Material hardship taking a mental and physical toll on young adults during pandemic

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine has become a new norm for many routine and non-emergency medical needs. But there are lessons to be learned from telemedicine's use - or lack thereof - prior to the pandemic, and a new study from a UConn School of Social Work researcher offers insight for policymakers, administrators, and public health officials when considering the implementation of new services. A qualitative researcher, lead author and licensed clinical social worker Kelsi Carolan was brought into the study - which was conducted in 2017 and 2018 and was recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research - to examine the adoption of a telemedicine program in a California independent senior ...

A recent study of homeless preschoolers found a strong correlation between the bonds those children formed with teachers and the children's risk of behavioral and emotional problems. "It's well established that children who are homeless are at higher risk of a wide variety of negative outcomes," says Mary Haskett, corresponding author of the study and a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. "However, there's a lot of variability within this group. We wanted to learn more about what makes some of these children more resilient than others." For ...

The systemic balance that coordinates the growth of an organism and its progress through the different stages of development occurs across the animal world and is regulated by internal and external signals. Examples of this balance are puberty in humans and metamorphosis in flies. These are transitions characterised by the production of steroid hormones and they mark the turning point that will determine the halting of growth and entry into the adult state. Certain human diseases, such as cancer and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), cause a delay in this transition. Led by Dr. Marco Milán, scientists at IRB Barcelona ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study illuminates how a gene called HAND2 may have a hand in the timing of human labor. "We don't know why humans go into labor. It's a basic aspect of human biology that we just don't know the answer to, and it's kind of embarrassing that we don't," says senior author Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo. "What happens in many other animals is that as gestation goes on, the level of progesterone keeps going up, and then a few hours before birth, progesterone levels drop to pre-pregnancy levels. Progesterone inhibits contractions, so once you lose it, the uterus starts contracting and the baby is born. "But in ...

The reintroduction of 32 bobcats to an island off the coast of Georgia more than three decades ago created an ideal experiment to examine the accuracy of a genetic-modeling technique that predicts extinction of isolated wildlife populations. That's the conclusion of Penn State researchers who continue to monitor the bobcat population on Cumberland Island National Seashore, and who conducted a study comparing and contrasting the Cumberland Island bobcats to a population of bobcats on Kiawah Island off the coast of South Carolina. The research was led by Cassandra Miller-Butterworth, associate professor of biology at Penn State Beaver, and Duane Diefenbach, Penn State adjunct professor of wildlife ecology who, as a doctoral ...

Like its chemical relative carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas and the dominant ozone-depleting substance emitted in the 21st Century. Consequently, strategies for limiting its emissions and its catalytic decomposition with metals are being developed. A recent study indicates that nitrous oxide can bind to metals similarly to carbon dioxide, which helps to design new complexes with even stronger bonding. This could allow the use of nitrous oxide in synthetic chemistry or help to degrade it to substances harmless to the atmosphere. The results were reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition as a Very Important Paper on February 17th 2021. A comprehensive analysis of the global N2O budget has ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted considerable investigation into how the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein attaches to a human cell during the infection process, as this knowledge is useful in designing vaccines and therapeutics. Now, a team of scientists has discovered additional locations on the Spike protein that may not only help to explain how certain mutations make emerging variants more infectious but also could be used as additional targets for therapeutic intervention. "Significant research is underway to examine how the receptor binding domain (RBD) at the tip of the club-shaped SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein attaches to an ACE2 receptor on a ...

A new study from researchers at the University of Ottawa's School of Psychology has found that using negative emojis in text messages produces a negative perception of the sender regardless of their true intent. Isabelle Boutet, a Full Professor in Psychology in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and her team's findings are included in the study 'Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing' which was published in Computers in Human Behavior. Study background: Eye movements of 38 University of Ottawa volunteer undergraduate student participants were tracked and studied, and the volunteers were shown sentence-emoji pairing under 12 different conditions where sentences could be negative, positive, ...

Philadelphia, February 22, 2021--In April 2020, pediatricians began recognizing a puzzling syndrome in children involving hyperinflammation that results in an array of symptoms, including fever, gastrointestinal distress and rash. The syndrome, thought to be a post-infectious complication of SARS-CoV-2 infection, was given the name Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome Children, or MIS-C. However, diagnosing the condition has posed challenges, as many of its symptoms, including rash, are common in many other pediatric infections. In a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) describe the ...

It has long been known that several chemicals used in plastic toys in different parts of the world can be harmful to human health. However, it is difficult for parents to figure out how to avoid plastic toys containing chemicals that may cause possible health risks to their children. Regulations and labelling schemes are different across regions and countries, and there is no international agreement on which substances should be banned from use in toy materials. For the most part, regulations and international lists of 'chemicals of concern' in toys focus on certain substance groups with known harmful properties, such as phthalates, but do not cover the wider range of chemicals found in plastic toys. Researchers from DTU ...