional ...

What The Study Did: Researchers looked at changes in the rate of deaths associated with the use of illicit (such as cocaine) and medical  stimulants in the United States from 2010 to 2017. Authors: Joshua C. Black, Ph.D., of Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety in Denver, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.7850) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial ...

What The Study Did: This report summarizes frequency and patterns of concussions and repetitive head impacts over the course of several seasons among college football players who wore sensors in their helmets. Authors: Michael McCrea, Ph.D., of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.5193) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest ...

For the first time, scientists have calculated the global impact of human activity on animal movement, revealing widespread impacts that threaten species survival and biodiversity. While it has been shown that activities such as logging and urbanisation can have big impacts on wildlife, the study by scientists at the University of Sydney and Deakin University in Australia shows that episodic events such as hunting, military activity and recreation can trigger even bigger changes in animal behaviour. "It is vital we understand the scale of impact that humans have on other animal species," said lead author Dr Tim Doherty, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Sydney. "The consequences of changed animal movement can be profound and lead to reduced ...

When two sheets of graphene are stacked atop each other at just the right angle, the layered structure morphs into an unconventional superconductor, allowing electric currents to pass through without resistance or wasted energy. This "magic-angle" transformation in bilayer graphene was observed for the first time in 2018 in the group of Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT. Since then, scientists have searched for other materials that can be similarly twisted into superconductivity, in the emerging field of "twistronics." For the most part, no other twisted material has exhibited superconductivity other than the original twisted bilayer ...

An intelligent material that learns by physically changing itself, similar to how the human brain works, could be the foundation of a completely new generation of computers. Radboud physicists working toward this so-called "quantum brain" have made an important step. They have demonstrated that they can pattern and interconnect a network of single atoms, and mimic the autonomous behaviour of neurons and synapses in a brain. They report their discovery in Nature Nanotechnology on 1 February. Considering the growing global demand for computing capacity, more and more data centres are necessary, all of which leave an ever-expanding energy footprint. 'It is clear that ...

The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II -- an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy that is about 50 kiloparsecs, or 163,000 light years, from Earth. Now MIT astrophysicists have detected stars at the edge of Tucana II, in a configuration that is surprisingly far from its center but nevertheless caught up in the tiny galaxy's gravitational pull. This is the first evidence that Tucana II hosts an extended dark matter halo ...

Millions of patients suffering from neurological and mental disorders such as depression, addiction, and chronic pain are treatment-resistant. In fact, about 30% of all major depression patients do not respond at all to any medication or psychotherapy. Simply put, many traditional forms of treatment for these disorders may have reached their limit. Where do we go from here? Research to be published in Nature Biomedical Engineering led by Maryam Shanechi, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in electrical and computer engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, ...

King Richard III's involvement in one of the most notorious and emotive mysteries in English history may be a step closer to being confirmed following a new study by Professor Tim Thornton of the University of Huddersfield. Richard has long been held responsible of the murder of his nephews King Edward V and his brother, Richard, duke of York - dubbed 'the Princes in the Tower' - in a dispute about succession to the throne. The pair were held in the Tower of London, but disappeared from public view in 1483 with Richard taking the blame following his death two years later. It has become of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of all, stoked by references in Shakespeare's play about the ...

Skoltech researchers helped their colleagues from Japan, Germany, the United States, and China study the crystal structure and optical properties of a new class of two-dimensional compounds, which can be used as effective visible-light-responsive photocatalysts for energy and chemical conversion. They used the Advanced Imaging Core Facility equipment for imaging and structural analysis. The paper was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. One potential use of photocatalysts, so-called water splitting can help substitute climate-warming fossil fuels with more environmentally friendly hydrogen. For this process to work on ...